"Canting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Butter-ferkin, a Kilderkin. These terms are common abuse as applied to a corpulent person. A firkin (Mid. Dut., vierdekijn) a small cask for holding liquids or butter; originally half-a-kilderkin. Dictionary of the Canting Crew (1700) has 'Firkin of foul Stuff; a ... Coarse, Corpulent Woman'. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... yard, gathering goodies among the leaves and twigs, and perhaps piping a little aria at intervals, congratulating himself on having found a pleasant, quiet place, when, lo! a gang of English sparrows crowd around him, peering at him now with one eye, now with the other, canting their heads in their impertinent way, bowing and scraping and blinking, and for all the world seeming to make such derisive remarks as, "Oh, what a fine fellow! Quite stuck-up, ain't he? Isn't that a stylish topknot, though? He! he! he! Look! he wears a rose on his shirt bosom! Isn't he a dandy? ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... man as Whitecraft was, and a knave to boot. I cannot forget how he took me in by the 'Hop-and-go-constant' affair. But then he's a good Protestant—not that I mean he has a single spark of religion in his nondescript carcass; but in those times it's not canting and psalm-singing we want, but good political Protestantism, that will enable us to maintain our ascendancy by other means than praying. Curse the hound that keeps him? Is this a day for him to be late on? and it now half past ten o'clock; however, ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... from a rocket flare-back, grasses burned away from the fins of a small scoutship. But even as Shann rose to one knee, his shout of welcome choked in his throat. One of those fins sank, canting the ship crookedly, preventing any new take-off. And over the crown of a low hill to the west swung the ominous black plate of a ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... sail that stretches wide, A sea that's running strong, A boat that dips its laving side, The forefoot's rippling song. A flaming sky, a crimson flood, Here's joy for body and mind, As in our canting crafts we scud With ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... Egyptian rogues [says he of the vagabonds who then infested England], they have devised a language among themselves which they name Canting, but others Pedlars' French, a speech compact thirty years since of English, and a great number of odd words of their own devising, without all order or reason: and yet such is it that none but themselves are able to understand. The first deviser ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... 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 and ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... to the top of the precipitous ascent and found themselves upon the broken edge of the forest amid a black chaos of piled up rock and underbrush. Evidently, the land here was giving way, little by little, for here and there they could see a tree canting tipsily over the edge, its network of half-exposed roots making a last gallant stand against the erosive process and helping to hold the weight of the great boulders which ere long would crash down into the ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... lost in constant admiration, quotes him On all occasions, takes his trifling acts For wonders, and his words for oracles. The fellow knows his dupe, and makes the most on't, He fools him with a hundred masks of virtue, Gets money from him all the time by canting, And takes upon himself to carp at us. Even his silly coxcomb of a lackey Makes it his business to instruct us too; He comes with rolling eyes to preach at us, And throws away our ribbons, rouge, and patches. The wretch, the other day, tore up a kerchief That he had found, pressed in the Golden ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... the calamitous issue of that unfortunate and most deplorable struggle increased the intensity of his bitterness. Although he did not hope for a renewal of the strife, he trusted that if it were renewed, he might have the opportunity of laying the country in waste, and of exterminating the canting, hypocritical, puritanical, independents. He soon perceived the folly of the Seat of Government being situated on the very frontier, the more especially as Detroit was to be surrendered to the very people whom he most detested. York, from its security, situation and extent, seemed, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... 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 ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... goest into the Smoking-room Three plagues will thee befall,— The chloride of lime, the tobacco smoke, And the Captain who's worst of all, The canting Sea-captain, The prating Sea-captain, The Captain who's worst ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... new and strange had happened. For instance, what had become of his powers of discernment? Here was this miserable doctor, who had been one of the thorns of his life, whom he had looked down upon as a canting hypocrite. Was he, after all, mistaken? The explanation of to-night looked like it; he had been deceived in that matter which had years ago come between them; he could see it very plainly now. In spite of himself, the doctor's earnest, manly apology would come back and repeat ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... But canting knave of pen and sword, nor sanctimonious fool, Shall never win this Southern land, to cripple, bind, and rule; We'll muster on each bloody plain, thick as the stars of night, And, through the help of God, the Wrong shall perish by ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... could be a 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
... upon him angrily for a moment. "I am rightly served for taking man or boy out of the canting hulks that lag on the water. Did ye ever chance to hear such a sound on board the ship Providence as 'Silence, and obey orders?' Let not your walk, youngster, extend beyond that point, from which, at daybreak, you can catch a view of the court tree, where, if ancient habits are not all put off, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... 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, ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... Braska. Presently he heard things of him that made him believe Howard was contemplating desertion, and no sooner had Lieutenant Davies arrived than he became assured of it. "I had to serve under that damned, canting Methodist preacher," said Howard, "and I won't have him nosing around where I am. I'll desert first." Now, Haney had no objection to Howard's "skipping,"—it would be good riddance to dangerous timber,—but ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... thereabout. Modern 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 but the lion's ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... a horde of common people running a government with no head but their own wills is preposterous!" cried the proud old Tory Ralph Jeffries, as he settled his wig with a shake of the head and pulled out his lace ruffles. "Are these canting Puritans going to rule us with ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... after listening to the arguments against the peace made by some of the remonstrants, and to Charles's replies, "it is too much to undertake to dispute with these canting knaves; it were better to have them strapped in the kitchen by your turnspits." ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... bad for men in office to take part in politics, are striving now to prove that the Republican party has been unclean and vicious all its life.... Some of these worthies masquerade as reformers. Their vocation and ministry is to lament the sins of other people. Their stock in trade is rancid, canting self-righteousness. They are wolves in sheep's clothing. Their real object is office and plunder. When Dr. Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel, he was unconscious of the then undeveloped capabilities and uses of the word reform.... Some of these new-found party overseers ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... 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 ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... are little better than a homily on the sins of dancing, feasting, dressing, and the like, garnished with scriptural allusions, and conveyed in a tone of sour rebuke, that would have done credit to the most canting Roundhead in Oliver Cromwell's court. The queen, far from taking exception at it, vindicates herself from the grave imputations with a degree of earnestness and simplicity, which may provoke a smile in the reader. "I am aware," she concludes, "that custom cannot make an action, bad in itself, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... The term Canting Heraldry frequently occurs in ancient and modern authors. It is a term of contempt and derision, applied to symbolic bearings that are assumed without the authority of the Heralds' College. In many cases they allude to the name or occupation of the bearer: the motto ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... by itself. I tell you I cannot speak without it. What's the use of canting now? You know it can ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... your father might still be alive? You had my message through Mr. Cuthbert; I met you day by day after you knew that I had been your father's partner, and never once did you give yourself away! Were you tarred with the same brush as those canting snobs who doomed a poor old man to a living death? Doesn't it look like it? What am I ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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
... Reay threw back his head and laughed joyously. "'Off you go!' said my editor, one fine morning, after I had slaved away for him for nearly two years—'We don't want any canting truth-tellers here!' Now mind that stone! You nearly ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... Tom was a young man of high principle. He had obeyed his mother's parting injunction, often repeated in the letters which came to him from home, and had faithfully "read his Testament." Without being a hypocrite or a canting saint, Tom carried about with him the true elements of ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... staircase, and an old hall with open fireplace. But the striking mansion of all is that of Jacques Coeur, the Bourges jeweller, father of an Archbishop of this his native city. Throughout the house is introduced his canting device, a human heart and the scallopshell of S. James. His motto is also graven, "A vaillants ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... I say, and shall say forever, in such a case. 'The wind's canting in from the west, and you'll ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... Drunken Dutchman resident in England A Phantastique: An Improvident Young Gallant A Button-Maker of Amsterdam A Distaster of the Time A Mere Fellow of a House A Mere Pettifogger An Ingrosser of Corn A Devilish Usurer A Waterman A Reverend Judge A Virtuous Widow An Ordinary Widow A Quack-Salver A Canting Rogue A French Cook A Sexton A Jesuit An Excellent Actor A Franklin A Rhymer A Covetous Man The Proud Man A Prison A Prisoner A Creditor A Sergeant His Yeoman A Common Cruel Jailer What a Character is The Character of a Happy ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... "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
... too 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
... scoundrels, leading scoundrelly lives, drunken, profligate, dissolute, low; as scoundrels 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 cordially to detest, scorn, ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... The judge gloomed on him a moment. "Art more like a snivelling, canting Jack Presbyter. I tell you, man, I can smell a ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... she who was alone near her when she died. Ask her, and she will tell you the wretch, who has prejudiced all minds against the good, the pure, the noble; the villain, the cruel despicable villain, who rested not till his base arts had ruined the—the—virtuous; that Jefferies, the canting hypocrite, the wretched miscreant, who has won all hearts because he speaks so fair, he, he alone is guilty. Put the question to him; let Nurse Langford ask him if the dying spoke falsely when she named him, and his guilt will be written on his brow. Arthur Myrvin did visit that cottage; ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... 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 ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... of 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. They rubbed their eyes with onions, gaped like ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... for preventing the bishops from letting their revenues at a moderate half value, (whereby the whole order would in an age have been reduced to manifest beggary) at the very instant when they were everywhere canting their own lands upon short leases, and sacrificing their oldest tenants for a penny an acre advance.[19] I know not how it comes to pass, (and yet perhaps I know well enough) that slaves have a natural disposition to be tyrants; and that when my betters give me a kick, I am apt to revenge ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... bishop, and a Roman Catholic station, with a variety of shelters in the shape of boarding-houses, shacks and tepees all around. From the number of scows and barges in all stages of construction, and the high timber canting-tackles, it had quite a shipyard-like look, the population being mainly mechanics, who constructed scows, small barges, called "sturgeons," and the old "York," or inland boat, carrying from four to five tons. Here, ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... the better!" she cried; "it is well to know at last that the man is a spy. I always thought so, the canting bigot! Turn him out of doors without an explanation. WE don't want him to work that newspaper. This Monsieur Cerizet seems, from what you tell me, the right sort of man, and we can get another manager. Besides, when Madame ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... cards. "What in deil's name is this?" says he. "What kind of Whiggish, canting talk is this, for the ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Britain, gave double weight to her action. Easy-going tobacco-planters, Church of England men all, were well known not to be great admirers of the precise Puritans of New England, whose moral fervor and conscious rectitude seemed to them a species of fanaticism savoring more of canting hypocrisy than of that natural virtue affected by men of parts. Franklin may well have had Virginia and Massachusetts in mind when he said, but a few years earlier, no one need fear that the colonies "will unite against their own nation... which 'tis well known they all love much more than ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... taken to quoting Scripture, you canting hypocrite," cried Sills. "Do you think we are afraid of any such thing happening to us? Our curses may come back ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... done; but I was mista'en: he only bid me good-mornin' like, in a quiet dacent way. So I dusted him a chair, an' fettled up th' fireplace a bit; but I hadn't forgotten th' Rector's words, so says I, "I wonder, sir, you should give yourself that trouble, to come so far to see a 'canting ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... 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 ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... 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 ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... society exacts when this sort of thing is—found out. I am perfectly willing to pay it, not in the least afraid to pay it, and, above all, not in the least sorry for anything. I want you to remember that and repeat it. I have no patience with cowardly canting talk about remorse. I have never for one moment regretted anything I have done, and I regret nothing now. Nothing! I have had five years of the best this world can give—power, fortune, social position, pleasure, ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... forbade Bryan the rectory-house; on which I swore that his eldest son, who was bringing up for the ministry, should never have the succession of the living of Hackton, which I had thoughts of bestowing on him; and his father said, with a canting hypocritical air, which I hate, that Heaven's will must be done; that he would not have his children disobedient or corrupted for the sake of a bishopric, and wrote me a pompous and solemn letter, charged with Latin quotations, taking farewell of me and my house. 'I do so with regret,' added ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and all who have got rich by pilfering, canting, and cheating, those you may beat and bind, and hold captive for ransom. And chiefly the Sheriff of Nottingham—look you, bear ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... that a walking tour, as some would have us fancy, is merely a better or worse way of seeing the country. There are many ways of seeing landscape quite as good; and none more vivid, in spite of canting dilettantes, than from a railway train. But landscape on a walking tour is quite accessory. He who is indeed of the brotherhood does not voyage in quest of the picturesque, but of certain jolly humours—of the hope and spirit with which the march begins at morning, ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 and breadth, or little and big. All earnest, uncompromising men are more ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... cordially for that. He's a villain in disguise; that's my opinion of him. A low, canting hypocrite. Buy him off for ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... so as to give the vessel a big cant 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 was ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... have lorded it over the people in this parish too long for their welfare. It is through you that the Church life is dormant here, and no clergyman can stay for any length of time. You know this to be true, notwithstanding your canting words in the hall to-night. I am not afraid of you, and I shall remain in this parish as long as I please. If you interfere with me in any way it will be at your own peril. I have given you timely ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... canting little thing," said Ermengarde in a passion, "My wickedness, indeed! Who else would call an innocent drive wickedness? Oh, yes; she let out the whole story to Miss Nelson, and now she wants to come round me ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... was but petulantly to interrupt them, to call him a man of great words and small deeds. All that he did she found ill done, and told him of it. His sober, godly garments of sombre hue afforded her the first weapon of scorn wherewith to wound him. A crow, she dubbed him; a canting, psalm-chanting hypocrite; a Scripture-monger, and every other contumelious epithet of like import that she should call to mind. He ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... 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 with holes ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... that most invaluable blessing. I thank thee, that thou 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 ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... up to view. Then I kneeled on the prostrate wretch and clutched his throat. Anger gathered in my brain as lightning clusters about a mountain top. I threw aside the arquebuse and proceeded to kill the canting mendicant. I do not know that I killed him; I hope I did. I cannot speak with certainty on that point, for I was quickly thrown away from him by the avenging mob that rushed upon us and tore the fellow limb from limb. The other friars were set upon by the populace ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... iron heel! You, sir, you offer suggestions for the benefit of a country whose prosperity excites your jealousy, and whose institutions arouse mingled feelings of hatred and fear! Go home, sir—go home! no more of your canting hypocrisy about the lusty negro! go home, sir, I say! enrich your own poor, clothe your naked, and feed your own starving—the negro here is better off than most of them! Imitate the example of this free and enlightened nation, where every citizen is an independent sovereign; ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... creatures, who leaves the remainder in blindness and uncertainty to follow their passions, or adopt opinions against which the favored wage war, must of necessity be eternally at odds with the rest of the world, canting about their oracles and mysteries, supernatural precepts, invented purely to torment the human mind, to enthral it, and leave man answerable for what he could not obey, and punishable for what he was restrained from performing. We need not then be ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... the first time I ever heard a preacher speaking in a large church who did not speak so loud that an echo chased his sentences round and round the vaulted dome and strangled the sense. The tone was conversational and the manner so free from canting conventionality that I moved up closer to get ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... scene has lost the colours 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
... cries Harry Martin, "you have brought us to this condition, (58) You must be canting and be plagued, with your Barebones petition, (59) And take in that bull-headed, splay-footed member of the circumcision, That bacon-faced Jew, Corbet, (60) that son of ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... teeth-disclosing grin was anyway disturbed by this rough usage. At every jump too, Hands appeared still more to sink into himself and settle down upon the deck, his feet sliding ever the farther out, and the whole body canting towards the stern, so that his face became, little by little, hid from me; and at last I could see nothing beyond his ear and the frayed ringlet ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lodgings, "The Latest Prescriptions of the Vienna Clinic for 1881." When he went to a patient he always took this book with him. He played billiards in the evening at the club: he did not like cards. He was very fond of using in conversation such expressions as "endless bobbery," "canting soft soap," "shut up with your ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... 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 ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... with such very different speakers; it has such a terrible canting sound. I hope you will not get into the habit of using ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... what Difficultyes we mett with through the Misfortune that the Coloneys were not inform'd of our Coming two Months sooner, and through the Interestedness, ill Nature, and Sowerness of these People, whose Government, Doctrine, and Manners, whose Hypocracy and canting, are insupportable; and no man living but one of Gen'l Hill's good Sense and good Nature could have managed them. But if such a Man mett with nothing he could depend on, altho' vested with the Queen's Royal Power and Authority, and Supported by a Number of Troops sufficient to reduce by force ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... here lies: Ye canting zealots, spare him! If honest worth in heaven rise, Ye'll mend ere ye win ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... the canting rogue again began to whine, edging nearer. "Charity, mistress! For the sake of the prophets and the disciples! The seven sacraments, the feast of the Pentecost and the Passover! In the name of the holy Fathers! St. ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... others of our kind. I hear the plain folk of the country speak ill of us for the free life we lead at home—I mean the Palatines and the canting Dutch, not our tenants, though what even they may think of the manor house and of us I can only suspect, for they are all rebels at heart, Sir John says, and wear blue noses at the first run o' ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... us, alas! are not what we ought to be, considering the graces we receive. But if you seek for canting hypocrites, or colossal defaulters, or perpetrators of well-laid schemes of forgery, or of systematic licentiousness, or of premeditated violence, you will seek for such in vain among those who frequent ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... It was all she could think of to say, and yet the words sounded trite and canting as soon as she ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... 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 work in his immediate neighbourhood. ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... with the name of its present owner he was not familiar. Doubtless, he might sometimes have heard it from his father, but the latter, when he spoke of the present possessor of the Court, generally did so as "that Roundhead dog," or "that canting Puritan." ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... present be seen by common people, inasmuch as they were contemplating the problem:—'I don't know what to do!' Nicholas's appetite for Turkey breakfasts had made work too profound for the brains of Downing Street. 'Don't seem a subject of this atmosphere,' said the stupid, significantly canting his head, and giving a queer look out of the corner of his right eye. 'You fellows don't seem to know me,' I interpolated, 'Citizen Smooth—they call me Solomon Smooth, Esq., that is my name.' A door now opened near where I was standing, and in I walked—right ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... stung her 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
... 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 ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Maclise's fresco. If he will only give his magnificent genius fair play, there is not enough cant and dulness even in the criticism of art from which Sterne prayed kind heaven to defend him, as the worst of all the cants continually canted in this canting world—to keep ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... of those critics who are always canting about genius—and who would probably deny this gift to the Robin, because he cannot cry like a chicken or squall like a cat, and because with his charming strains he does not mingle all sorts of discords and incongruous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... I was following showed the faintest spread in the direction of their canting—they must have been only a few miles from blast center. As I passed each one I could see where the metal on the blast side had been eroded—vaporized by the original blast, mostly smoothly, but with welts and pustules where the metal had merely melted and run. I supposed ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... themselves or their friends who, though married, are childless, because they have little courage or because they permit compliance with fashion's demands to stifle the best parts of their nature—such people, I say, will actually be found to protest, with the sort of canting righteousness which does its best to smirch the Right, against this doctrine, Marry, but do not have children, as the rule of life in the cases under discussion. Nevertheless, this is the moral doctrine; this is the right fruit of knowledge, and knowledge will more and ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... favourite with him as a poet, and he knew by heart many passages from his poems, though he disliked Pope's personal character as a man, saying he was all affectation, and speaking of his letter to Arbuthnot when the latter was dying as a consummate piece of canting. Dryden was another of his favourite poets, and when he was speaking one day in high praise of Dryden's fables, Amicus mentioned Hume's objections, and was told, "You will learn more as to poetry by reading one good poem than by a thousand volumes of criticism." Smith regarded ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... no use canting, and minimising them. They affected the thing that mattered most—one's relations with people. Men, for instance, cared more to talk to a woman whose looks pleased them. They liked pretty girls, and pretty women. Interesting men cared to talk to them: they told them things they would never ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... is, literally, hell. There is a canting phrase in England to the effect that poverty is nothing to be ashamed of. Yet if there is one country in the world where poverty is a thing to be superlatively ashamed of, that country is England. There never was an Englishman who wasn't ashamed of being poor. I myself had a youth of hardship ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... was told and how I was prepared. I was born into cowardice and debasement. We all are. Our generation's grimy with hypocrisy. I came to the most beautiful things in life—like peeping Tom of Coventry. I was never given a light, never given a touch of natural manhood by all this dingy, furtive, canting, humbugging English world. Thank God! I'll soon be out of it! The shame of it! The very savages in Australia initiate their children better than the English do to-day. Neither of us was ever given a view of what they call morality that didn't make it show as shabby subservience, as the ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... glutton, they are not at leisure to observe what passes amongst others at the same table. This I have observed in more cases than my own; and this was so strongly verified by my aunt, that, though she often found us together at her return from the pump, the least canting word of his, pretending impatience at her absence, effectually smothered all suspicion. One artifice succeeded with her to admiration. This was his treating me like a little child, and never calling ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... his knees against his desk, and pushed himself back, but kept his balance to the eye by canting his hat sharply forward." There's an old cock over there at the widow's that's written a book to prove that slavery was and is the only solution of the labor problem. He's ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... There are those amongst us who become decadents, whose presence amongst us breeds corruption, whose dirty little lives are like the trail of a foul insect across the page of life. I hold it a just and moral thing to rid the world of such a creature. The sanctity of human life is the canting cry of the falsely sentimental. Human life is sacred or not, according to its achievements. Such a one as Morris Barnes I would brush away like ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... arrear; there was something in that to be sure. But Sir Murtagh was as much the contrary way; for let alone making English tenants [See GLOSSARY 7] of them, every soul, he was always driving and driving, and pounding and pounding, and canting and canting [See GLOSSARY 8], and replevying and replevying, and he made a good living of trespassing cattle; there was always some tenant's pig, or horse, or cow, or calf, or goose, trespassing, which was so great a gain to Sir Murtagh, that he did not like to hear me talk of repairing ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... 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 ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... think he might write a canting book," said the general with a sneer; "that would be ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... other side, except our word of honor as gentlemen. Neither my comrade nor I are going to plead for our lives, though we don't fancy being hung. But perhaps of your courtesy, if we write our names, you will allow a letter to go to General MacKay, and that canting Puritan will be vastly amused when he learns that he had hired us to assassinate my Lord Dundee. He will be more apt to consider our execution an act of judgment for joining the Malignants. We got our ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... 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 ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... The canting phrases wearied Kirkwood; abruptly he cut in. "Would a sovereign help you out, Mr. Calendar? I don't mind telling you that's about the limit of my ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... round 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 ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... runs a little way along the path; then he hops up upon a twig, then down again upon the ground; then "makes believe" peck at something which he imagines or pretends that he sees in the grass; then, canting his head to one side and upward, the branch of a tree there happens to strike his eye, upon which he at once flies up to it. Perching himself upon it for the moment, he utters a burst of joyous song, and then, instantly afterwards, down he comes upon the ground again, runs along, stops, runs along ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... amateurs, reigned throughout the crowd. Assuming the knowing and supercilious look of an acknowledged connoisseur, he approached the picture, prepared to cavil and find fault, or, at best, to damn with faint praise. But the canting phrase of conventional criticism died away upon his lips at the sight he there beheld. Faultless, pure, gracious, and beautiful as some fair and virgin bride was the noble production of genius that met his astonished gaze. With wonder and admiration he recognised the work ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... whims— John Wesley's sweet damnation hymns, That chant of heavenly riches. What have they done?—those heavenly strains, Devoutly squeezed from canting brains, But filled John's ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... be two in one— Let the canting liar pack! Well I know, when I am gone, How she mouths ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... his coach's wheels; Prescribes in haste, and seldom kills by rule, But rides triumphant between stool and stool. Well, let him go,—'tis yet too early day To get himself a place in farce or play; We know not by what name we should arraign him, For no one category can contain him. A pedant,—canting preacher,—and a quack, Are load enough to break an ass's back. At last, grown wanton, he presumed to write, Traduced two kings, their kindness to requite; One made the doctor, and one dubbed ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... soothed the African company with the prospect of being indemnified for the losses they had sustained. They amused individuals with the hope of sharing the rest of the equivalent. They employed emissaries to allay the ferment among the Cameronians, and disunite them from the cavaliers, by canting, praying, and demonstrating the absurdity, sinfulness, and danger of such a coalition. These remonstrances were reinforced by the sum of twenty thousand pounds, which the queen privately lent to the Scottish treasury, and which was now distributed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... a corral and stored his packs and saddles; and when, in the evening, he drifted back to The Mint, man after man tried to buy him a drink. But Wunpost was antisocial, he would have none of their whiskey and their canting professions of friendship; only Ben Fellowes, the new barkeeper, was good enough for his society and he joined him in several libations. It was all case goods, very soft and smooth and velvety, and yet in ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... dear 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 had slain? Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends! Hath he not always treasures, always friends, ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... "Thou canting miscreant!" cried Heselrigge, springing on him suddenly, and aiming his dagger at his breast. But the soldier arrested the weapon, and at the same instant closing upon the assassin, with a turn of his foot threw him to the ground. Heselrigge, as he lay prostrate, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... Encyclopaedia, 1819, describes the Gipsies as "impostors and jugglers forming a kind of commonwealth among themselves, who disguise themselves in uncouth habits, smearing their faces and bodies, and framing to themselves a canting language, wander up and down, and under pretence of telling fortunes, curing diseases, &c., abuse the common people, trick them of their money, and steal all that ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... bound, for we went smack smooth through Venn's horse, like a knife through a mouldy cheese, and left 'em lying to the right and left. If the other fellows had but stuck by us as well, we'd have made a clean sweep of the canting dogs." ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... how could he but dislike him! and his dislike jealousy fostered into hatred. Cowed before him, like Macbeth before Banquo, because he was an honest man, how could he but hate him! He called him, and thought him a canting, sneaking fellow—which he was, if canting consist in giving God His own, and sneaking consist in fearing no man—in fearing nothing, indeed, but doing wrong. How could George consent even to the far-off ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... Coglioni, family were of considerable antiquity and well-authenticated nobility in the town of Bergamo. Two lions' heads conjoined formed one of their canting ensigns; another was borrowed from the vulgar meaning of their name. Many members of the house held important office during the three centuries preceding the birth of the famous general, Bartolommeo. He was born ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... pinned the Virgin on her doublet, and sent for her helmet and tied the ribbon on that; first one way, then another; then a new way, then another new way; and with each effort perching the helmet on her hand and holding it off this way and that, and canting her head to one side and then the other, examining the effect, as a bird does when it has got a new bug. And she said she could almost wish she was going to the wars again; for then she would fight with the better courage, as having always ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... 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
... 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 ...
— 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
... Rubens, the grace of Raphael, the purity of Domenichino, the 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 man ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... 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 triumphant over ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... "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 reprobated ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 to become less confused and corrupt, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... to me, what business have I there? I who can neither lie nor falsely swear? Nor praise my patron's undeserving rhymes, Nor yet comply with him nor with his times? Unskilled in schemes by planets to foreshow, Like canting rascals, how the wars will go; I neither will nor can prognosticate To the young gaping heir his father's fate; Nor in the entrails of a toad have pried, Nor carried bawdy presents to a bride: For want of these town-virtues, thus alone ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... grog there was plenty of chat, Of canting, and flenching, and cutting up fat; And how gun-harpoons into fashion had got, And if they were meant for ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... 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 be said of them but that they are glaring ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... a song, possible only in those days, and at Henry's voluptuous and at the same time canting court—a song full of the most wanton allusions, of the most cutting jests against both monks and women; a song which made Henry laugh, and the ladies blush; and in which John Heywood had poured forth in glowing dithyrambics ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... situation, infused a bitterness into the letters in 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." "This is an undiscovered clime," he at another period ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... You 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, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... 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 she ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... the reality of them, even in his own case, much less in that of another. All we know is, that pretenders to these extraordinary assistances, have never been wanting to abuse the credulity of the vulgar, and to try the patience of the wise. From the canting hypocrites and wild fanatics of the last century, to their less dangerous, chiefly because less successful, descendants of the present day, we hear the same unwarranted claims, the same idle tales, the same low cant; and we may discern not ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... constables who refuse to act, and penalties for resisting them when they do. In addition to these trifles, the constables are invested with arbitrary, vexatious, and most extensive powers; and all this in a bill which sets out with a hypocritical and canting declaration that 'nothing is more acceptable to God than the TRUE AND SINCERE worship of Him according to His holy will, and that it is the bounden duty of Parliament to promote the observance of the Lord's day, ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... she runs into an iceberg or a derelict, she can endure a certain intake of water, and lists at a moderate angle far more readily than a warship, whose guns are rendered nearly useless if the ship is heavily canting. A warship must be built so as to withstand, without sinking, the injury caused by a number of gun holes even beneath the water line, where the inner part of the ship must necessarily be subdivided into many parts. A warship is built at great cost, but so is an ocean steamer. ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner |
