"Affectation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... He would think it showed want of faith to prevent me. He's very sensible about things like that," said Isabel without affectation. "There are always typhoid and diphtheria about in the autumn, but Jimmy never fusses. It wouldn't be much use if he did, with him and Val always in and out of ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... career that there was little in it either significant or attractive. There is, in this respect, a marked contrast between his correspondence and that of Jefferson. There was, possibly, a little affectation in Jefferson's frequent assertions of his intense desire for the quiet of the country and the tranquillity of home, and of his distaste for the turmoils and anxieties of public office. But he was certainly ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... another Emperor, of a practical turn of mind, ordered that music should follow the sense of the words, and be simple and free from affectation, and he appointed a censor to see that his instructions were carried out. The latter, 'Couci' by name, declared that when he played upon his 'king,' the animals ranged themselves before him ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... unknown quantities, x, y, z. sealed book, terra incognita, virgin soil, unexplored ground; dark ages. [Imperfect knowledge] smattering, sciolism[obs3], glimmering, dilettantism; bewilderment &c. (uncertainty) 475; incapacity. [Affectation of knowledge] pedantry; charlatanry, charlatism[obs3]; Philister[obs3], Philistine. V. be ignorant &c. adj.; not know &c. 490; know not, know not what, know nothing of; have no idea, have no notion, have no conception; not have ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... out of it now," retorted Stoner, who was sharp enough to see through Mallalieu's affectation of scorn. "Just you realize the importance of what I'm saying. I tell you once again—I know who ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... pendent, or become stiff. Grace is closely united to gesture; the manifold play of the articulations which constitutes strength, also constitutes grace. Grace subdues only because sustained by strength, and because strength naturally subdues. Grace without strength is affectation. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... the houses of Merindol be burned and razed to the ground, and the trees cut down for a distance of two hundred paces on every side, in order that the spot which had been the receptacle of heresy might be forever uninhabited! Finally, with an affectation which would seem puerile were it not the conclusion of so sanguinary a document, the owners of lands were forbidden to lease any part of Merindol to a tenant bearing the same name, or belonging to the same family, as the miscreants against ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... church crammed, by twice as many people as used to be: and to my great joy find Mr. Frampton in the pulpit; so to my great joy I hear him preach, and I think the best sermon, for goodness and oratory, without affectation or study, that ever I heard in my life. The truth is, he preaches the most like an apostle that ever I heard man; and it was much the best time that ever I spent in my life at church. His text, Ecclesiastes xi., verse 8th—the words, "But if a man live ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Fashion, the harden'd incorrigible Fop; so often wounded, but never reclaim'd: For still, by a dire Mistake, conducted by vast Opiniatrety, and a greater Portion of Self-love, than the rest of the Race of Man, he believes that Affectation in his Mein and Dress, that Mathematical Movement, that Formality in every Action, that a Face manag'd with Care, and soften'd into Ridicule, the languishing Turn, the Toss, and the Back-shake of the Periwig, is the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... plane of feeding to that of dining; that you can change existence into living. All because you dare to break away from conventionalities which make so many people affect ignorance of how to live because they imagine it is an evidence of refinement. If they but knew it, their affectation and their ignorance is the hall mark of ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... their execution, nor so ruinous by a great deal to the civil prosperity of the state, as those which we have established for a perpetual law in our unhappy country. It cannot be thought to arise from affectation, that I call it so. What other name can be given to a country which contains so many hundred thousands of human creatures reduced to a state of the most ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... some mixture of truth in their sarcasms. He was sensible that his mother, in some points—her manners, for instance—was obvious to ridicule and satire. In Lady Clonbrony's address there was a mixture of constraint, affectation, and indecision, unusual in a person of her birth, rank, and knowledge of the world. A natural and unnatural manner seemed struggling in all her gestures, and in every syllable that she articulated—a ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... avoid mere habits of display, which are unworthy of a man who aspires to be a gentleman and not an athlete. Another indispensable quality is gracefulness in all he does and says. In order to secure this elegance, he must beware of every form of affectation: 'Let him shun affectation, as though it were a most perilous rock; and let him seek in everything a certain carelessness, to hide his art, and show that what he says or does comes from him without effort or ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... was uttered with an accent implying more than mere trust, and was accompanied by a look full of strong feeling. But Corona's expression did not change. Her eyes returned the glance quietly, without affectation, neither lovingly nor unlovingly, but indifferently. Giovanni felt a sharp little pain in his heart as he realised the change that had ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... of twenty-four commissioners was created, twelve from Holland and two from each of the other six provinces. This affectation of concession to Holland was ridiculous. Either the law 'de non evocando'—according to which no citizen of Holland could be taken out of the province for trial—was to be respected or it was to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... moral purity, without harshness, and without misanthropy. He wrote three sevenths of that immortal production, and on every variety of subject, without any attempt to be eloquent or intense, without pedantry and without affectation. The success of the work was immense, and every one who could afford it, had it served on the breakfast table with the tea and toast. It was the general subject of conversation in all polite circles, and did much to improve the taste and reform ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... so touchingly, and with so perfect a freedom from all affectation, that her lover could only reply by covering her hand with his kisses. And it was not till after a pause that ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... modesty with blushing face; Now enters overweening Pride, And Scandal, ever gaping wide, Hypocrisy with frown severe, Scurrility with gibing air; Rude laughter seeming like to burst, And Malice always judging worst; And Vanity with pocket glass, And Impudence with front of brass; And studied Affectation came, Each limb and feature out of frame; While Ignorance, with brain of lead, Flew hovering o'er each female head. Why should I ask of thee, my Muse, A hundred tongues, as poets use, When, to give every dame her due, A hundred thousand were too few? Or how should I, alas! relate The sum of ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... and triumphant. One of his repartees we will quote, not as a favorable specimen of his manner, but because it was called forth by Congreve's characteristic affectation. The poet spoke of the Old Bachelor as a trifle to which he attached no value, and which had become public by a sort of accident. "I wrote it," he said, "to amuse myself in a slow recovery from a fit of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... feeling in him, and, with more wisely chosen associates, would have developed a much less contemptible character. When Power had done speaking, he looked up and said, without one particle of his usual affectation— ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... there was combined an admirable affectation of sobriety. Mr. Shandy would have us believe that he was no blind slave to his theory. He was quite willing to admit the existence of names which could not affect the character either for good or evil—Jack, Dick, and Tom, for instance; and such the philosopher styled "neutral ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... the spirit of the foreigner a kind of gross levity, an affectation of frivolity with respect to women, and a continual habit of vulgar vanity, which seems to run through all ranks and ages of the continental world. What can be more offensively trifling, than the conduct which Napoleon narrates of himself, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... of, inconceivable. He slapped his forehead openly before his customers; he would sit brooding in silence or else would burst out unexpectedly declaiming against Heyst without measure, discretion, or prudence, with swollen features and an affectation of outraged virtue which could not have deceived the most childlike of moralists for a moment—and greatly ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... to the Houyhnhnms a noble and not a disgusting piece of literature. There are people who pretend that this section of Gulliver's Travels is almost too terrible for sensitive persons to read. This is sheer affectation. It can only be honestly maintained by those who believe that life is too terrible ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... greeted her, with his instinctive warm, transient smile, holding out his hand sheepishly. It was a most extraordinary and amazing thing that he could never regard the ceremony of shaking hands with a relative as other than an affectation of punctilio. Happily he was not wearing his hat; had it been on his head he would never have taken it off, and yet would have cursed ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... any changes made, Mr Belton,' said Mr Amedroz, with some affectation of dignity in his manner. 'I won't have the fences moved, ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... Letters, writes:—"The choir[114] was densely filled.... The moment he appeared in the pulpit, all the weight of his duty, all the authority of his office, were written on his countenance; and, without a particle of affectation, his whole demeanour bespoke the gravity ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... of these sonnets in a letter to Cottle [November, 1797] is much to the same effect:—'I sent to the Monthly Magazine (1797) three mock Sonnets in ridicule of my own Poems, and Charles Lloyd's and Lamb's, etc., etc., exposing that affectation of unaffectedness, of jumping and misplaced accent in common-place epithets, flat lines forced into poetry by italics (signifying how well and mouthishly the author would read them), puny pathos, etc., etc. The instances were almost all taken from myself ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... pas nourri de Grec et de Latin, J'appris a veiller tard, a me lever matin, La nature est le livre ou je fis mes etudes, Et tous ces mots nouveaux me semblent long-temps rudes; Je trouve qu'on ne peut tres bien les prononcer Sans affectation, au moins sans grimacer; Que tous ces mots tires des langues etrangeres, Devraient etre l'objet de critiques severes. Faites donc de l'esprit en depit du bon sens, On vous critiquera; quant a moi ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... No doubt it is sometimes desirable, even necessary, to look to some manuscript authority for the clearing-up of a special point; but too often the profession of having perused a great mass of manuscript authorities is an affectation and a pedantry. He who searches for and finds the truth in any considerable portion of history, performs too great an achievement to care for the praise of deciphering a few specimens of difficult ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... forgot my dignity and I forgot the affectation he had steadily assumed of talking only ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... double pronunciation, one cursory and colloquial, the other regular and solemn. The cursory pronunciation is always vague and uncertain, being made different in different mouths by negligence, unskilfulness, or affectation. The solemn pronunciation, though by no means immutable and permanent, is yet always less remote from the orthography, and less liable to capricious innovation. They have however generally formed their tables according to the cursory speech of those with whom they happened to converse; and ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... ignorant of the world and of human nature, but intelligent observers of character and events. It is easy to understand, however, that with the herd of imitators who, in Paris and the provinces, aped the style of this famous salon, simplicity degenerated into affectation, and nobility of sentiment was replaced by an inflated effort to outstrip nature, so that the genre precieux drew down the satire, which reached its climax in the Precieuses Ridicules and Les Femmes Savantes, the former of which appeared ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Absurd affectation of candor Always less apt to complain of irrevocable events Imagined, and did the work of truth Judas Maccabaeus Neither ambitious nor greedy ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... goes on visiting Laura, and writing to her a sonnet regularly so many times a week, and the best, carefully selected, we feel distinctly persuaded, at regular intervals. It is a determined cultus, a sort of half-real affectation, something equivalent to lighting a lamp before a very well-painted and very conspicuous shrine. All his humanities, all his Provencal lore go into these poems—written for whom? For her? Decidedly; for she has no reason not ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... ago? Could I ever forget how I saved my coppers, one by one, until I had accumulated a sum large enough to buy a whole cocoanut, which I presented to her in the proudest moment of my life, and how the other girls tossed their heads with the affectation of a sneer, and with pretended indifference to this astonishing stroke of fortune? And that fatal evening when I provoked my little beauty's wrath, and in all the receding opportunities of "Post-Office" and "Copenhagen" she had turned her face and rosy lips away from me, ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... nobody could ever do yet, boy or man. But, my lord, I beg your pardon; for this brother will make mischief betwixt us if he can—I only took notice of the word Sister so often used, which looked more like affectation than affection." ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... words and things; amass sound knowledge; avoid all affectation; write all topics which interest you.—F. ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... phases of their first acquaintance, had been a sort of slatternly Amazon. But the effect of this was, really, very happy; because when a perfectly presentably clad, well-bred, admirably poised young girl came into the room and greeted her neither shyly nor eagerly, nor with any affectation of ease, a girl who didn't try to pretend it wasn't a critical moment for her but was game enough to meet it without any evidences of panic—when Frederica realized that this was the Rose whom Rodney had been telling her about, she fell in love ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... in your favour," said the magistrate, making exactly the inference to which Ratcliffe was desirous to lead him, though he mantled his art with an affectation of oddity. ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... to the skillion and loitered about for ten minutes without discovering anything of Dick Haddon, but at the expiration of that time Dick stole out of the darkness and approached him with an affectation of the greatest unconcern. His greeting was very casual, and he followed it with a fishing inquiry intended to discover if the young man ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... Monsieur St. Gille, that gentleman appeared absolutely mute while he was exercising this talent; nor could the author perceive any change whatever in his countenance. He observed, however, at this first visit, that Monsieur St. Gille contrived, but without any affectation, to present only the profile of his face to him, while he was speaking as ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... faculties were concentrated: he would listen for a great length of time, without speaking, and then would break silence by some light and jocular remark, that was too much at variance with his former manner, not to be affectation. But of the war, and of his father, he seldom spoke and always from some ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... fastidious as our lucky superiors, and cannot afford timid airs, and affectation of extreme nervousness. Having no escort, and expecting none, I walk alone in any direction I choose, with what fearlessness and contentment I find myself able ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... Edward's lips, contrasted with them, grated on my feelings, and irritated my susceptibility. Unlike as they were in many respects, there was one resemblance between Mrs. Middleton and Henry Lovell, which never failed to strike me. Without affectation or exaggeration, by the peculiar qualities of their minds, by the union of a powerful understanding with a lively imagination, joined to a kind of spontaneous eloquence, and a ready command of language, they made every subject which ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... of the period an affectation of simplicity covers and reveals by turns a great thirst for ingenuity. Swift's prose is a fair example; in the "Tale of a Tub" and even in "Gulliver" at first sight there seems to appear only an honest and simple directness; but ...
— An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript • Thomas Gray
... [1] The fastidious affectation of some commentators has denounced this ode as spurious. Degen pronounces the four last lines to be the patch-work of some miserable versificator, and Brunck condemns the whole ode. It appears to me, on the contrary, to be elegantly graphical: full of delicate ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... evident to her now that her situation was one full of frightful peril. The departure of Wiggins, of which she was aware, seemed to afford additional danger. Between him and Leon there had been what seemed to her at least the affectation of dislike or disagreement, but now that he was gone there remained no one who would even pretend to interpose between herself and her enemy. Even if Mrs. Dunbar had been capable of assisting her against Leon, Edith knew that no reliance could be placed upon her, for she had openly manifested ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... hitting foibles without inflicting pain. He was not a man who held strong opinions on subjects. This is especially evident where he speaks of his own fickleness; and while he reiterates his dislike of Rome, with its noise and bustle, he makes his slave say that this is but affectation, and when an invitation comes from Mecaenas, "Mulvius and the 'scurrae' are turned out," from which we learn that parasites had their parasites, and that Horace in the country played the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... could no longer avoid it without violating her duty to her parents, she resolved to supply the apparent deficiencies in her husband's understanding by a most respectful deference to his opinions, thus conferring distinction on him whom she wished everyone to esteem and honour; for as there was no affectation in this part of her conduct, any more than in the rest of her behaviour, all were convinced that the man who was respected by a woman of an understanding so superior to most of her own sex, and the greatest part of the ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... there must be striking. Rags and dirt are now the exception rather than the rule. Perhaps the statement is a trifle too strong as to the dirt; but dirt is not harmful except when coupled with rags; it can be washed off, and nowadays is washed off where such a thing would have been considered affectation in the days that were. Soap and water have worked a visible cure already that goes more than skin-deep. They are moral agents of the first value in the slum. And the day is coming soon now, when with ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... this pretended lack of interest on the part of the Wall Street banker. I condemned it as a piece of absurd affectation. ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... they did. Tiberius, who appears to have read him truly, spoke of educating him "for the destruction of the Roman people," and Caligula seemed eager to make these words good. At first, indeed, he seemed generous and merciful, mingling this affectation with a savage profligacy and voluptuousness. Illness, however, apparently affected his brain or destroyed what little moral nature he possessed, and he quickly embarked on a career of frightful excess ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... manner is offensive, it is because it is strained or feigned; for there may be quite as much intolerable affectation in plainness as in mincing nicety. All that the captain said and did was honestly according to his nature; and his nature was open nature and good nature; therefore, when he paid this little compliment, and expressed with a sparkle or two of his knowing ...
— A Message from the Sea • Charles Dickens
... Mademoiselle de Voss, and she came of a good house, being cousin to one of the King's Ministers, M. de Finckenstein, and sister of a President of the Chamber. "This beauty, who to my mind is very ugly," wrote Mirabeau, "is a mixture of prudery and cynicism, of affectation and ingenuousness; she has a natural wit of a kind, some schooling, manias rather than desires, a gaucherie which she strives to cover by an appearance of naivete.... All her charm lies in her complexion, and even that I find wan rather than white; a very beautiful neck. It was this mixture ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... exert themselves, as if without this they could not get thin enough; then, good heavens! how difficult it seems, and how ugly it is! As if this could give them any pleasure! For some of them it seems as if it were day-labour, and as if it were a frenzy to others; and for a third, a kind of affectation; nay, I must go my ways, for I shall become mad or splenetic if I look any ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... faults to their partial eyes added to her charm; for, according to Lydia, "they were uncommon innocent and funny, Miss Dorry's ways were." In fact, the young lady, who had a strong will of her own, would have been spoiled to a certainty but for her scorn of affectation, her love of truth, and genuine faithfulness to whatever she believed ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... a thing as a person socially superior or inferior to themselves, they had never learned but one sort of manners. Having never had any occasion to create a false or deceitful impression or to accomplish anything by indirection, it was natural that they should not know what affectation was. ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... me," interrupted La Palferine, "'My one affectation is the pretence that I make of living in ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... for your brother, in these troublesome times, as I said, it were less trouble to put him out of the way in a broil. Colour it with the affectation of party spirit, and, as you are on both sides, in a manner, it matters not on which you disagree. You might draw swords yourselves, and have me and one or two stout fellows near, who would rush in and stab him, as it were, ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... to reprove a vain, fantastical, conceited and preposterous Humour, which about that time prevailed very much in France. It had the desir'd good Effect, and conduced a great deal towards rooting out a Taste so unreasonable and ridiculous.—-As Pride, Conceit, Vanity, and Affectation, are Foibles so often found amongst the Fair Sex at present, I have attempted this Translation, in hopes of doing service to my pretty Country-Women.—And, certainly, it must have a double efficacy, under the Patronage ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... can do. Snow produces a glow and a tingle, if applied rightly. Your indifference is half affectation, and a good ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... displaying her generosity. They were busy making havoc of the manner of a distinguished person who was much talked of at that time, and whom they had all chanced to meet. Now Nan ordinarily was very intolerant of affectation; but had she not promised to be ten times kinder to everybody? So she struck in ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... is to this that we must impute the incredible deficiency of our actors in getting by heart and delivering verse. Even yet they cannot habituate themselves to it. He was thus also indirectly the cause of the insipid affectation of nature of our Dramatic writers, which a general use of versification would, in some degree, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... homage in his acts to every virtue—how he, I say, could afford such scope to malice and to calumny. Circumstances, and also, probably, an eccentricity of disposition, (which, nevertheless, had its origin in a virtuous feeling, an excessive abhorrence for hypocrisy and affectation,) contributed, perhaps, to cloud the splendour of his exalted nature in the opinion of many. But you will well know how to analyse these contradictions in a manner worthy of your noble friend and of yourself, and you will prove that the goodness of his heart was not ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... try freak services. They are useless against high-class players. Sharp breaking underhand cuts can be easily angled off for points by a man who knows anything of the angles and effects of twist. These deliveries are affectation if used more than once or twice in a long match. A sudden shift may surprise your opponent; but to continue to serve these freaks ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... it, my lord," interrupted Damake; "and perhaps, ashamed of not knowing it, he feigned it to be a secret. It is the habit of men to cover their ignorance by an affectation of mystery." ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... retired there was another wait, a longer one which lengthened unduly, a note of impatience sounded from the gallery; it was taken up elsewhere. And suddenly Weiss came again upon the platform—this time with no affectation of suave entreaty. He was plainly much upset; his elegant waistcoat seemed to have assumed careworn creases, his mop of blonde hair was palpably rumpled as if he had been endeavouring to tear some of its wavy locks out by force. And when ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... aristocratic stutter, fatigued, listless, wherein you might perceive a profound contempt for the vulgar art of speech. In the society of which the duke was the centre, every one sought to imitate that accent, those disdainful intonations with an affectation of simplicity. ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... versed in the secret laws of thought, he can pass regularly through all the gradations, can pierce infallibly all the windings, which false taste through ages has pursued, from the very time when first, through inexperience, heedlessness, or affectation, the imagination took its departure from the side of truth, its original parent. Can a disputant thus accoutred be withstood?—one to whom, further, every movement in the thoughts of his antagonist is revealed by the light of his own experience; who, therefore, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... mediaeval inquisitors into witchcraft was based? Why forget the angel who wrestled with Jacob, and, as the account suggests, somewhat over-stepped the bound of fair play, at the end of the struggle? Surely, we must agree with Dr. Newman that, if all these camels have gone down, it savours of affectation to strain at such gnats as the sudden ailment of Arius in the midst of his deadly, if prayerful,[63] enemies; and the fiery explosion which stopped the Julian building operations. Though the words of the "Conclusion" of the "Essay on Miracles" may, perhaps, be quoted against me, I may ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... to her own resources; was quite enough to have put her on her dignity, and the bewailment of that mysterious convulsion in the Indigo trade, for four-and-twenty hours. But this becoming deference to her experience, on the part of the young mother, was so irresistible, that after a short affectation of humility, she began to enlighten her with the best grace in the world; and sitting bolt upright before the wicked Dot, she did, in half an hour, deliver more infallible domestic recipes and precepts, than would (if acted on) have ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... "And all to make two minutes grow where one grew before?" Dede queried, at the same time laughing heartily at his affectation of mystery. ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... others that might be mentioned: for this age was adorned with a profusion of good orators; and the genuine strength and vigour of Eloquence appears to me to have subsisted to the end of this period, which was distinguished by a natural beauty of composition without disguise or affectation. ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... attempt to imitate nature it is important to avoid affectation, for to this fault even perfect ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... wish to intrude; that is, our party certainly has not," continued the young lady, pulling the tight gloves, and smoothing the plump, almost bursting fingers, with an affectation ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... receive him with open arms. Poor Ned's heart sank as he realized more vividly than ever that he was as much a prisoner as if immured within the walls of Sing Sing. Still, he affected not to notice the presence of the sentinel, but walked back toward the camp with that affectation of indifference which he had used on more than one occasion before. He recollected this time to put on the limp—his lameness being of such a decided character that there could be no mistaking it by any one who happened to look in ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... defer forming one's ultimate and irrevocable decision, so long as new data might be afforded for one to act with the greater wisdom and propriety. I would not wish to conceal my prevailing sentiment from you. For you know me well enough, my good sir, to be persuaded that I am not guilty of affectation, when I tell you it is my great and sole desire to live and die in peace and retirement on my own farm. Were it even indispensable a different line of conduct should be adopted, while you and some others ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... great deal of genial humour, strong feelings, enthusiasm, delicacy, refinement, good taste, naivete which just misses being affectation, and a bonhomie which extends ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... her attendants. They were all veiled; while a white mantle fell from her left shoulder, its ends lost in the folds of the train of her gown, leaving the head, face, and neck bare. Her manner, noticeable in the distance even, was dignified without hauteur, simple, serious, free of affectation. She was not thinking of herself.... Nearer—he heard no foot-fall. Now and then she glided through slanting rays of soft, white light cast from upper windows, and they seemed to derive ethereality from her.... ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... a sweet decision. Her 'I love you!' was a bond with eternity. In the simplest as in the greatest things she saw his wish and acted frankly upon it. No pretty petulance, no affectation of silly-sweet languishing, none of the weaknesses of woman. And so exquisitely fresh in her twenty years of maidenhood, with bright young eyes that seemed to bid defiance to all the years ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... dear," said the doctor, with an affectation of petulance. "You know how irritating to me is any allusion to that vulgar superstition about the snake's ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... Philharmonic Concerts. He died at Cairo, on the 13th of February 1894. Buelow was a pianist of the highest order of intellectual attainment, an artist of remarkably catholic tastes, and a great conductor. A passionate hater of humbug and affectation, he had a ready pen, and a biting, sometimes almost rude wit, yet of his kindness and generosity countless tales were told. His compositions are few and unimportant, but his annotated editions of the classical masters are of great value. Buelow's writings and letters (Briefe und ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... expressed anxiety about the impression they were making upon the reader was not always an affectation. There is a real solicitude in the confidences concerning William Ravenshoe upon his sudden promotion from the stable to the drawing-room of Ravenshoe Manor. 'I hope you like this fellow, William,' he says in one place, and then there is a naive enumeration of some of the ex-groom's ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... very flowers, is hired for the occasion. It glitters in the brooches and bracelets of the women, in the studs and signet-rings of the men; it is in the hired broughams, the hired waiters, the pigmy page-boys, the faded paper flowers, the cheap champagne, and the affectation of social consideration that meet us at every turn. The whole of the lower section of the middle classes is penetrated through and through with the worship of pinchbeck, and for one family that holds itself in the honor and simplicity of truth, ten thousand lie, ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... curious coincidence, Lord Lovat was not only the last person beheaded on Tower Hill, but was the last person beheaded in this country—April 9, 1747—an event which Walpole has thus described in one of his letters, telling us that he died extremely well, without passion, affectation, buffoonery, or timidity. He professed himself a Jansenist, made no speech, but sat down a little while in a chair on the scaffold and talked to the people ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... his head on one side, after the pattern of the mediaeval saints; the broad-church preacher looks forward and round about him, as if he felt himself the heir of creation. Our rector carries his head in the broad-church aspect, which I suppose is the least open to the charge of affectation,—in fact, is the natural and manly way of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... all his affectation of unpremeditation, evidently had in mind these listeners at the door. To their shadowy presence was, for him, added consciousness of keen eyes watching him from all quarters of the House; some of his friends waiting for sign of readiness to quit Egypt; the Opposition ready to catch at any ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... a man we respect not, and we are persuaded that the greater part of Ossian's Poems can be traced no further than his teeming brain. Nor are we careful to defend his poetry from the common charges of monotony, affectation, and fustian. But we deem Macaulay grossly unjust in his treatment of Macpherson's genius and its results, and can fortify our judgment by that of Sir Walter Scott and Professor Wilson, two men as ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... got the essay out of the records of the academy, and returned it to the author, Bonaparte destroyed it after he had read a few pages. He also laboured under the temptation of writing a journey to Mount Cenis, after the manner of Sterne, which he was fortunate enough finally to resist. The affectation which pervades Sterne's peculiar style of composition was not likely to be simplified under the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... where-is-the-brigand manner, and, as they see me, stand abashed, amazed. The young man who wore a robe-de-chambre and Turkish slippers worked in gold, returns my salaam courteously and invites me up to the divan. There is a spark of intelligence in his eyes, and an alien affectation in his speech. I foresaw that he had been in America. He does not ask me the conventional questions about my religious persuasion; but after his inquiries of whence and whither, he offers me an Egyptian cigarette, and goes in to order the coffee. It did ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... to supplant: And all this without ever having entertain'd the least previous Design or Thought for that Purpose: No Art used to inflame him, no Coquetry practised to tempt or intice him, and no Prudery or Affectation to tamper with his Passions; but, on the contrary, artless and unpractised in the Wiles of the World, all her Endeavours, and even all her Wishes, tended only to render herself as un-amiable as she could in his Eyes: Tho' at the same time she is so far from having any Aversion to his Person, ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... solemn farewell to Evelyn, retreated again to his own room, where he remained till his post-horses arrived. Then, descending into the drawing-room, he was pleased to find neither Aubrey nor Evelyn there. He knew that much affectation would be thrown away upon Mr. and Mrs. Merton; he thanked them for their hospitality, with grave and brief cordiality, and then turned to Caroline, who stood apart by ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... benefactors. There are some people whom it is safer to affront than to serve, since by their dislike they seek to give the impression of being under no obligation. One ought to accept without fastidious affectation, and without cringing humility; for if a man shows small care at the time of bestowal, when every newly-conferred benefit should please, what will he do when the first glow of pleasure ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... father having related to him from beginning to end, and with much detail, three authentic murder cases. Archie went the usual round of other Edinburgh boys, the high school and the college; and Hermiston looked on, or rather looked away, with scarce an affectation of interest in his progress. Daily, indeed, upon a signal after dinner, he was brought in, given nuts and a glass of port, regarded sardonically, sarcastically questioned. "Well, sir, and what have you donn with your book to-day?" my lord might begin, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a belt gallery before, and this idea of building a wooden box one hundred and fifty feet long and holding it up, thirty feet in air, on three trestles, was formidable. Bannon's nonchalant air of setting about it seemed almost an affectation. ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... bellowing up and down the town, like a stag in a forest, as he now did, with his fraternity in their coats-of-arms, and I know not how many trumpets, proclaiming the act of parliament; when, meeting my Lord Archon, whom from a retreat that was without affectation, as being for devotion only and to implore a blessing by prayer and fasting upon his labors, now newly arrived in town, the herald of the tribe of Bestia set up his throat, and having chanted out his lesson, passed as haughtily by him as if ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... told in simple and direct, but seemingly artless, prose. Of all the prose writers since Swift's time, few have equaled him and still fewer surpassed him in simplicity, flexibility, directness, and lack of affectation. The essays of Steele and Addison constitute a landmark. No preceding English prose shows so much grace of style, delicate humor, and power of awakening and retaining interest as do the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... even Christ's enemies, acknowledged to be a prophet, and therefore his visible pointing out the Lamb of God, his declaring how near he was, and preferring of him infinitely before himself, who had so much authority himself, (and so likely to have spoken the truth, being misled with no ambition or affectation of honour,) his instituting a new ordinance, plainly pointing out the Messiah at the doors, and publishing constantly that voice, "the kingdom of heaven is at hand,"—these we, and all the people have heard,—and heard, not with indignation, but with reverence and respect. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... of inveighing against the illiberality of this statement, or attempting to dispute its truth, as many persons, from an affectation of enthusiastic regard for the honour of our tars, or positive ignorance or contempt of the most incontrovertible obligations of morality and religion, would incline, it will be vastly more philosophical ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... for which it would be an affectation to thank you,' Father Oliver answered. And Father O'Grady spoke of the ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... Friedrich I, who died in 1713. 2: Den Toten, i.e. den alten (Schriftstellern) 3: Lsterndem, 'wanton,' 'lubricious.' 4: Pickelscherz (Pickelhringscherz), 'clownish jokes.' 5: The Italian poet Marino, known for his sensuality and affectation, was in high favor with the later Silesians. 6: Brief, in allusion to the sensual Heldenbriefe of Hofmannswaldau. 7: Philomuschen, 'poetaster' (lover of the Muses). 8: Weisianer, partisans of the dull and trivial schoolmaster-poet, Christian Weise. 9: Hbneristen, mechanical ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... Affectation! Affectation! It is the nauseating disease of the day! If a thinking man, a sincere philanthropist, takes into consideration the condition of the working classes and endeavors to lay bare their necessities, scarcely has his work made an impression before it is greedily ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... must be confessed, as much pleased. She seized this occasion of speaking to him about his verses, for hitherto she had only been able to acknowledge the receipt of them by a word. While she expressed without affectation the emotions they had occasioned her, she complained of his injustice to her mother: this was the cause of an interesting conversation of which her father was the subject, and for which she had long sighed. ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... the second officer, with much politeness. The two young ladies were the next in order, and accomplished their flight successfully. Isabella lastly took her seat in the chair without trepidation or affectation of alarm. Morton's eyes had already done hommage to her superior beauty; but he was too busy with the other ladies to notice her any farther than as the most lovely of the female visitors. He now remarked the pensive expression of her lovely countenance, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... no doubt," she remarked, "that the tears which used to be shed over 'Oft in the sully night,' or 'Auld Robin Gray,' or 'A place in thy memory, dearest,' were honest tears, coming from the true sources of emotion. There was no affectation about them; those songs came home to the sensibilities of young people,—of all who had any sensibilities to be acted upon. And on the other hand, there is a great amount of affectation in the apparent enthusiasm of many persons in admiring and applauding music of which ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... was highest in Cyril's character, and he worshipped her with an unconcealed adoration that, from any man less high- minded, would have appeared affectation, and which she accepted with the sweet content that Artemis might have accorded to ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... anything that you said or thought about me, but the shocking way you treat yourself and what is best in you. Can't you understand it? You know how I believe in you and hope for you, and it was your affectation of indifference to things which are a religion to me—as they are to you—that cut me ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... the Indian. "I suppose you were lost, and fired your gun," he said, with a transparent affectation ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... This feminine affectation, of course, has gradually taken on the force of a fixed habit, and so it has got a certain support, by a familiar process of self-delusion, in reality. The civilized woman inherits that habit as she inherits her cunning. She is born half convinced that she ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... surmise, for trudging after her she will have a fond mother and a bevy of aunts, and so forth—persons who, within a year, will have filled her with womanishness to the point where her own father wouldn't know her. And to that there will be added pride and affectation, and she will begin to observe established rules, and to rack her brains as to how, and how much, she ought to talk, and to whom, and where, and so forth. Every moment will see her growing timorous and confused lest she be saying too much. Finally, she will develop into ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... honest fellow. In his peculiar American way, he was very religious, and I knew that his piety was not a mere affectation. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... construction of a canal. Samuel Young, who seemed to nourish a deep-seated dislike of Clinton, never tired of disparaging the ex-Mayor. He apparently took keen pleasure in holding up to ridicule and in satirising, what he was pleased to call his ponderous pedantries, his solemn affectation of profundity and wisdom, his narrow-mindedness, and his intolerable and transparent egotism. But the canal sentiment was all one way. With the help of the Federalists, who declined to make an opposing nomination, Clinton swept the State ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... protect the hair and head of the artist from falling colour as he painted the roof above him. It is an energetic head, with jet black hair and sallow complexion, with many lines and wrinkles for so young a face, determined, sad, and scornful in expression; a slight weakness and affectation may be due to the personality of the painter. Buggiardini also executed a painting from the cartoon of the master, the Madonna and Child with Angels, number 809, of the National Gallery. The beauty and grandeur of the lines of this design are far above the imagination ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... melodramatic, and although a bold signature has ever been said to betoken a bold heart, it has yet to be demonstrated that boys who whistle going through the woods are indifferent to danger. "Conscious weakness takes strong attitudes," says Delsarte. The strength of Hancock's signature was an affectation quite in keeping with his habit of riding about Boston in a coach-and-six, with outriders in uniform, and servants ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... and unstudied in their wit and fun, and with such a constant well-spring of sprightly runnings of speech in them, point of epigram, ingenuity of quaint expression, absolute freedom from every touch of affectation, and to believe that the source of this man's humour, or of whatever gave wealth to his genius, was other than ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... sealed volume, and the lines written therein blurred and illegible. Nevertheless among those men whom I have known the love of books and the love of outdoors, in their highest expressions, have usually gone hand in hand. It is an affectation for the man who is praising outdoors to sneer at books. Usually the keenest appreciation of what is seen in nature is to be found in those who have also profited by the hoarded and recorded wisdom of their ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt |
