"Canting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and wrung her, The venom is working;— And if you had hung her With canting and quirking, She could not be deader than she will be soon;— 255 I have driven her close to you, under the moon, Night and day, hum! hum! ha! I have hummed her and drummed her From place to place, till at last I have dumbed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... which cool reason cannot approve and they were fit causes for grief to the municipal authorities, who desired to preserve the good order of the roads and streets. But, what was sadder for a man of heart was the sight or the canting humbugs, who, from fear of blows, kept at an equal distance from the two camps, and who, although they allowed their selfishness and cowardice to be visible, claimed admiration for the generosity of their sentiments and the nobility of their souls. ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... victim of calumnies. These expressions of unctuous pharisaism are coldly received by the French, who ask no favours but claim justice. Their thoughts are full of the wrongs perpetrated on the great man who is the object of their attachment and pity. They will listen to none of Lowe's canting humbug. They see incontestable evidences of the Destroyer enfolding his arms around the hero who had thrilled the nations of the world with his deeds. Their souls throb with fierce emotion at the agony caused ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... specious plausibilities, which the pleasurable faculties of our fathers welcomed with such hearty greetings, knowing that no harm (dramatic harm even) could come, or was meant to come of them, must inspire a cold and killing aversion. Charles (the real canting person of the scene—for the hypocrisy of Joseph has its ulterior legitimate ends, but his brother's professions of a good heart centre in downright self-satisfaction) must be loved and Joseph hated. To balance one disagreeable reality ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... beard and the canting hat looked into my eyes keenly, but he did not speak. He had nothing to say, perhaps. Something human had moved before him, that was all; something that could come and go at its pleasure and break the monotony ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... or better belief can be said to exist in these Twelve Hundred? Belief in high-plumed hats of a feudal cut; in heraldic scutcheons; in the divine right of Kings, in the divine right of Game-destroyers. Belief, or what is still worse, canting half-belief; or worst of all, mere Macchiavellic pretence-of-belief,—in consecrated dough-wafers, and the godhood of a poor old Italian Man! Nevertheless in that immeasurable Confusion and Corruption, which struggles there so blindly ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... their quality, To try good people's hospitality. It happen'd on a winter night, As authors of the legend write, Two brother hermits, saints by trade, Taking their tour in masquerade, Disguis'd in tatter'd habits, went To a small village down in Kent; Where, in the strollers' canting strain, They begg'd from door to door in vain, Try'd ev'ry tone might pity win; But not a soul would let them in. Our wand'ring saints, in woful state, Treated at this ungodly rate, Having thro' all the village past, To a small cottage came at last Where dwelt a good old honest ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... much," said Julian, using the only oath that ever in all his life-time crossed his lips. "You canting and mean—Pshaw! you are beneath my abuse. Sizar indeed! there, take that, and begone." He had meant to empty the tumbler in his face, but his hand shook with passion, and the glass flew out of it, and after cutting the top of Hazlet's head, fell ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... disliked: "'Sabbath travelling!' Those are the sort of men who will ruin the Church of England and make the profession of a clergyman disreputable. It is not the dissenters or the papists that we should fear, but the set of canting, low-bred hypocrites who are wriggling their way in among us; men who have no fixed principle, no standard ideas of religion or doctrine, but who take up some popular cry, as this fellow ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... against the wall; the one great hair-cloth rocker stood ostentatiously in advance of them, facing the hearth fire; the long level of the hair-cloth sofa gleamed out under stiff sweeps of the white fringed curtains at the window behind it. The books on the glossy card-table were set canting towards each other like the chairs, and with their gilt edges towards the light. And Sylvia had set also on the table a burnished pitcher of a rosy copper-color ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... make them scholars, but not men; to talk rather than to know, which is true canting. The first thing obvious to children is what is sensible; and that we make no ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... notoriety? Are you striving to foment discord in your community or cast oil upon the troubled waters? Are you striving to establish on earth the universal brotherhood of Man and common fatherhood of God, or Throwing Stones at Christ and the Christian Cause from the cover of a canting hypocrisy? ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... want her consent. That I leave you to obtain; and if you can't get it otherwise, you must force it. Bah! what is it for? A good husband—a good home—plenty of meat, drink, and dress: for don't you get it into your fancy that the Latter-Day Saints resemble your canting hypocrites of other creeds, who think they please God by their miserable penances. Quite the reverse, I can assure you. We mean to live as God intended men should live—eat, drink, and be merry. Look there!" The speaker exhibited a handful of shining ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... to starboard, had answered perfectly; for, high as was the tide that night, the Dolphin, though so powerful, could not have moved a ship of 1,500 tons with her keel still partly sustaining her weight on the rooks on which she had struck. By canting her as he had done, she had actually floated—and no more than floated—an hour before the tide ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... of England.... We have heard none of this lesson for fourteen years past. We have been huffed and bullied with your Act of Toleration; you have told us that you are the Church established by law as well as others; have set up your canting synagogues at our Church doors, and the Church and members have been loaded with reproaches, with oaths, associations, abjurations, and what not. Where has been the mercy, the forbearance, the charity, you have shown to tender consciences of the Church of England, that could not take oaths ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... anything about that. I don't know what God had to do with my mother being so good! She was none of your canting sort!" ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... heroism that almost compels one's admiration, despite the mistaken enthusiasm which is its animating cause. Nay, do not speak, senor; I know exactly what you would say; I have heard, until I have become sick of it, the canting jargon of those meddlesome busy-bodies who, knowing nothing of the actual facts of slavery, or for their own purposes, hunt out exceptional cases of tyranny which they hold up to public execration as typical of the system—I have heard it all so often that I have ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... reached swiftly for the flying bridle reins of her own animal and as her hand closed upon them he quieted almost instantly. Relieved of the weight of the other horse, the boat shifted its position for the worse, the bottom canting to a still steeper angle. A flash of lightning revealed the precariousness of the situation. A few inches more, and the water would rush over the side, and both realized that ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... fog Bouncer was in, besides which the sail was just then beginning to bulge back as the wind headed us, the boat rocking for an instant and then canting over as if she was going to capsize, I drew my knife and rushed to where he sat in the bottom of the boat, struggling with ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... will be. They don't quote Plato, like Eugene Aram; or live like gentlemen, and sing the pleasantest ballads in the world, like jolly Dick Turpin; or prate eternally about "to kalon,"[*] like that precious canting Maltravers, whom we all of us have read about and pitied; or die whitewashed saints, like poor "Biss Dadsy" in "Oliver Twist." No, my dear madam, you and your daughters have no right to admire and sympathise with any such persons, fictitious or real: you ought to be made ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... friend, renounce this canting strain; What would'st thou have a good great man obtain? Place? titles? salary? a gilded chain? Or throne of corses which his sword hath slain? Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends! Hath he not always treasures, always friends, The good great man? Three treasures, love, and ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Roland Graeme, "dost thou think I would have accepted a boon from one who was giving me over a prey to detraction and to ruin, at the instigation of a canting priest and a meddling serving-woman? The bread that I had bought with such an alms would have choked me ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... men," continued Norman, "know that canting is necessary—that one must always profess high and disinterested motives, and so on, and so on. But they don't let their hypocritical talk influence their actions. How is it with the little fellows? Why, they believe the flapdoodle the leaders talk. They ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... of this lesson for fourteen years past. We have been huffed and bullied with your Act of Toleration; you have told us that you are the Church established by law, as well as others; have set up your canting synagogues at our church doors, and the Church and members have been loaded with reproaches, with oaths, associations, abjurations, and what not. Where has been the mercy, the forbearance, the charity, you have ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... by God. The old woman is keeping up her assumption of the character of a devotee by canting ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... and young, he had left behind him the ornate Imperialism of Disraeli, on the one hand, and the cultured Imperialism of Tennyson, on the other. He sang of Imperialism as it was, or was about to be—vulgar and canting and bloody—and a world that was preparing itself for an Imperialism that would be vulgar and canting and bloody bade him welcome. In one breath he would give you an invocation to Jehovah. In the next, with ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... way that most puritanical of Puritans, the praying, cheating, canting, hypocritical, long-faced Master Spikeman?" cried Arundel. "I wonder what new mischief he hath now on foot, for it is ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... and pointed Ingredients, that wound Religion and the Professors of it; whereof some are made the Entertainment of the Company by these facetious Scoffers, and expos'd as Persons fetter'd with Prepossessions, and biass'd by Notions of Vertue, deriv'd from Education and the early Instructions of canting Parents. Others are represented as indebted for their Piety to the Prevalency of the Spleen, and an immoderate mixture of Melancholy in their Complexion, which, say they, give to the Mind a superstitious ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... towers, leaning all awry; a vast pile fashioned like a church front, with twin steeples canting drunkenly; the tremendous columns the captain had told him of; jutting masses that hinted in their half-formed outlines of gigantic, crouching beasts. And everywhere in that weird field of shapes were the openings of caves—dark blots in ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting. I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that man who will give up the reins of his imagination into his author's ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... sees nothing but itself, which it mistakes for wisdom and virtue. But Bigotry begets hypocrisy. When this spreads over a sufficient area and counts a voting majority it sends its agents abroad, and thus we acquire canting apostles and legislators ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... the great moral poet of all times, of all climes, of all feelings, and of all stages of existence. The delight of my boyhood, the study of my manhood, perhaps (if allowed to me to attain it) he may be the consolation of my age. His poetry is the Book of Life. Without canting, and yet without neglecting, religion, he has assembled all that a good and great man can gather together of moral wisdom clothed in consummate beauty. Sir William Temple observes, 'That of all the members of mankind that live within the compass of a thousand years, for ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... The clergymen, called "canting, diabolical preachers," deserve more respectful consideration from one who well knows their sincerity. They are men of brains, heart and conscience; men who believe that righteousness rather than revenue exalts a nation, and that sin, no matter how much money invested in it, is a reproach ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... city man of that of the artist? and vice versa? Behind the mask of good manners we all of us go about judging and condemning one another root and branch. We are in no real agreement as to the worth either of men or things. It is an illusion of the 'canting moralist' (to use Stevenson's phrase) that there is any fixed and final standard of Good. Good is just what any one thinks it to be; and one man has as much right to his opinion ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... she proceeds to show that Johnson was no gentler to herself or those for whom he had the greatest regard. "When I one day lamented the loss of a first cousin, killed in America, 'Prithee, my dear (said he), have done with canting: how would the world be worse for it, I may ask, if all your relations were at once spitted like larks and roasted for Presto's supper?'—Presto was the dog that lay under the table." To this Boswell opposes ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... smile upon me with fresh novelty Death discharges us of all our obligations Difference betwixt memory and understanding Do thine own work, and know thyself Effect and performance are not at all in our power Fantastic gibberish of the prophetic canting Folly of gaping after future things Good to be certain and finite, and evil, infinite and uncertain He who lives everywhere, lives nowhere If they chop upon one truth, that carries a mighty report ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... in the style of the Dairyman's Daughter; that is the kind of literature, sir, that sells at the present day! It is not the Miller of the Black Valley—no, sir, nor Herder either, that will suit the present taste; the evangelical body is becoming very strong, sir; the canting scoundrels—' ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... audience applauded the base character of Maguire, and shuddered when as he thought that a masked hypocrite was brought before the world as the type of a Christian, and that a "Serious Family" was only another name for an unhappy, canting set of ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... the sea was comparatively smooth, but after a while a curious phenomenon began to be noticed; immense billows would suddenly appear, rushing upon the Ark now from one direction and now from another, canting it over at a dangerous angle, and washing almost to the top of the huge ellipsoid of the dome. At such times it was difficult for anybody to maintain a footing, and there was great terror among the passengers. But Cosmo, and stout Captain Arms, remained at ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... the helpless state of mind which our poor New Englandmen were under, and our sloop drawing towards the shore, called out, "why, d—n your eyes and limbs, down with her sails, and let her drive a—e foremost, what the devil signifies your praying and canting now?" Ebenezar quickly taking the hint, called to Jonathan to lower the sails, saying he believed that young man's advice was very good, but wished he had not delivered it so profanely!!—and the soldier took the helm and saved the sloop. If captain ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... which we accord to real worth, to high, and noble, and strong manhood and womanhood, with the scorn we have for the canting weakling, is but part of our discrimination between a living, deep religion expressed in conduct and a mask or pretense adopted ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... real light of grace would have fallen from his lips and charmed the crowded aisle; the rich epigrammatic style, the true creed of the churchman; no fear of canting innovations or evangelical sceptics; but all would have proceeded harmoniously, ay, and piously too—for true piety consists not in purgation of the body, but in purity of mind. Then if we could but have witnessed Colman filling ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... swallowed large cubic measures of physic prescribed by unscrupulous ignorance which had taken no degrees. Considering that statistics had not yet embraced a calculation as to the number of ignorant or canting doctors which absolutely must exist in the teeth of all changes, it seemed to Lydgate that a change in the units was the most direct mode of changing the numbers. He meant to be a unit who would make a certain amount of difference towards that spreading change which would one day tell appreciably ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... into a world-Power of the first magnitude? Give these people the most perfect political constitution and the soundest political program that benevolent omniscience can devise for them, and they will interpret it into mere fashionable folly or canting charity as infallibly as a savage converts the philosophical theology of a Scotch missionary into crude ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... did my part. Not that I am certain that to fall at her feet like a canting methodist, own myself the most reprobate of wretches, whine out repentance, and implore forgiveness at the all sufficient fountain of her mercy would not be the very way ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... of the fanatical preachers crowded round her bed, and by the canting verbiage of delusion strove to revive the raptures of enthusiasm. Not one had the honesty to tell her that the figure which so appalled her, was her living brother. They feared the assurance of his existence acting upon her present terrors might induce her to do an act of justice, and to make ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... his poor country's oppressors." Here Fra Diavolo scowled; he was getting into form. "But to His Majesty in our own Mexican capital, to His Glorious Resplendent Most Christian, Most Catholic, priest-ridden, bloodthirsty, foppish, imbecile decree-making fool of a canting majesty—to this Austrian archduke who drove forth the incarnation of popular sovereignty by the brutal hand of the foreign invader—to him I will yet make it known that the love of liberty, that the loyalty to Liberal Reforms, to the Constitution, to Law and Order, to—uh—are ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... decent and comfortable human being, although he was a minister, and had so gained his confidence and good-will that he could say anything to him at their next interview. Captain Duncan finished his remarks by a decided expression of his disapproval of the canting regulation phrases so frequently employed by religious people, which are perfectly nauseous to ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... possibility of defending Limerick. He would probably, had his temper been as hot as in the days when he diced with Grammont and threatened to cut the old Duke of Ormond's throat, have voted for running any risk however desperate. But age, pain and sickness had left little of the canting, bullying, fighting Dick Talbot of the Restoration. He had sunk into deep despondency. He was incapable of strenuous exertion. The French officers pronounced him utterly ignorant of the art of war. They had observed that at the Boyne he had seemed to be stupified, unable to give directions ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... old sailor, "it hath been sixty years since I heard those canting Puritans, my mother and father, pray. I want no prayers. But come, I must put you in ward. There should be ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... inscription—Latin, but simple; he was an exile two-and-thirty-years—one of King Charles's judges. Near him Broughton (who read King Charles's sentence to Charles Stuart) is buried, with a queer and rather canting, but still a republican, inscription. Ludlow's house shown; it retains still its inscription—'Omne solum forti patria.' Walked down to the Lake side; servants, carriage, saddle-horses—all set off and left us plantes la, by ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... suddenly, you know, Georgy," he said, "and your poor dad was always anxious I should make things square for you. I don't suppose you're likely to marry again, my lass, so I've no need to tie up Lottie's little fortune. I must trust some one, and I'd better confide in my little wife than in some canting methodistical fellow of a trustee, who would speculate my daughter's money upon some Stock-Exchange hazard, and levant to Australia when it was all swamped. If you can't trust me, Georgy, I'll let you see that I can trust ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... said Grierson, "dog and traitor as he is, let him sink to the lowest pit, there to wait the arrival of his canting and Covenanting spouse, whom we shall now take the liberty of carrying to head-quarters, there to await her sentence, for decoying a king's sworn servant and a sergeant, from his duty ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... we employed in the negotiations that serious moral strain which he might have been more inclined to approve, many of the gentlemen opposed to me would, I doubt not, have complained, that we had taken a leaf from the book of the Holy Alliance itself; that we had framed in their own language a canting protest against their purposes, not in the spirit of sincere dissent, but the better to cover our connivance. My honourable friend, I admit, would not have been of the number of those who would so have accused us: but he may be assured that he would have been wholly disappointed in the practical ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... beat the hoof. To go packing; to trudge off on foot. Dic. Canting Crew (1690), 'Hoof it or beat it on the Hoof—to walk on foot.' Pad the hoof is a yet commoner expression. These and similar slang are ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... with reason," said Mirabeau; "I am attached to him too; but I never saw you so much moved." "Ah!" said. Quesnay, "I think of what would follow." "Well, the Dauphin is virtuous." "Yes; and full of good intentions; nor is he deficient in understanding; but canting hypocrites would possess an absolute empire over a Prince who regards them as oracles. The Jesuits would govern the kingdom, as they did at the end of Louis XIV.'s reign: and you would see the fanatical Bishop of Verdun Prime Minister, and La Vauguyon all-powerful under some ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... property and a good bit besides are coming to Isobel, and you want to collar the sag, like you did that of the old woman out in Lucerne. Well, you don't do it, my boy. I've other views for Isobel. Do you think I want to see her married to—to—the son of a fellow like that—a canting snuffler who prigs letters and splits on his own son?" and swinging the fat finger round he thrust it almost into the face ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... rest, while the work of cutting up the head was undertaken by the rested men. At seven bells (7.30) it was "turn to" all hands again. The "junk" was hooked on to both cutting tackles, and the windlass manned by everybody who could get hold. Slowly the enormous mass rose, canting the ship heavily as it came, while every stick and rope aloft complained of the great strain upon them. When at last it was safely shipped, and the tackles cast off, the size of this small portion of a full-grown cachalot's body could ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... artificiality as is the sonnet. These certainly are faults that one does not readily associate with the work of Whitman. But then I remember that the French critic, Scherer, charges Carlyle, the apostle of the gospel of sincerity, with being insincere and guilty of canting about cant. If Carlyle is insincere, I think it very likely that Whitman may be narrow and hide-bound. These things are so much a matter of temperament that one cannot judge for another. Yet one ought not to confound narrowness ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... "Are you interested in canting heraldry?" she asked. "There is no country so rich in it as Italy. These are the arms of the Farfalla, the original owners of this property. Or, seme of twenty roses gules; the crest, on a rose gules, a butterfly ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... have a cold bath before breakfast; and blaze away, wrathful and red-hot, until three o'clock or so; when I usually knock off (unless it rains) for the day . . . I am fierce to finish in a spirit bearing some affinity to those of truth and mercy, and to shame the cruel and the canting. I have not forgotten my catechism. 'Yes verily, and with God's ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... not appear again, nor, at one o'clock, was any land to be seen. Captain Davenport looked astern at the Pyrenees' canting wake. ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... won't have anything to do with me because I am a poor drunkard's boy." "You have got a wrong idea, my boy, Jesus will love you and save you and your father too," and I told him a story of a little boy in an Eastern city. The boy said his father would never allow the canting hypocrites of Christians to come into his house, and would never allow his child to go to Sunday-school. A kind-hearted man got his little boy and brought him to Christ. When Christ gets into a man's heart he cannot help but pray. This father had been drinking one day ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... man has no right to say to his own generation, turning quite away from it, 'Be damned!' It is the whole Past and the whole Future, this same cotton-spinning, dollar-hunting, canting and shrieking, very wretched generation of ours." CARLYLE ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... justice. They are the saurians of humanity; and it is remarkable that the idea of 'progressive development'—if I may be pardoned for making use of a term in modern philosophy about which there has been so much assumption and canting—it is remarkable that this idea, which the name of saurian suggests, should run through all nature, and be embodied in her finest forms and intelligences. There is a considerable distance between the saurian and good Master Adam, the gardener of Eden; but it ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... brought'st me into being; The things of this our world are well worth seeing; And let me add, moreover, well worth feeling; Then what the Devil would people have? These gloomy hunters of the grave, For ever sighing, groaning, canting, kneeling. Some wish they never had been born, how odd! To see the handy works of God, In sun and moon, and starry sky; Though last, not least, to see sweet Woman's charms,— Nay, more, to clasp them in our arms, And pour the soul in love's delicious sigh, Is well worth coming for, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Bachelor belongs, not to true Congrevean comedy but, to that of the models from which he was to break away. The characterisation of The Way of the World is light and true, that of The Old Bachelor is heavy and yet vague. Vainlove indeed, the 'mumper in love,' who 'lies canting at the gate,' is individual and Congrevean. But Heartwell, the blustering fool, Bellmour, the impersonal rake, Wittol and Bluffe, the farcical sticks, Fondlewife, the immemorial city husband, and the troop of undistinguished women—what can ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... weel-worn clay here lies: Ye canting zealots, spare him! If honest worth in heaven rise, Ye'll mend or ye win ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... fact well known that this meeting was projected by, and the canting pretences which bro't it together and sent forth the strange account which it gives of itself, originated with two or three "demagogues," yet it is a subject of real regret that a few honest men have suffered themselves to be duped by their shameful artifices. It commenced ...
— 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
... their very faces flash past with looks of tragic significance. By their own fault they were ruined; they were shut out of the garden of their gifts; their city of hope was ploughed and salted. The past cannot be retrieved, let canting optimists talk as they choose; what has been has been, and the effects will last and spread until the earth shall pass away. Our acts our angels are, or good or ill; our fatal shadows that walk by us still. The thing done lasts for eternity; the lightest act of man or woman has incalculably ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... cover, is often used by the hoppers as a cradle. Another favourite cradle is made from a trug basket, the handle cut off. It is then like half a large eggshell, with cross pieces underneath to prevent it from canting aside. This cradle is set on the bare ground in the garden; when they move one woman takes hold of one end and a second of the other, and thus carry the infant. If you ask them, they will find you a 'hop-dog,' a handsome ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... The canting hypocrite, whose voice may be loudest in chapel or meeting-house, and whose sanctimonious air and solemn visage will cover the sins of his heart to the general observer, is well known to the detective, who has seen that same face pale with apprehension, and has heard that ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... as a Whig bailie on the causeway of his own borough, or a canting Presbyterian minister in his own pulpit; and I came to tell you that you need not remain ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... "You canting sneak!" said another boy, putting his fist under the captive's chin; "you were going to the master to ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... which he first made known to his western friends that he had fixed his abode in Nithsdale. "I am here," said he, "at the very elbow of existence: the only things to be found in perfection in this country are stupidity and canting; prose they only know in graces and prayers, and the value of these they estimate as they do their plaiden-webs, by the ell: as for the muses, they have as much an idea of a rhinoceros as of a poet." ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... given neither reward nor compensation for the help I gave in '46. So much for their boasted gratitude and their many promises! My Lord Protector feasts the Dutch ambassadors with music and with wine, my Lords Ireton and Fairfax and Hutchinson and the accursed lot of canting Puritans flaunt it in silks and satins, whilst I go about in a ragged doublet and ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... striking his musket on the ground in a rage, "the fellow is safe!—to your business at once. A short half hour will bring down that canting sergeant and the guard upon us. 'Twill be lucky if the guns don't turn them out. Quick, to your posts, and fire the house in the chambers; smoking ruins are good ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... a waste of good liquor I'd pour some of this down your gullet," he exclaimed, shaking a half-filled bottle in his fist. "Then maybe you could answer when I spoke to you. Now, see here, you canting old hypocrite, I'm Red Fagin, an' I guess you know what that means. I'm pisen, an' I don't like your style. Now you're goin' to do just what I tell you, or the boys will have a hangin' bee down in the ravine. Speak up, an' tell me ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... damned, and Twemlow be damned too!" cried Sir Jeoffry, who had a great quarrel with his lordship and hated him bitterly. "What does the canting fool mean?" ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... not enough women in our general life, that it has long been pressed home to me that there is a great deal too much. The whole generation is womanised; the masculine tone is passing out of the world; it's a feminine, a nervous, hysterical, chattering, canting age, an age of hollow phrases and false delicacy and exaggerated solicitudes and coddled sensibilities, which, if we don't soon look out, will usher in the reign of mediocrity, of the feeblest and flattest and the most pretentious that has ever been. ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... over the winding, white ribbon of road—through Brodnyx village, past the huge barn-like church which had both inspired and reproached her faith, with its black, caped tower canting over it, on to Walland Marsh, to the cross roads at the Woolpack—My, how they would talk at the Woolpack!... but she would be far away by then ... where?... She didn't know, she would think of that later—when she had told Ellen. Oh, there would be trouble—there would be the ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... projections of the rocks helping to lessen it; though it is probable that the life of the unfortunate sealer was saved altogether by means of the lance. This was beneath him as he made his final descent, and he slid along it the whole length, canting him into a spot where was the only piece of stinted vegetation that was to be seen for a considerable distance. In consequence of coming down on a tolerably thick bunch of furze, the fall ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... way with old sinners like you—canting hypocrites! Be a man, General Tracy, if you can, and talk sense. I never did any harm or sin in all my life yet, and don't intend to: and my poor boy Julian's well enough, if they'd only let him alone; but nobody understands his heart but me. Good boy, I'm sure there's ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... which gave it a false and superficial lustre, and I gaze on the melancholy reality chidden, and, let me say, instructed by the sight. I can now better appreciate and understand the self-confident tone which pronounced upon my state in the eye of heaven—the canting expressions of brotherly love—the irreverent familiarity with which Scripture was quoted, garbled, and tortured to justify dissent, and render disobedience holy—the daring assumption of inquisitorial privileges, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... "Select Cases of Conscience concerning Witches and Witchcraft." He is one of the most exact writers on the subject, and arranges witches in the following classes: "1. The diviner, gypsy, or fortune-telling witch; 2. The astrologian, star-gazing, planetary, prognosticating witch; 3. The chanting, canting, or calculating witch, who works by signs and numbers; 4. The venefical, or poisoning witch; 5. The exorcist, or conjuring witch; 6. The gastronomic witch; 7. The magical, speculative, sciential, or arted witch; ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... CANTING. Preaching with a whining, affected tone, perhaps a corruption of chaunting; some derive it from Andrew Cant, a famous Scotch preacher, who used that whining manner of expression. Also a kind of gibberish used by thieves and gypsies, called likewise pedlar's French, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... English polite society, my native sphere, seems to me as corrupt as consciousness of culture and absence of honesty can make it. A canting, lie-loving, fact-hating, scribbling, chattering, wealth-hunting, pleasure-hunting, celebrity-hunting mob, that, having lost the fear of hell, and not replaced it by the love of justice, cares for nothing ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... latter church is strong all through the mountains. They are bigoted and ignorant, and boast that their knowledge comes direct from the throne, and they have nothing to do with man-made theories, as they call education. Their preaching is a sort of canting reiteration of the text and what few Scripture verses they chance to know and some hackneyed expressions. They are great on arguing, and it would be laughable if it was not so pitiful to hear the ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various
... emanate from such men. The missionaries do not gamble or drink whiskey, nor will their wives and daughters attend or reciprocate entertainments at which wine, cards and dancing are the chief features. So, of course, the missionaries are "canting hypocrites,'' and are believed to be doing no good, because the foreigner who has never visited a Chinese Christian Church, school or hospital in his life, does not see the evidences of missionary ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... says St. Paul, He is faithful in all His office. Therefore He is severe as well as gentle. He was so when on earth. With the poor, the outcast, the neglected, those on whom men trampled, who was gentler than the Lord Jesus? To the proud Pharisee, the canting Scribe, the cunning Herodian, who was sterner than the Lord Jesus? Read that awful 23rd chapter of St. Matthew, and then see how the Saviour, the lamb dumb before His shearers, He of whom it was said "He shall not strive ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... "Goodnatured Man" is, like almost all Goldsmith's plots, very ill constructed. But some passages are exquisitely ludicrous; much more ludicrous, indeed, than suited the taste of the town at that time. A canting, mawkish play, entitled "False Delicacy," had just had an immense run. Sentimentality was all the mode. During some years, more tears were shed at comedies than at tragedies; and a pleasantry which moved the audience to anything more than a grave smile was ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... strengthen the kingdom and for the honor of the king, than be ground by these petty tyrants at Westminster, who would shut up our churches, forbid us to smile on a Sunday, or to pray, except through our noses; who would turn merry England into a canting conventicle, and would rule us with a rod to which that of the king were as a willow wand. Therefore it is the duty of all true men and good to drink the health of his majesty the king, and ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... lice all samee hab one Melican man," while a chivalric but seedy-looking Southerner, who seemed to have "seen better days," wished he "might be—if he didn't lay a pe-yor of boots thar whar that blanket whar." Not to be lost in the shuffle was a tall canting specimen of Yankee-dom perched on a water cask that "reckoned ther is right smart chance of folks on this 'ere ship," and "kalkerlate that that boat swinging thar war a good place to stow my fixin's in." The next day thorough system and efficiency was brought out ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... answered the old man. "This dolt, my Lord of Northumberland—they must have missed rocking of him in his cradle!— this patch, look thou, hath taken offence at the canting name men have given ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... The miser should not accumulate his gold at the expense of another; the libertine should not revel in beauty's arms, by force; the lady must make a willing sacrifice—thus nobody is injured—and thus the pleasure is legitimate; though bigoted churchmen and canting hypocrites may declaim on the sin of carnal indulgences unsanctioned by the priest and his empty ceremonies. Fools! NATURE, and her laws, and her promptings, and her desires, spurn the trammels of form and custom, and reign ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... Macdonalds," he said—"of them. The uncle was a damn rebellious, canting, planting Scotchman. Horton Pen was the centre of the Separation Movement. We could have hung him if we'd wanted to. The nephew was the writer of an odious blackmailing print. He calumniated all the decent, loyal inhabitants. He was an agent of you pirates, too. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... the reality and healthiness of the religion of those brave knights than their cheerful and open countenance, their thorough enjoyment of all the good things of this life, their freedom in thought and speech. You never catch Joinville canting, or with an expression of blank solemnity. When his ship was surrounded by the galleys of the Sultan, and when they held a council as to whether they should surrender themselves to the Sultan's fleet or to his army on shore, one of his servants objected to all surrender. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... bit. I had not finished," continued Mark. "If ever you say another word to us, whether we are together or whether we are alone, about being grateful, and that sort of thing, I shall say you are a canting humbug—at least, my cousin will; I shouldn't ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... them pay for every indulgence, even that of water; and when some of the prisoners resisted a demand so unreasonable, and insisted on their right to have this necessary of life untaxed, their keepers emptied the water on the prison floor, saying, "If they were obliged to bring water for the canting whigs, they were not bound to afford them the use of ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... are not surely gone over to the side of those canting fellows (Spanish Jesuits in disguise, every one of them, they are), who pretended to turn up their noses at Franky Drake, as a pirate, and be hanged ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... i. 458. In Humphry Clinker, in the Letter of June 11, the turnkey of Clerkenwell Prison thus speaks of a Methodist:—'I don't care if the devil had him; here has been nothing but canting and praying since the fellow entered the place. Rabbit him! the tap will be ruined—we han't sold a cask of beer nor a dozen of wine, since he paid his garnish—the gentlemen get drunk with nothing ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Oh, I know the sort you are: no mercy for yourself or anyone else. I know. My experience has done that for me anyhow: I can tell the pious, canting, hard, selfish woman when I meet her. Well, keep yourself to yourself: I don't want you. But listen to this. Do you know what I would do with you if you were a baby again? aye, as sure as there's a Heaven ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... priestly lies, which sink a new terror in my soul. It can not, can not be, this other world where men receive the reward or punishment drawn upon themselves in this. Thou liest, thou canting monk-faced coward; it is all a ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... do I care about dignity, and womanliness, and right, and all the rest of the canting words! I want him. I want his kisses and his arms about me. He is mine! He loved me once! I have only given him up because I thought it a fine thing to play the saint. It is only an acted lie. I would rather be evil, and ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... literature, sir, that sells at the present day! It is not the Miller of the Black Valley—no, sir, nor Herder either, that will suit the present taste; the evangelical body is becoming very strong, sir—the canting scoundrels—" ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... what a royal person!' exclaimed the whole family as I returned, in Spanish, but in the whining, canting tones peculiar to the Gypsies, when they are bent on victimising. 'A more ugly Busno it has never been our chance to see,' said the same voices in the next breath, speaking in the jargon of the tribe. 'Won't your Moorish Royalty please to ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... by the life-boat davits, he saw at once that the ship was canting far over. The life-boat, which in the drills swung close to the vessel's side, now hung far away. It was already filled ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... canting hypocrite!" Julian declared. "Try your delirium. That packet happens to be in the one place where neither you nor one of your tribe could get ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... various swains our motley walls contain! - Fashion from Moorfields, honour from Chick Lane; Bankers from Paper Buildings here resort, Bankrupts from Golden Square and Riches Court; From the Haymarket canting rogues in grain, Gulls from the Poultry, sots from Water Lane; The lottery-cormorant, the auction-shark, The full-price master, and the half-price clerk; Boys who long linger at the gallery-door, With pence twice five—they want but twopence more, Till some ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... the thing were not true, how came it that everyone in practical life believed it to be so—how came it that everyone who talked in praise of honesty and virtue looked, as he talked, as if he were canting and half ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... Jack," said Wenlock, "how this villain has stole the hearts of my uncle's servants; I suppose this canting old fellow knows where he is, if the ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... corregiescity of Corregio, the learning of Poussin, the airs of Guido, the taste of the Caraccis, or the grand contour of Angelo." "Grant me patience, just heaven! Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting! I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith |
