"Quack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Hope over his business, and was never heard of for months. Then he turned up in Sussex with a little girl, who had been saved from diphtheria by tracheotomy, and some unknown quack. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... your way, and the other to dazzle and confound your weak brain. Heark ye, Clinker, you are either an hypocritical knave, or a wrong-headed enthusiast; and in either case, unfit for my service. If you are a quack in sanctity and devotion, you will find it an easy matter to impose upon silly women, and others of crazed understanding, who will contribute lavishly for your support. If you are really seduced by the reveries of a disturbed imagination, the sooner you lose your senses entirely, the better for ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... few rushes and some sedgy growth close to where the rat had been busy. Farther off, too, there was the sound that I had heard down in a marshy part of Essex with my uncles, during one of our excursions. "Quack, quack, quack! Wuck, wuck, wuck!"—a duck and a drake just coming down to the water to drink and bathe and feed ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... to run to the galley in search of cotton and bandages. He was something of a quack doctor and always kept things necessary ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... discover being either a consequence of this knowledge, or the effects of observation and experience. The powers of a somnambule extend equally to the morale as well as to the physique. In this respect a phrenologist is a pure quack in comparison with a lady in a trance. The latter has no dependence on bumps and organs, but she looks right through you, at a glance, and pronounces ex cathedra, whether you are a rogue, or an honest man; a well-disposed, or an evil-disposed ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... who had heard all this with infinite pleasure, 'I have at last met with a reasonable physician; he will not confine me to bread and water, nor starve me under pretence of curing me, like that confounded quack from whose clutches ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... did Madame de Pompadour. It was from her I learnt what I have just related. M. Queanay said, talking of the pearls, "They are produced by a disease in the oyster. It is possible to know the cause of it; but, be that as it may, he is not the less a quack, since he pretends to have the elixir vitae, and to have lived several centuries. Our master is, however, infatuated by him, and sometimes talks of him as if his ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... In some parts of Syria, as in Arabia, almost every ill and affection is attributed to the rheums, or called so. Rheumatism, for instance, is explained by the Arab quack as a defluxion of rheums, failing to discharge through the upper orifices, progress downward, and settling in the muscles and joints, produce the affection. And might there not be more truth in that than the diagnosis of him who is a Membre de la ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... better class of travellers the roads were frequented by wanderers of all kinds, quack doctors, minstrels, jugglers, beggars, and such like. Life in the country was dull, and even great lords took pleasure in amusements which are now only to be heard of at country fairs. Any one who could play or sing was always welcome, ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... I should eat all my enemies, I should suffer from an everlasting indigestion, and, in my despair, I might fly to La Mettrie for help. It is well known that when you suffer from incurable diseases, you seek, at last, counsel of the quack." ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... in the marsh; and there was something else which Mildred did not seem to like. While George was quack-quacking, and making himself as like a little goose as he could, Mildred softly called to Ailwin, and beckoned her to the hedge. Ailwin came, swinging the great spade in her right hand, as easily as Mildred could flourish ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... found out, and reported to George Bickley, a miserable quack and 'confidence man,' a person long familiarly spoken of by the press as a mere Jeremy Diddler, but who has been a useful tool to shrewder men in managing for them this precious Order. The member is to do all in his power to 'build up a public sentiment in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that they must be always either very busy for the good of others, or else extremely ill themselves. Some natural delicacy of constitution, in fact, with an unfortunate turn for medicine, especially quack medicine, had given them an early tendency at various times to various disorders. The rest of their suffering was from their own fancy, the love of distinction, and the love of the wonderful. They had ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... and more tasteful articles of apparel. There were caterers there for all customers; and stuffs and wares were offered for sale from all countries. And in the wake of this business part of the fair there invariably followed a crowd of ministers to the popular tastes— quack doctors and merry andrews, jugglers and minstrels, singlestick players, grinners through horse-collars, and sportmakers of ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... the pond, and Johnny put in his boat. It sailed right out among the ducks, and they were much afraid of it, and swam away as fast as they could, saying, "Quack, ...
— The Nursery, No. 165. September, 1880, Vol. 28 - A Monthly Magazine For Youngest Readers • Various
... always found a powerful anti-splenetic; and, although I am not a professed physician, I will venture to prescribe to you in this instance with all the confidence of Hippocrates. The whole system of nostrums from that arch-quack, the old serpent, down to the far-famed Stoughton of our own day, does not present so powerful a remedy, amid all its antis, as cheerful reading to a heavy spirit. I will venture to say, in the spirit ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... way. With these, the taint of the money they hope to receive clouds such mind or intuition as they may possess, and it follows that their judgments and prognostications have precisely the same value as the nostrums of the quack medicine-vendor. They are very different from the Highlander who, coming to the door of his cottage or bothie at dawn, regards steadfastly the signs and omens he notes in the appearance of the sky, the actions of animals, the flight of birds, and so forth, and derives there from a ...
— Tea-Cup Reading, and the Art of Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves • 'A Highland Seer'
... advice in raising what might be termed semi-hardy trees, is to grow them in sod, the ordinary quack grass, June grass, bluegrass or other natural grass sods which can be found on your planting site. Although this will probably hold back your tree development for a few years, until the roots are thoroughly established in the deeper soil beneath the sod roots, it is surprising ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... more thoroughly immoral than is M. Renan on this matter. This Jesus of his, about whom he sentimentalizes, whom he declares a thousand times to be so 'charming,' and so 'divine,' and the rest, turns out to be a deliberate cheat and quack, putting out claims He does not Himself believe, and acting in sham miracles which people coax Him, according to his biographer, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the other impinges a bluff still covered with its forest growth of shrubs and wood-plants,—while upon the frowning front of a cliff that has for centuries faced nothing meaner than the Alleghany, with its mountain background, some Vandal has daubed the advertisement of a quack nostrum. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... the intruders; but no one heeded his look. At a signal from the Dominican a servant had brought in a pair of candelabra, and in their commonplace light the cabalistic hangings, the magician's appliances and his fantastically-dressed attendants looked as tawdry as the paraphernalia of a village quack. Heiligenstern alone survived the test. Erect, at bay as it were, his black robe falling in hieratic folds, the white wand raised in his hands, he might have personified the Prince of Darkness drawn up undaunted against the hosts of the Lord. Some one had snatched ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... would solemnly waddle to a certain hole in the fence well known to himself, and, by dint of much pushing with his strong, yellow feet, would squeeze himself through, and rejoin his companion with many a guttural quack and flirt of his tail. If "Chung" desired to take a bath, he would make for the brook, where "One Lung" would soon join him, always remaining, however, on the bank, where he would strut about and crow continuously. On one occasion, ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... soon as the delicate melody of the horns and clarinets is taken at the proper tempo; these instruments are thus relieved from the special difficulties pertaining to them, and which, particularly with the clarinet, at times render it likely to produce a "quack" [FOOTNOTE: Anglice, "a goose,"] even in the hands of skilful players. I remember an occasion when all the musicians began to breathe at ease on my taking this piece at the true moderate pace: then the humorous sforzato ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... the children this they were much amused, and I am sure they thought it would be very dull never to hear the crowing of a cock or the "quack, quack" of a duck—to say nothing of the soft cooing of doves in the wood, and the sweet, rich notes of ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... voice of a duck. You do not speak with the quack of which they are so proud. And then, if you are truly a duck, why are you not with ...
— Children's Classics In Dramatic Form • Augusta Stevenson
... Baroja and Blasco Ibanez. For all his appearance of modernism, Blasco really belongs to the generation before 1898. He is of the stock of Victor Hugo—a popular rhapsodist and intellectual swashbuckler, half artist and half mob orator—a man of florid and shallow certainties, violent enthusiasms, quack remedies, vast magnetism and address, and even vaster impudence—a fellow with plain touches of the charlatan. His first solid success at home was made with La Barraca in 1899—and it was a success a good deal more political than artistic; he was hailed for his frenzy far ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... "Quack-quack! Take me out! Oh, take me out!" cried poor Fluffy-dumpty. The other six ducks crowded around and looked ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... happiness are wrapped up in that girl. But in an evil hour she has been led astray. Now she is with child. She begs, she implores you to save her from ruin, and her parents from despair. If you do not help her, some other Doctor or a quack will do it; but you could do it so much better. If you should have yielded on the two former occasions, if you have already stained your heart with innocent blood, will you now refuse? Where are you going to ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... XV. and Madame de Pompadour treated Saint-Germain as a person of consequence. 'He is a quack, for he says he has an elixir,' said Dr. Quesnay, with medical scepticism. 'Moreover, our master, the King, is obstinate; he sometimes speaks of Saint-Germain as ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... twenty, was enchanted by the philosophic veteran. In after years he so far forgot himself as to write of Saint Simon as a depraved quack, and to deplore his connection with him as purely mischievous. While the connection lasted he thought very differently. Saint Simon is described as the most estimable and lovable of men, and the most delightful in his relations; he is the worthiest of ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... in the stillness of morn,— When to call 'em to breakfast Josh toots on the horn, The ducks gives a quack, and the caow gives a moo, And the childen chimes ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... truth, like a good old mother duck, who, having for years led her ducklings to the same pond, when that pond has been drained and nothing is left but baked mud, will still persist in bringing her younglings down to it, and walks about with flapping wings and anxious quack, trying to induce them to enter it. But the ducklings, with fresh young instincts, hear far off the delicious drippings from the new dam which has been built higher up to catch the water, and they smell the chickweed and the long grass that is growing up beside it; and absolutely ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... and humours. Here a party of young men were jumping, or wrestling, or shooting at a mark with cross-bows. There, girls and boys were dancing to the sound of a pipe, or still smaller children were playing at marbles, or amusing themselves with the toys they had just purchased. Not far from these, a quack from one scaffold was descanting on the virtues of his medicines, whilst a preacher from another was holding forth to the graver part of the crowd, the joys and terrors of another life; and yet farther on, a motley groupe were listening ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... matter of fact, we were richer. The captain had the usual sailor's provision of quack medicines, with which, in the usual sailor fashion, he would daily drug himself, displaying an extreme inconstancy, and flitting from Kennedy's Red Discovery to Kennedy's White, and from Hood's Sarsaparilla to Mother Seigel's Syrup. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... may therefore be best studied in the vocational types it has produced. Among the types which it would be interesting to study are: the shopgirl, the policeman, the peddler, the cabman, the night watchman, the clairvoyant, the vaudeville performer, the quack doctor, the bartender, the ward boss, the strike-breaker, the labor agitator, the school teacher, the reporter, the stockbroker, the pawnbroker; all of these are characteristic products of the conditions of city life; each with its special experience, insight, and point of view determines ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the rising generation must be thoroughly instructed in this matter. That quack specific "ignorance" has been experimented with quite too long already. The true method of insuring all persons, young or old, against the abuses of any part, organ, function, or faculty of the wondrous machinery of life, is to teach them its use. "Train a ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... so of a writer, who delivers himself up to you perforce unreservedly, you say, Is he honest? Does he tell the truth in the main? Does he seem actuated by a desire to find out and speak it? Is he a quack, who shams sentiment, or mouths for effect? Does he seek popularity by claptraps or other arts? I can no more ignore good fortune than any other chance which has befallen me. I have found many thousands more readers than I ever looked for. I have no right to say to these, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hen set up such a din and clatter that Mrs. Gerome, who happened to get a glimpse of them, felt sorry for the poor frightened fowl, and tried to drive the little ones out of the water; but, whenever she put her hand towards them to catch the nearest, the whole brood would quack and dive,—and, when she had laughed that one short laugh, she called to me to look after them and went back to the house. You don't know how ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... an Indian tepee, reeking as it is, with filth and poisonous odors. There is no such a thing as an health officer among that band of braves. They have a half spiritualized personage whom they desiginate the Medicine Man; but he is nothing more or less than a quack of the worst kind. As in every other part of their life, so in the ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... warfare against cant. The historical facts with which he had to deal he grouped under these embracing categories, and in the French Revolution, which is as much a treasure-house of his philosophy as a history, there is hardly a page on which they do not appear. "Quack-ridden," he says, "in that one word lies all ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... waxed with his years, it must not be supposed that Hake suffered from what in the “new criticism” is sweetly and appropriately called “modernity”—in other words, that vulgar greed for notoriety that in these days, when literature to be listened to must be puffed like quack medicine and patent soap, has made the atmosphere of the literary arena somewhat stifling in the nostrils of those who turn from “modernity” to poetic art. Nor was Hake’s feeling akin ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... the rooms of the Club, with glassy, meaningless eyes, and an endless greasy simper—he fawns on everybody he meets, and shakes hands with you, and blesses you, and betrays the most tender and astonishing interest in your welfare. You know him to be a quack and a rogue, and he knows you know it. But he wriggles on his way, and leaves a track of slimy flattery after him wherever he goes. Who can penetrate that man's mystery? What earthly good can he get from ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in, his eyes sparkling with indignation. "Sir Arthur, I have so often warned you of the knavery of that rascally quack, that I really wonder you ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... anything may seem to happen. But Dr. Carpenter wholly omits such cases as that of Mr. Hamilton Aide, and of M. Alphonse Karr. Both were absolutely sceptical. Both disliked Home very much, and thought him an underbred Yankee quack and charlatan. Both were in the 'expectancy' of seeing no marvels, were under 'the dominant idea' that nothing unusual would occur. Both, in a brilliantly lighted room of a villa near Nice, saw a chair make a rush from the ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... unregistered proprietary medicine purporting to cure certain diseases or produce abortion is made an offence. A register of proprietary medicines, etc., is established. The object is to protect the public against quack remedies. ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... notice. To being the last person informed (instead of the first) of Mr. Nugent Dubourg's exaggerated and absurd view of the case of his afflicted child. To the German surgeon, as being certainly a foreigner and a stranger, and possibly a quack. To the slur implied on British Surgery by bringing the foreigner to Dimchurch. To the expense involved in the same proceeding. Finally to the whole scope and object of Mr. Nugent Dubourg's proposal, which had for its origin rebellion against the decrees of an all-wise Providence, and for its ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... feebleness in us. Our youths, who spend their days in trying to build up their constitutions by sport or athletics and their evenings in undermining them with poisonous and dyed drinks; our daughters, who are ever searching for some new quack remedy for new imaginary megrim, what strength is there in them? We have our societies for the prevention of this and the promotion of that and the propagation of the other, because there are no individuals among us. Our sexes are already nearly ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... was this truth rather (the word doctrine reminds one of quack medicines)—which, quickening in Luther's mind, gave Europe its new life. It was the flame which, beginning with a small spark, kindled the hearth-fires in every ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... from his horse and done himself some serious injury which had obviously ended in derangement, came to a Catholic priest, declaring that he was possessed, and telling a story of almost dramatic interest. In his sickness he had consulted a quack doctor, who told him that he could cure him by charms. He wrote strange signs on little fragments of paper, some of which were to be worn, some to be eaten in bread and drunk in wine. These the poor madman fancied afterwards were charms by which he had unknowingly sold himself ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various
... man, I understand, this Grimshawe,—a quack, intemperate, always in these scuffles: let him get out ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his toils to relax, The scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks: 80 Come, all ye quack bards, and ye quacking divines, Come, and dance on the spot where your tyrant reclines: When Satire and Censure encircl'd his throne, I fear'd for your safety, I fear'd for my own; But now he is gone, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... Council ordered Stukely, 'all delays set apart,' to bring the body of Sir Walter Raleigh speedily to London. Two days later, Stukely and his prisoner started from Plymouth. A French quack, called Mannourie, in whose chemical pretensions Raleigh had shown some interest, was encouraged by Stukely to attend him, and to worm himself into his confidence. As Walter and Elizabeth Raleigh passed the beautiful Sherborne which had once been theirs, the former could not refrain ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... that Macaulay prophesied a reign of terror as a necessary consequence of an extended franchise. Macaulay, skilfully enough, protested against this interpretation. 'We say again and again,' he declares, 'that we are on the defensive. We do not think it necessary to prove that a quack medicine is poison. Let the vendor prove it to be sanative. We do not pretend to show that universal suffrage is an evil. Let its advocates show it to be a good.'[119] Mill rests his whole case upon the selfishness of mankind. Will not the selfishness lead the actual majority at a given moment to ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... commences the long campaign against the weeds, which advance like successive armies. No sooner is one growth slain than a different and perhaps more pestiferous class rises in its place—the worst of the Philistines being nut-grass, quack-grass, and—direst foe ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... The advertising quack who wearies With tales of countless cures, His teeth, I've enacted, Shall all be extracted By terrified amateurs: The music-hall singer attends a series Of masses and fugues and "ops" By Bach, interwoven With Spohr and Beethoven, At classical Monday Pops: The billiard sharp whom any ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... sailors a-skipping on the deck, And they were little white mice with rings about their neck. The captain was a duck, with a jacket on his back, And when the ship began to sail, the captain cried, "Quack! Quack! Quack! Quack!" The captain ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... Projected Villages, which afforded an ocular demonstration to all who saw them of the practicability of Mr. Owen's whole scheme. He comes into a room with one of these documents in his hand, with the air of a schoolmaster and a quack doctor mixed, asks very kindly how you do, and on hearing you are still in an indifferent state of health owing to bad digestion, instantly turns round and observes that 'All that will be remedied in his plan; that indeed he thinks too much attention has been ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... first gazed at him in mute surprise; then hurried, with every variety of squeak, and quack, and fluttering wing, ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... 'But may not many people be far more worthy of the appointment than myself?' said the writer. 'Where?' said the friendly Radical. 'If you don't get it it will be made a job of, given to the son of some steward, or, perhaps, to some quack who has done dirty work. I tell you what, I shall ask it for you, in spite of you; I shall, indeed!' and his eyes flashed with friendly and patriotic fervour through the large pair of ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... failures. When I was on earth, professors of all sorts prowled round me feeling for an unhealthy spot in me on which they could fasten. The doctors of medicine bade me consider what I must do to save my body, and offered me quack cures for imaginary diseases. I replied that I was not a hypochondriac; so they called me Ignoramus and went their way. The doctors of divinity bade me consider what I must do to save my soul; but I was not a spiritual hypochondriac any more than a bodily one, and would not trouble myself ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... was a failure, discovered that they love to for I asked the children to use imitate sounds, so we will play their boards and chalks for a at this. They could draw a cat definite drawing, and they should and say "miauw," and a duck and have had the time to use them say "quack." They could also freely and discover their use. I imitate the wind. got very ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... the famous Astrologer William Lilly, whose prophetic Almanacks, under the title of Merlinus Anglicus, had been appearing annually since 1644. But indeed all sorts of men were in contact with this quack or quack-mystic. He had been consulted by Charles I as to the probable issue of events; he had been consulted and feed by partisans of the other side: his Almanacks, with their hieroglyphics and political predictions, had a boundless popularity, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... of the constipatory and stupefying tendencies which, by a private process known to the assigns of the inventor, have been so masked or removed that it possesses in many cases an availableness which the practitioner can not despise, though compelled by the secrecy of its formula to rank it among quack medicines. The amount of it which my friend had taken during his month's eclipse represents an ounce of dry gum opium—in rough measurement a piece as large as a French billiard ball. I thus particularize because he had never previously been ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... their pretty feathers while alive, as the eloquent poulterer by-and-by will do; but because they have really distinguished birth, and adventurous, chivalrous, and bright blue Norman blood. To such purpose do the gay young Vikings of the world of quack pour in (when the weather and the time of year invite), equipped with red boots and plumes of purple velvet, to enchant the coy lady ducks in soft water, and eclipse the familiar and too legal drake. For a while they revel in the change of scene, the luxury of unsalted mud ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... form of a boy shot upward, with brandished arms; and the square-built man reached the Hardscrabbler's jaw with a powerful and accurate swing. There was a scream of pain, a roar from the crowd, and an answering bellow from the quack in midair, for he had launched his formidable bulk over the rail, to plunge, a crushing weight, upon the would-be murderer, who lay stunned on the grass. For a moment the avenger ground him, with knees and fists; then was up and back on the platform. Already the city man had gained the flooring, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the druggists; and for this last week he has taken to sitting in my piazza for two or three hours every day, and making it a resort for asthmas and squalling bambini. It stirs my gall to see the toad-faced quack fingering the greasy quattrini, or bagging a pigeon in exchange for his pills and powders. But I'll put a few thorns in his saddle, else I'm no Florentine. Laudamus! he is coming to be shaved; that's what I've waited for. Messer Domenico, go not away: wait; you shall see a rare bit of fooling, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... setting his goblet down with a bang upon the polished table, after draining it to the bottom. "I would like to go through that mob again! and I would pull an oar in the galleys of Marseilles rather than be questioned with that air of authority by a botanizing quack like La Galissoniere! Such villainous questions as he asked me about the state of the royal magazines! La Galissoniere had more the air of a judge cross-examining a culprit than of a Governor asking ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... amazing future ahead of the book business. But I tell you that future lies not merely in systematizing it as a trade. It lies in dignifying it as a profession. It is small use to jeer at the public for craving shoddy books, quack books, untrue books. Physician, cure thyself! Let the bookseller learn to know and revere good books, he will teach the customer. The hunger for good books is more general and more insistent than ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... lots of time, much pains and trouble, the others seek by petty tricks and Arts to gain a name, and profit from the industrious. Nay some Mountebanks have been set up by purchasing receipts of the Apothecary or his Servants. And one of them told me, he set up a Quack by selling and commending to him a Medicine he had long kept in his Shop and could not otherwise put off, and that by degrees he made him a famous practiser among the ignorant and poor people. An Act quite contrary to the interest of ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett
... to yield to the impulse and go abroad. My intention was to avoid cities, and, wandering from village to village, lay my soul bare to the healing influences of nature. As to any healing in the power of Time, I despised the old bald-pate as a quack who performed his seeming cures at the expense of the whole body. The better cures attributed to him are not his at all, but produced by the operative causes whose servant he is. A thousand holy balms require his services for their ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... doctor, a simple man, who was not so cautious, and who signed his name to these letters, glad to get clients from any quarter. For his trouble, Saniel took this doctor's place during Sunday in summer, and from time to time received a box of perfumery or quack medicines, which he sold at a low price when ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... the blackbird, who has puffed out his feathers to shield him from the frost, and who will sit so close and quiet that you may see the moonlight glitter on his eye. Presently comes a whistling noise of wings, and a loud 'quack, quack!' as a string of ducks, their long necks stretched out, pass over not twenty yards high, slowly slanting downwards to the water. This is the favourable moment for the gun, because their big bodies are well defined against ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... creaks and quacks and croaks broke out, sudden snappings of twigs, a scurry among dead leaves, a splash in the water, the far whir of wings. There were no insect noises, no resonant voices of bull-frogs; weird squeaks arose at intervals, the murmuring complaint of water-fowl, guttural quack of duck and bittern—a vague stirring everywhere of wild things settling to rest or awaking. There were things moving in the unseen ooze, too, leaving sudden sinuous trails in the dim but growing lustre that whitened ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... in Families is still more marked. We need only recall the harsh and noisy Parrots, so similar in their peculiar utterance. Or take as an example the web-footed Family,—do not all the Geese and the innumerable host of Ducks quack? Does not every member of the Crow Family caw, whether it be the Jackdaw, the Jay, the Magpie, the Rook in some green rookery of the Old World, or the Crow of our woods, with its long, melancholy caw that seems to make the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... green and blue bodies. A fine region this for frogs, but many of them live in trees, finding, I suppose, that they are likely to be gobbled up, if they keep, as frogs in northern countries do, in the water. As night drew on, we heard them 'hoo-hooing, quack-quacking,' keeping up the strangest concert imaginable; indeed, had not the consul assured me that frogs produced the noises, I should have supposed that they were caused by some species of nightbird; however, I am, I confess, no great hand at description, nor had ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... he carried a long, uncovered basket in which were arranged rows and piles of small bottles; a glance at the basket reassured her, every one knew Crazy Dale, the peddler of essences, cough-drops and quack medicines. ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... invited in London to be introduced to a great man, by any of his parasites or hangers-on, you may be assured that your great man is no such thing; you may make up your mind to be presented to some quack, some hollow-skulled fellow, who makes up by little arts, small tactics, and every variety of puff, for the want of that inherent excellence which will enable him to stand alone. These gentlemen form the Cockney school ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... horse]; squeak, [swine, mouse]; neigh, whinny [horse]; bray [donkey, mule, hinny, ass]; mew, mewl [kitten]; meow [cat]; purr [cat]; caterwaul, pule [cats]; baa^, bleat [lamb]; low, moo [cow, cattle]; troat^, croak, peep [frog]; coo [dove, pigeon]; gobble [turkeys]; quack [duck]; honk, gaggle, guggle [goose]; crow, caw, squawk, screech, [crow]; cackle, cluck, clack [hen, rooster, poultry]; chuck, chuckle; hoot, hoo [owl]; chirp, cheep, chirrup, twitter, cuckoo, warble, trill, tweet, pipe, whistle [small birds]; hum [insects, hummingbird]; buzz ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... two grassy slopes, the Tsomass ends. When they approached the river mouth, they saw extending from the bank a salmon trap, and even to-day, the Indians will show at Lup-se-kup-se some old rotten sticks, which they affirm formed part of that same trap. The land was green, the wild duck's quack was heard among the reeds which edged the river bank, while flocks of geese were feeding on the grass which grows thickly upon the tidal flats, the flats ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... Don Quixote in high wrath, turning upon him angrily, as his way was; "and it is a very great slander, or rather villainy. Queen Madasima was a very illustrious lady, and it is not to be supposed that so exalted a princess would have made free with a quack; and whoever maintains the contrary lies like a great scoundrel, and I will give him to know it, on foot or on horseback, armed or unarmed, by night or by day, or as he ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Rule by bayonets, bribes, and spies, Charlatans in church and throne, France is opening all her eyes— Down go minion, king, and quack, We'll have our ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... to do—"Godfrey's Cordial," "Infants' Preservative," and "Dalby's Carminative," are sometimes given in flatulence, but as most of these quack medicines contain, in one form or another, either opium or poppy, and as opium and poppy are both dangerous remedies for children, ALL quack medicines ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... boschas).—The mallard is splendid in plumage, and in shape is far more graceful than his domesticated brother. In early winter the wild ducks fly overhead in a wedge-shaped phalanx, and by and by they pair, and if disturbed start up with a sudden quack, quack from the copse-wood pond. Broods of downy wild ducks have been brought in by boys, but it has almost always ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... me while I took some refreshment, and, finding I had read a little, became very obliging and friendly. Our acquaintance continued all the rest of his life. He had been, I imagine, an ambulatory quack doctor, for there was no town in England, nor any country in Europe, of which he could not give a very particular account. He had some letters, and was ingenious, but he was an infidel, and wickedly undertook, some years after, to turn the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... misbegotten satyr," replied the schoolmaster; "that is, more appropriately concatenated with your own trade than wid mine. I have no trade, sirra, but a profession, and neither have you. You stand in the same degraded ratio to a tradesman that a rascally quack does to a ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... wholly at heart a knave, I fancy, among whose dupes is himself. Did you not see our quack friend apply to himself his own quackery? A fanatic quack; essentially a fool, though ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... always act our creed. A man's conduct, just because he is man, is generated by his view of himself and his world. He who cheats his neighbour believes in tortuosity, and, as Carlyle says, has the Supreme Quack for his God. No one ever acted without some dim, though perhaps foolish enough, half-belief that the world was at his back; whether he plots good or evil he always has God as an accomplice. And this is why character cannot ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... Wakes is more ear-splitting, more terrific, more dizzying, or more impassable. When you go to Knype Wakes you get stuck in the midst of an enormous crowd, and you see roundabouts, swings, switchbacks, myrioramas, atrocity booths, quack dentists, shooting-galleries, cocoanut-shies, and bazaars, all around you. Every establishment is jewelled, gilded, and electrically lighted; every establishment has an orchestra, most often played by steam and conducted ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... formulae, and at length, when he threatens it with the mystic formula of the Trinity, it dissolves into mist, and out of the mist steps forth Mephistopheles, dressed as a 'travelling scholar'—an itinerant professor, or quack doctor. ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... uneducated, disinherited classes. The party of extreme measures is always chiefly constituted from the proletariat because it is the very poor who most pressingly feel the need for change and because they have not usually the education to judge the feasibility of the plans, many of them quack nostrums, presented as panaceas for all their woes. A complete break with the past and with the existing order has no terrors for them, but ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... all that has been said to the disadvantage of the devil, that he has very much improved in his management of worldly affairs; so much so, that, instead of an administration of witches, wizzards, magicians, diviners, astrologers, quack doctors, pettifogging lawyers, and boroughmongers, he has selected some of the wisest men as well as greatest fools of the day to carry his plans into effect. His satanic majesty seems also to have ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... pawn any thing. I'll vamp it, and tip you the cole: I'll pawn it, and give you the money. Also to refit, new dress, or rub up old hats, shoes or other wearing apparel; likewise to put new feet to old boots. Applied more particularly to a quack bookseller. ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... and swift like himself; in fact, like his domestic service, it was of his own invention. If he was an advertising quack, he was one who believed in his own wares. The sense of something tiny and flying was accentuated as they swept up long white curves of road in the dead but open daylight of evening. Soon the white curves came sharper ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... me, who is that lanky quack there?" asked Herr Carovius, pointing to Daniel and looking at Schwalbe the sculptor. He had known Daniel for a long while, but every now and then it gave him a peculiar kind of pleasure to play the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... are never destined to a long supremacy. They have never come into power but in some perverted state of the public feelings. There must be some terror, or some infatuation, in the public mind, before it calls in the quack; but the moment that sees quiet succeed to disturbance, and the nation has recovered its composure, always sees the Whigs driven out of office. The death of Fox, in 1806, unquestionably deprived the party of a great popular name, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... "Quack! quack!" said the duck; and all the babies quacked too. Then they looked all around. The mother let them look as much as they liked, for green is ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... "Church Advocate", of Harrisburg, Pa., which publishes quack advertisements disguised as editorials. One of ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... so now you are to have Kaffee Klatsch with the Princess. I told you so. The lady is in love with you, and the Emperor is going to offer you her hand in marriage after he has bestowed on you an Iron Cross in return for one of your quack medicines." ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... after a lapse of ages, furnished with an easy recipe for a resignation—a sort of panacea to correct all the sores of the body politic and produce a "speedy composure of the public mind" "Tereatis Risum Amici;" and call no one a political quack playing off his whimsical nostrums upon the people, whose mental repose lies so near his heart. If the meeting are told that they shall be responsible if they act on a declaration thus limited, keep it out of view as much as possible, or say as the citizen does, p. 40, that it was only ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... grandmother had a very fine farm 'Way down in the fields of Older. With a quack-quack here, And a quack-quack there, Here and there a quack-quack, Quack-quack here and there, Down in the ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin |
