"Bunkum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man to think me a liar." The man spoke slowly between puffs at his cigarette. "You think it's all bunkum that I'm fresh out of Germany, but it isn't. Do you see that?" He ran his finger across the gash in his forehead. "That and the ill-treatment I received in the prison-camps made me go wuzzy. The only fact about myself that I could remember in ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... reading aloud whole chapters from the inspired chisellings of the popular seer Ber Nard Pshaw, who was to the literature of that period what King Ptush was to statecraft. He was the acknowledged leader of the Neo-Bunkum School of Right Thinking, and had first attracted the attention of his age by his famous reply to one who had called ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... millionaires a lovely roast in a sarcastic way, describing their automobiles and opera-boxes and diamonds; and then he got around to the working-classes and the kind of grub they eat and the long hours they work—and all that sort of stuff—bunkum, of course. 'The restless rich,' says he, 'never content with their luxuries, always prowling among the haunts of the poor and humble, amusing themselves with the imperfections and misfortunes of their fellow men and women. And even here, Herr Brockmann,' he ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... conspicuous. I was a red-hot Liberal in those days, for no better reason, probably, than that my father held that form of creed, and I was quite persuaded that Kenealy was a paid impostor. So when, in that raucous voice of his, he said, "I love the working man," I answered from below with a cry of "Bunkum, doctor, bunkum." The doctor paused and looked at me, but said nothing at the moment By and by he flowed on: "When I go to the poll with ten thousand of the working men of this constituency behind me," and I chimed in with a cry of "When, doctor, when?" This time the orator fixed ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... course, he told us of their great marching feats, and wound up thus: "The other day Clements said to our ole man, 'Give the Borders a new pair of boots an' a ration of rum, an' they'll march to h——." Then after a pause, "Of course, that's a bit o' bunkum to keep us goin';" but his manner showed he was proud to repeat it nevertheless. On the 5th, we advanced to Doornkom, getting a fine herd of cattle from a kloof on our way, and having sundry necessary bonfires, principally ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... urged Denzil, placing a chair. "What do you think of Dizzy's letter? Did you ever read such bunkum? And his 'men of light and ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... the way of pay and practice, and she may get all she can out of me in the way of work. As for being ill-used, I never expect to be anything else in this life. I'm sure I don't care; and I'm sure she don't; so live and let live; talk plain truth, and leave Bunkum for right honourables who keep their places thereby. Give ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... Lord Bunkum, when he opens Oxford to Jew and Gentile, and offers to make Rothschild Chancellor instead of Lord Derby, and tells them old dons, the heads of colleges, as polite as a stage-driver, that he does it out of pure regard to them, and only to improve ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... American to the midshipman and back again, with his doubts here and there, veering like a weather vane, for the thought would keep attacking him—suppose all this about the slave schooner was Yankee bunkum, and as soon as he had got rid of them, the lugger would sail away and ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... he?" Gwent was amused at her quaint way of putting it. "Well, he's the first man I ever heard of, that didn't! That's all bunkum, my good girl! Probably he's crying for ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... me to be sent about much more than might otherwise have been the case—to report the speeches of prominent public men, whether they were "stumping the provinces" throughout the Union, or basking in the blazing "bunkum" ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... children to my knowing. I don't know no father. My owner was Boss William Green, young mistress. His wife was Miss Lizabuth, young mistress. They did have a big family, young mistress. To my knowing it was: Billy, Charlie, Bunkum, Ida, Mary, Sally, Jimmy, Buddy. I never went to school a day in my life, young mistress. When I come on big 'nuff to work I had to help keer for mama and two girl sisters, ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... o' bunkum paid for by the fam'ly!" said a great hulking drayman who had joined the little knot of bystanders, flicking his whip as he spoke,—"Sassiety plunged into mourning for the death of a precious raskill, is it? I 'xpect it's often got to mourn that way! ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... "that's all bunkum about this girl being wanted as a witness. I had my doubts and I looked up the Scotland Yard warning which I received a couple of days ago. She's Odette Rider, and she's wanted on ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... fortunately they're emotional and sentimental; and the pill can be gilded with high falutin. It's for them that the Union Jack and the honour of Old England are dragged through every newspaper and brandished in every music hall. It's for them that all these atrocities are invented—most of them bunkum. Men are only savages with a thin veneer of civilisation, which is rather easily rubbed off, and then they act just like Red Indians; but as a general rule they're well enough behaved. The Boer isn't a bad sort, and the Englishman isn't a bad sort; but there's not ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... might as well as its ancient renown; and who have then come to live in Canada,—well, they naturally look with amused contempt at our raw, rough ways, our homespun legislators and log colleges, combined with lofty ambitions expressed sometimes—it must be admitted—in bunkum. I do not wonder, either, that men who have been citizens of the United States, who exult in its vast population, its vast wealth, and its boundless energy, should think it madness on our part that we are not knocking untiringly ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... lawyers, pleaders, writers, and the like, who have, up to now, been in abject submission to them. They say little, hut after all they are the most important fagots in the great bundle of communities, and all the glib bunkum in the world would not pay for their estrangement. They ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... VANCE was born in Buncombe County, North Carolina, and was educated at Washington College, Tennessee, and at the University of North Carolina. He studied law and began its practice in Asheville. He was soon elected to the State Legislature and to Congress; and from 1854 to his ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... the readers of this journal the benefit of my advice and my opinions. In good time I shall have something to say about Goodwood—something that will make the palaeolithic cauliflower-headed dispensers of buncombe and bombast sit up and curse the day on which fate allowed them to be born. There are some who profess to attach importance to the goose-billed mouthings and vapourings of the butter-brained crew who follow in the wake of the most ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... by crushing it, but by guiding it. I've come to the conclusion that there is a true instinct in it, that there are certain things we have done which have been mistakes, and which we can't do any more. But as for this theory that all wisdom resides in the people, it's buncombe. What we have to do is to work out a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill |
