"Imposture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heard a voice that spoke to me from the end of the sacristy: it whispered so low that I could not catch the words. I remained motionless, and gave it my whole attention. At last I heard, distinctly, the following sentence:—'Spirit of Truth, raise up these victims of ignorance and imposture.' 'Father Hegesippus,' said I, in a weak voice, 'is that you who are returning to me?' But no one answered. I lifted myself on my hands and knees, I listened again, but I heard nothing. I got up completely, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... have good radical sponsors in the hon. members for Stockport and Leicester. Perhaps Parliament as a whole is the best sponsor. The Neo-conservative programme should tell us what is meant by the liberties of the people. The absence of definition may perhaps cover an imposture. ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... I replied, 'by what singular tenure this person claims my obedience as a guardian; it is a barefaced imposture. I never in my life saw him, until I came unhappily to this country, about ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... been guilty; and it has sometimes occurred to me that the occult cause of his lady's separation from him, round which herself and her legal adviser have thrown such formidable mystery, may have been nothing more, after all, than some imposture of this kind, some dimly hinted confession of undefined horrors, which, though intended by the relater but to mystify and surprise, the hearer so little understood him as ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... After a long residence in Louisiana, she followed him to Paris and the Island of Bourbon, where he had a commission of major. Having become a widow in 1754, she returned to Paris, with a daughter, and went thence to Brunswick, when her imposture was discovered; charity was bestowed on her, but she was ordered to leave the country. She died in 1771, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... foreground, and its appearance upon close inspection, was equal to the difference in the scenery of a theatre as regarded from the boxes or from the stage. Even that painful exposure of an optical illusion would be trifling compared with the imposture of Khartoum. The sense of sight had been deceived by distance, but the sense of smell was outraged by innumerable nuisances, when we set foot within the filthy and miserable town. After winding through some narrow, dusty lanes, hemmed in by high walls of sun-baked bricks that ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... indiscriminate alms-giving, but at "the encouragement of industry and frugality among the poor by visits at their own habitations; the relief of real distress, whether arising from sickness or other causes, and the prevention of mendicity and imposture." Visitors were appointed, who went from house to house among the poor, encouraging habits of thrift and cleanliness; whilst a savings bank received deposits, and trained these same poor to save ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... therefore, that the utmost caution is necessary in the exercise of this right claimed by Great Britain. While we have recourse to the necessary, and, indeed, the only means for detecting imposture, the practice will be carefully guarded and limited to cases of strong suspicion. The undersigned begs to assure Mr. Stevenson that the most precise and positive instructions have been issued to her Majesty's ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... summed up in those words: resounding titles, real millionaires, then, down below, the most extravagant medley of international imposture and turpitude. And Pierre thought of that internationalism, that cosmopolitanism, that flight of foreigners which, ever denser and denser, swooped down upon Paris. Most certainly it came thither to enjoy it, as to a city of adventure and delight, and it helped to rot ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the place it holds among the psychological movements of the present day, is the object of these pages. Not a few books have been written against Spiritualism; but most of them endeavor to account for it on the ground of human jugglery and imposture, or on natural principles, the discovery of a new and heretofore occult force in nature, etc., from which great things may be expected in the future. But rarely has any one discussed it from the standpoint of prophecy, and the testimony of the Scriptures, ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... exacerbated, produces debauchery veiled by hypocrisy, an overwhelming demand for licentious theatrical entertainments which no censorship can stem, and, worst of all, a confusion of virtue with the mere morality that steals its name until the real thing is loathed because the imposture is loathsome. Literary traditions spring up in which the libertine and profligate—Tom Jones and Charles Surface are the heroes, and decorous, law-abiding persons—Blifil and Joseph Surface—are the villains and butts. People ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... you would hold to be incredible without the evidence of your own senses. Let me only say this, it was not so much what we saw or heard (in which you might fairly suppose that we were the dupes of our own excited fancy, or the victims of imposture in others) that drove us away, as it was an undefinable terror which seized both of us whenever we passed by the door of a certain unfurnished room, in which we neither saw nor heard anything. And the strangest marvel of all was, that for once in my life I agreed with my wife, silly ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... in both convenient and agreeable to make one to another, might in time, probably reduce the doctrine of the greater part of them to that pure and rational religion, free from every mixture of absurdity, imposture, or fanaticism, such as wise men have, in all ages of the world, wished to see established; but such as positive law has, perhaps, never yet established, and probably never will establish in any country; because, with regard to religion, positive ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... possessed; and, under treatment by a celebrated exorcist, (an inferior hand having failed,) she, or the demon in possession, among other things accused Gaufridi. Her revelations may be resolved into an imposture instigated by revenge, or a pious fraud caused by remorse, or hysterical fits, with utterance shaped by memory; but what can be said of Gaufridi's, made with a full ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... 'Frederick' can deny; his insight into hidden causes and far-away effects was keen beyond precedent—nothing he ever said deserves contempt, though it may merit anger. If we would escape his conclusion, we must not altogether disregard his premises. Bankruptcy and death are the final heirs of imposture and make-believes. The old faiths and forms are worn too threadbare by a thousand disputations to bear the burden of the new democracy, which, if it is not merely to win the battle but to hold the country, must be ready ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... till he disappeared in the dark. He fluctuated among many surmises about Feltram. Was he insane, or was he practising an imposture? or was he fool enough to believe the predictions of some real gipsies? and had he borrowed this money, which in Sir Bale's eyes seemed the greatest miracle in the matter, from those thriving shepherd mountaineers, the old Trebecks, who, he believed, were attached to him? Feltram had, he thought, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... came quite close, holding his lantern until the rays fell full in Barney's face. He scrutinized the young man for a moment. There was neither humility nor respect in his manner, so that the American was sure that the fellow had discovered the imposture. ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... his lips. Again he saw himself in a pitiful light, and this self-contempt reflected upon Sidwell. He could not doubt that she was yielding to him; her attitude and her voice declared it; but what was the value of love won by imposture? Why had she not intelligence enough to see through his hypocrisy, which at times was so thin a veil? How ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... sense to be duped, and too much honesty to bear a part in what he knew to be an imposture. "It is a silly superstition," he exclaimed, when he heard that, at the close of Lent, his palace was besieged by a crowd of the sick: "Give the poor creatures some money, and send them away." [499] On one single occasion he was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... at Castres, were brought before him, one of whom was unshakable in his belief, the other expressed himself open to conviction. "Burn them both," said the count; "if this fellow mean what he says, the fire will expiate his sins; and, if he lie, he will suffer for his imposture." ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... recovered from the effects of the bridal feast, he discovered, to his intense horror and dismay, that the bride he had taken was not the woman of his choice—in short, he was the victim of a cheat. Indignant at this cruel imposture, he ascertained that the plot emanated from the woman who, till then, had been the ideal of his soul, and that she had substituted her veiled sister Anne for herself at the altar. The remainder of this strange affair is briefly told:—George Evans had one, and only one, interview with his wife, ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... lives and stories your kind presence here shows that you have curiosity and sympathy, appeal to a great number of our other faculties, besides our mere sense of ridicule. The humourous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness—your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture—your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy. To the best of his means and ability he comments on all the ordinary actions and passions of life almost. He takes upon himself to be the week-day preacher, so to speak. Accordingly, as he finds, and speaks, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... and both, as evidently, were men of courage, not to be blinded by superstitious panic. Is it a probable thing that they would destroy an old and valued family mansion, without having exhausted every conceivable expedient to detect imposture? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... highest ambition," he used to say, "was to be a humdrum."[21] The intellectual and the moral parts of his character were of a piece. The tricks and flimsinesses of a bad argument provoked him as much as the imposture and "flash" of insincere sentiment and fine talking; he might be conscious of "flash" in himself and his friends, and he would admit it unequivocally; but it was as unbearable to him to pretend not to see a fallacy as soon as it was ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... his hands; he was anxious not to let any sign of his give any clue in case of its being all imposture and extraordinary quickness of sight. He purposely passed over the letters, but was rapped back by the recognised signal till the ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... followed by a patronizing welcome and a rummage for small coins to cross her hand withal in return for her solutions of the grave questions of love, jealousy, money, and marriage, which fermented secretly or openly in the bosoms of all of them. They were but human beings, food for imposture, and preyed on by deceivers. The visit of Mere Malheur was an event of interest in both kitchen and laundry ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Since the terrible events of 1812 the Czar's mind had taken a strongly religious tinge. His private life continued loose as before; his devotion was both very well satisfied with itself and a prey to mysticism and imposture in others; but, if alloyed with many weaknesses, it was at least sincere, and, like Alexander's other feelings, it naturally sought expression in forms which seemed theatrical to stronger natures. Alexander had rendered many public acts of homage to religion in the intervals of diplomatic ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... asserts that the monks have planted in their garden a bush similar to those which grow in Europe, and that by the most ridiculous imposture, they hesitate not to affirm that it is the same which Moses saw—the miraculous bush. The assertion is false, and the alleged fact a mere invention."—Geramb's Pilgrimage to ...
— Notes and Queries, 1850.12.21 - A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, - Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. • Various
... would be a joke if my little Iron-Clad should end his career of imposture in that public institution, and sit once more under my excellent uncle! But I can't wish him any such misfortune. His mission to us was one of mercy. The place has been Paradise again, ever since his visit.—Scribners Magazine, ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... disgrace for herself, and though resolved to no longer allow him the rights purchased by crime, she yet trembled at the idea of losing his love. It was this above all which decided her to keep eternal silence about her discovery; one single word which proved that his imposture was known would raise an insurmountable barrier ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... sorry, brother, you see his pretensions in so wrong a light; but if you think there is any imposture in the case, go with us, and be a witness of all ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... lepus. And the ground of the conceit was probably no greater than this, that a fearful animal passing by us portended unto us something to be feared; as upon the like consideration the meeting of a fox presaged some future imposture." Such superstitions as these last must be the result of study; they are too recondite for natural or spontaneous growth. But when the attempt was once made to construct a science of predictions, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... could not at first realize that the temple had fallen before the assault of men of the outer world. When she did, there must have come, too, a terrible realization of what it meant to her—the loss of power—humiliation—the exposure of the fraud and imposture which she had for so long played upon her ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... performance. Happy mortal! to whom that success which is the ground of his pride, is also the glittering aegis of his sure defence! To this he points with exultation and self-applause, as if the prosperity of the wicked, or the popularity of an imposture, had never yet been heard of in this clever world![12] Upon what merit this success has been founded, my readers may judge, when I shall have finished this slight review of his work. Probably no other grammar ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... defeat and imprisonment; and now we see the same poor human heart, its visions soiled and clouded, its courage beaten down, surrounded only by enemies and scoffers, beginning even to suspect itself of imposture and impiety. She who had felt as a saint, hears herself exorcised as a sorcerer; and, by and by, a crowd of men, churchmen and civilians, stand round in triumph to see her burnt and consumed as a thing unholy and impure, whose life had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... Blair, who wrote the critical dissertation usually prefixed to the editions of Ossian, and who compares him favorably to Homer. First among the incredulous, as might be expected, was Dr. Samuel Johnson, who, in his Journey to the Hebrides, lashes Macpherson for his imposture, and his insolence in refusing to show the original. Johnson was threatened by Macpherson with a beating, and he answered: "I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat by the menaces of ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... territory, to which they had put the Goths before the overthrow of the Western Empire. It was a most eventful era at which they addressed themselves to these Turks of the Caspian. It was almost the very year of the Hegira, which marks the rise of the Mahometan imposture and rule. As yet, however, the Persians were in power, and formidable enemies to the Romans, and at this very time in possession of the Holy Cross, which Chosroes, their powerful king, had carried away from Jerusalem twelve years before. But the successful Emperor Heraclius was already ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... purpose. In the tale of Maruf the Cobbler, which concludes the Bulak and Calcutta printed texts of The Nights, we have an interesting version of Aladdin. The hero runs away from his shrewish wife and under false presences is married to a king's daughter. He confesses his imposture to the princess, who loves him dearly, and she urges him to flee from her father's vengeance and not to return until his death should leave the throne vacant, and having furnished him with money, he secretly quits the city at daybreak. After riding ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... but salutary. In the nature of the case, it must be in the highest degree pernicious. The testimony of Mr. DOUGLASS, on this point, is sustained by a cloud of witnesses, whose veracity is unimpeachable. "A slaveholder's profession of Christianity is a palpable imposture. He is a felon of the highest grade. He is a man-stealer. It is of no importance what you ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... the celebrated monitor of James IV; for the expression in Lindesay's narrative, "My mother has sent me," could only be used by St. John, the adopted son of the Virgin Mary. The whole story is so well attested, that we have only the choice between a miracle or an imposture. Mr. Pinkerton plausibly argues, from the caution against incontinence, that the Queen was privy to the scheme of those who had recourse to this expedient, to deter King James from his ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... manner with those in Boston. The physicians, unable to account for the disorder, attributed it to witchcraft, and an old Indian woman in the neighbourhood was selected as the witch. The attention bestowed on these girls gave them great importance; and not only confirmed them in the imposture, but produced other competitors who were ambitious of the same distinction. Several other persons were now bewitched; and not only the old Indian, but two other old women, the one bedridden, and the other subject to melancholy and ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... native vein of sauciness which it required all the solemnity of the senate to repress. Indeed, even there, upon the benches, with a grave face, he often indulged in quips and cranks that convulsed his neighbouring audience, who often, amid the long dreary nights of statistical imposture, sought refuge in his gay sarcasms, his ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... less right than any man to do so, for I have lied a great deal myself, and at this supreme moment I feel the need to open my heart, to free my bosom, to publicly confess my imposture..." ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... theology, new revolutions would equally produce others; even if the old ones should chance to be forgotton. Ignorant, miserable, trembling beings, will always either form to themselves systems, or else adopt those which imposture shall announce—which fanaticism shall be disposed to ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... by the bearer whether his eldest son was with him, or whether he had met with the unfortunate death that was reported; and as his youngest son was at home, and had been there for some months, he could not but imagine, as both of them were mentioned in the reports, that there might be some imposture in the business. ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... task the more difficult was that his predecessors had so bungled the cross-examination in many ways that they not only had not elicited what they might have done, but actually, by many questions, furnished information to the Claimant which enabled him to carry on his imposture.] ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... now was to brazen out the imposture, and he huddled the boat-cloak round Jocko so as ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... officers; but finding that she was unable to bear the voyage, he resolved to confide in the honor of the French, and present his passport at the Mauritius. There he was detained a prisoner six years; first charged with imposture, then treated as a spy; and when these imputations were refuted, he was accused of violating his passport. The French had found in his journal a wish dotted down to examine the state of that settlement, ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... This had already been maintained by Merker, the Prussian Counsellor of Police. The theory which Stanhope now advanced was, that Caspar was a journeyman tailor or glover, from some small village on the Austrian side of the river Salzach. The reasons which he assigns for his belief in the imposture are all derived from Caspar's supposed want of integrity and veracity. They impeach the character of Caspar living, and not of Caspar dead. Why, then, did Stanhope wait for his death before he proclaimed the imposture? Why did he remain ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... to Start for Erythrae, a town of Ionia, which faces that island, and he prevailed upon the seamen to allow him to accompany them. Having embarked, he invoked a favourable wind, and prayed that he might be able to expose the imposture of Thestorides, who, by his breach of hospitality, had drawn down the wrath of ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... one more point, it is time that the public should fully understand that the common method of supporting barefaced imposture at the present day, both in Europe and in this country, consists in trumping up "Dispensaries," "Colleges of Health," and other advertising charitable clap-traps, which use the poor as decoy-ducks for the rich, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... it is no imposture!" declared the man before me. "You will, perhaps, understand later. Have a cigar," and he took up Digby's box and ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... himself—you may add such other ugly appellatives as your fancy may suggest; and be sure that your portraiture will still fall short of the hideousness of the original. Perhaps the most striking characteristic of these fanatics is the absolute openness of their cheat. A more commonplace imposture has never been offered for acceptance, even to the most ignorant of mankind. It appeals neither to reason nor romance. The one is insulted by the very shallowness of its chicanery, while its rank plebbishness disgusts the other. Even the nomenclature, both of its offices ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... this spurious Spanish lady had no real knowledge of that which she professed. The whole affair was an imposture; and on the very night of her first appearance the truth exploded. On the discovery of the truth, I declined to allow the English adventuress, for such she was, another appearance on my boards. In spite of the expostulations of the "friends" of the lady—in spite of the deprecatory ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... all, the doctrine of transubstantiation was fortified by the circulation of stories of wonders such as that which took place at Poitiers, in 1516, when the consecrated wine, spilled by a crazy man, from white instantly became red.[112] At other times imposture was resorted to in support of such profitable beliefs as the existence of purgatorial fires, or to inculcate the advantage accruing from masses for the souls of the dead. The "ghost of Orleans" has become historic. The wife of the provost of the city having died, was buried, as she had requested, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... and ceremony to the temple in Kandy, which already ranks in sacredness next to the great Shwe Dagon pagoda in Rangoon. A temple in Java is founded upon a single hair of Buddha's head. All this superstition and imposture dates back to a couple of centuries before Christ, and there is great reason to believe that the Roman Catholic worship of relics is only an appropriation of this form ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... craze to which we allude, was Joanna Southcott, the daughter of a farmer residing at the village of Gettisham, in Devonshire, where she herself was born in the month of April, 1750. At the time, therefore, the imposture was made patent to such of her deluded followers as retained any remnants of the small stock of common sense with which nature had originally endowed them, Joanna was sixty-four years ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... a poem by Ossian, son of Fingal, a Gaelic prince of the third century. For a moment the work was accepted as genuine in some quarters, especially by some of the Edinburgh divines. But Dr. Johnson denounced it as an imposture from the first. He pointed out that Macpherson had never produced the manuscripts from which he professed to have translated it when challenged to do so. He maintained also that the so-called poem had no merits; that "it was a mere unconnected ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... certain weight of gold to a workman, to be made into a crown. When the crown was made and sent to the king, a suspicion arose in the royal mind that the gold had been adulterated by the alloy of a baser metal, and he applied to Archimedes for his assistance in detecting the imposture; the difficulty was to measure the bulk of the crown without melting it into a regular figure; for silver being, weight for weight, of greater bulk than gold, any alloy of the former in place of an equal weight of the latter would necessarily increase the bulk ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... are the supreme authorities. But we must consult others to discover why they experienced these feelings. An illusion is no more than a false interpretation of a real subjective experience; although many are inclined to treat the rejection of the interpretation as equivalent to a charge of imposture or deliberate lying. ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... "I am perfectly convinced that I have both seen and heard, in a manner that should make unbelief impossible, things called spiritual which cannot be taken by a rational being to be capable of explanation by imposture, coincidence, ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... painted and papered, it was not only uninhabited at present, but plainly had never been inhabited at all. The young officer remembered with astonishment its specious, settled, and hospitable air on his arrival. It was only at a prodigious cost that the imposture could have been carried out upon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... very intelligent man. He seemed very intimate with the family, and told us he had studied them all, and had had Miss Cooke a month at a time in his own house, studying these phenomena. He was absolutely satisfied of their genuineness, and indeed no opportunity for imposture seems to exist. ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... his mother knew the sixty-five stanzas of the ballad by heart. Does any one believe that, as a woman of seventy-two, she learned the poem to back Hogg's hoax? That he wrote the poem, and caused her to learn it by rote, so as to corroborate his imposture? ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... fakeer, to whom his Majesty's confidential servants, the singers, had taken him to be cured of his disease, was no other than this Sadik Allee. The King, on hearing this, sent for Sadik Allee, who was seized and brought before him on the 2nd December. He confessed the imposture, but pleaded that he had practised it merely to obtain some money, and that the singers were associated with him in all that he did. The King soothed his apprehensions, and conferred upon him a dress of honour, consisting of a doshala and roomul, and then made him over to ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... not her father, that she had just heard the truth, and Dane was amazed. He hardly knew what to say, but ultimately stammered out some sort of denial. Anne did not give him time to speak. She said that she would see Denham herself, and get to the bottom of the imposture. Then she asked what message he had sent in the character of her father. Dane refused to give it in my presence, so I walked away for ten minutes and left them together. Oh, I was foolish, I know," she added in reply to Ware's exclamation. "But I thought ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... who is named in the London Company's list as "Captain John Sicklemore, alias Ratcliffe." He will have a short and stormy Virginian life, and in two years be done to death by Indians. John Smith quarreled with him also. "A poor counterfeited Imposture!" said Smith. Gabriel Archer is a lawyer, and first secretary or recorder of the colony. Short, too, is his life. His name lives in Archer's Hope on the James River in Virginia. John Smith will have none of him! George Kendall's life is more nearly spun than ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... withdraw even while it is uttered; and yet what it seems to dissemble is all too probably a platitude. But obviously, literature is not—as is the craft and mystery of painting—so at the mercy of a half-imposture, so guarded by unprovable honour. For the art of painting is reserved that shadowy risk, that undefined salvation. May the gods guard us from the further popularising of Impressionism; for the point of honour is the simple ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... medium, excuses his imposture, and then thinks "it may not altogether be imposture. For all he knows there may really be spirits at the bottom of it. He never meant to cheat; yet he did cheat. Yet, even if he lied, lies help truth to live; and he must live ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... years that have transpired since that time, it has been seen and described at eight or ten observatories. Nevertheless, some still deny that these phenomena are real, and tax with illusion (or even imposture) those who declare ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... pretenders to these sciences was, that they were generally persons who, feeling themselves odious to humanity, were careless of what they did to deserve the public hatred. Real crimes were often committed under pretence of magical imposture; and it somewhat relieves the disgust with which we read, in the criminal records, the conviction of these wretches, to be aware that many of them merited, as poisoners, suborners, and diabolical agents in secret domestic crimes, the severe fate to ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... were attributed to the influence of malignant spirits. To meet these, the medicine-man, or juggler, invested himself with his mysterious character, and endeavored to exorcise the demon by a great variety of ceremonies, a mixture of delusion and imposture. For this purpose, he arrayed himself in a strange and fanciful dress, and on his first arrival began to sing and dance round the sufferer, invoking the spirits with loud cries. When exhausted with these exertions, he attributed the hidden cause of the malady to the first ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... of water, with holes bored at the bottom stopped only by wax to keep it in, a seeming miracle extinguished the flames, as soon as approached by Canopus; whose triumph was of course proclaimed, and he respected accordingly. The figure was a monkey, whose sitting attitude favoured the imposture: our antiquaries tell us ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... be imagined that a foreign queen may with impunity be substituted for the legitimate mother. The bees will at once detect the imposture; the intruder will be seized, and immediately enclosed in the terrible, tumultuous prison, whose obstinate walls will be relieved, as it were, till she dies; for in this particular instance it hardly ever occurs that the stranger ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... all his scorn and hatred for Catholicism—for its tortuous tactics, its monstrous credulity and appetite for miracles, which must proceed, according to him, either from infantile folly or from deliberate imposture. Forgetting altogether that he has to defend himself against a specific charge of slander, he offers his great opponent the choice between writing himself down a knave or a fool—a knave if he pretends to believe in the Holy Coat and ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... Granger; who both, with all the innocence of Criticism, give specimens of these "Relics," without a suspicion that they were transcribing literally from Lord Bacon's Essays! Unquestionably Lady Gethin herself intended no imposture; her mind had all the delicacy of her sex; she noted much from the books she seems most to have delighted in; and nothing less than the most undiscerning friends could have imagined that everything written by the hand of this young lady was her "first conceptions;" and apologise ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... towns beggary was an organised imposture, with a sort of government and police of its own. Each beggar had his beat, with orderly successions and promotions, as with other governments. There were battles to decide conflicting claims, and a good beat was not unfreguently a marriage portion ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... were fiends, And what was he who taught them that the God Of nature and benevolence had given A special sanction to the trade of blood? His name and theirs are fading, and the tales Of this barbarian nation, which imposture Recites till terror credits, are pursuing Itself ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... agreed well with the impression my writings had made, and served the purpose I intended it for; which was to continue the awe and reverence due to the character I was vested with, and, at the same time, to let my enemies see how much I was the delight and favourite of this town. This innocent imposture, which I have all along taken care to carry on, as it then was of some use, has since been of singular service to me, and by being mentioned in one of my papers, effectually recovered my egoity out of the hands of some gentlemen who endeavoured ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... out so atrocious, that I half repent me of having undertaken to record thy memoirs; yet such monsters ought to be exhibited to public view, that mankind may be upon their guard against imposture; that the world may see how fraud is apt to overshoot itself; and that, as virtue, though it may suffer for a while, will triumph in the end; so iniquity, though it may prosper for a season, will at last be overtaken ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... not essentially an imposture, though it might seem so if we consider it as its defenders present it to us rather than as its discoverers and original spokesmen uttered it in the presence of nature and face to face with unsophisticated men. Religion ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... course imputed all this to imposture; but when he reflected upon what she had already told him, he felt perfectly confounded with amazement. The prophetess then went to her father's counter and wrote something upon a small fragment of paper, which she handed to him. No earthly language could now express his astonishment, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... has furnished a similar puzzle to these investigators. There are those among them who assume that religion is an invention of crafty men who find it a means of obtaining ascendency over their fellows. That it is all imposture—the product of priestcraft—is the theory of some small philosophers. Such being the case, they expect that the progress of knowledge ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... millions, of whom 1,200,000 are Protestants, and 800,000 Catholics; and he maintains that if the Parliamentary representatives were chosen by a general vote, the Parnellite 80 would be cut down to 62; while the Unionists would number 44. He regards the Parnellite policy as "an organised imposture," and firmly believes that an Irish Parliament in Dublin would now mean civil war in Ireland. He had a visit here last week, he says, from an American Presbyterian minister, who came out to Ireland ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... thoughts of vengeance rouse, And the fond bridegroom turns him to his spouse. At this first birth of light, while morning breaks, Our spouseless bride, our widow'd wife, awakes; Awakes, and smiles; nor night's imposture blames; Her real pomps were little more than dreams; A short-liv'd blaze, a lightning quickly o'er, That died in birth, that shone, and were no more: She turns her side, and soon resumes a state ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... bright chapel tried, however, to be gloomy; it was like those wine shops whose walls are made to look like those of caves, with false stones painted in the imitation plaster. Only the height of the nave manifested the childishness of the imposture, and declared the vulgarity of ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... said I, somewhat moved to anger. "Mystery is always the trick of imposture: God's chosen should be distinguished from their flock only by superior virtue, and not by a superior privilege ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... advert very briefly to the Mohammedan imposture, though that is perhaps the most signal instance within all time, of a malignant delusion maintained directly and immediately by ignorance, by an absolute determination and even a fanatic zeal not to receive one new idea. Tenets involving the most ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... only scorned to revenge the imposture which had been practised on him on a woman, but, as a Persian, had far too much respect for a mother, and especially for the mother of a king, to injure Ladice ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... mentions Dodona and Delphi as the seats of worship of the Greek demons. Among a few of the humanists we certainly find an attempt to apply the natural explanation even here; thus Caelius Rhodiginus asserted that a great part (but not all!) of the oracular system might be explained as priestly imposture, and his slightly younger contemporary Caelius Calcagninus, in his dialogue on oracles, seems to go still further and to deny the power of predicting the future to any other being than the true God. An exceptional position is occupied by Pomponazzi, who in his little pamphlet De Incantationibus ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... forgive!" I heard the noise of one dropping on her knees. "Oh, my boy, my pride, my hope, forgive me—forgive the innocent imposture I've practised on you! My son, I never saw ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... representations of the divine essence. But we must not confine ourselves to a superficial consideration and consequent rejection of these representations and the religious practices which follow upon them as being engendered by superstition, by error, or by imposture, or even by a simple piety, and so neglect their essential value. There is need to discover in these representations and in these ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... unhappy, the old Prophet was right and not wrong in saying to it: Ye have forgotten God, ye have quitted the ways of God, or ye would not have been unhappy. It is not according to the laws of Fact that ye have lived and guided yourselves, but according to the laws of Delusion, Imposture, and wilful and unwilful Mistake of Fact; behold therefore the Unveracity is worn out; Nature's long-suffering with you is exhausted; ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... in the English newspapers, and the same imposture has been repeated this year, a letter from the Lords of the Admiralty to Dennis de Berdt, in Coleman street, informing him that a convoy should be appointed to the Brazil fleet. But this, we have certain information, was a forgery, calculated merely ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... truth seems to be, that a belief in omens and prodigies was again become prevalent, as the people were evidently relapsing into pristine barbarity, ignorance being ever the proper soil for a harvest of imposture. ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... universal belief in his existence is natural enough; the irresistible impulse to ask for a first cause is accounted for; or religious nature has an object; the uniformity of natural law finds an adequate explanation, and human history is vindlcated from the charge of being a vast imposture. Atheism leaves all these matters without an explanation, and makes, not history alone, but our moral and intellectual nature itself, an ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... ruthlessly as their own health, strength, and patience are exploited by selfish hypochondriacs. They must do all these things or else run pecuniary risks that no man can fairly be asked to run. And the healthier the world becomes, the more they are compelled to live by imposture and the less by that really helpful activity of which all doctors get enough to preserve them from utter corruption. For even the most hardened humbug who ever prescribed ether tonics to ladies whose need for tonics is of precisely the same character as ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... continual spectacle, and a kind of remedy against the like inchantments of people in time to come." What! do lawful princes live in dread of a possibility of phantoms!(37) Oh! no; but Henry knew what he had to fear; and he hoped by keeping up the memory of Simnel's imposture, to discredit the true duke of York, as another puppet, when ever he ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... wander up and down, and never to find rest anywhere—a sad fate: almost a sufficient punishment for an imposture, which he seems in time to have half believed himself—lost his Scottish refuge through a truce being made between the two Kings; and found himself, once more, without a country before him in which he could lay his head. But James (always honourable and true to him, alike when ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... offensively and violently to Dr. Samuel, who replied heartily enough—'I received your foolish and impudent letter ...I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian ...I thought your book an imposture. I think so still. Your rage I defy,' etc. etc. What was all this to Runciman? He had no learning—he cared nothing for antiquarianism. He took for granted that Ossian was authentic. Many north of the Tweed looked upon ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... if eyes looked down on him from the dark sky and pierced him through and through. His whole life had been an imposture from the first—his quarrel with his father, his taking Orders, his entering the monastery and his leaving it, his crusade in Soho, his intention of following Father Damien, his predictions at Westminster—all, ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... course for him. Clearly enough the professions were unsuitable; they to him, he to them. Professions, built so largely on speciosity instead of performance; clogged, in this bad epoch, and defaced under such suspicions of fatal imposture, were hateful not lovable to the young radical soul, scornful of gross profit, and intent on ideals and human noblenesses. Again, the professions, were they never so perfect and veracious, will require slow steady pulling, to which this individual young radical, with his ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... The secret entrance, and, above all, the currently-believed story of the ghost, might afford facilities for frightening away those who were disposed to be curious; and any noises unavoidable in the course of their operations might be attributed to this fruitful source of imposture. By a little dexterity, possession of the haunted chamber was obtained, the feigned beggar being a periodical visitant; thence a ready entrance was contrived, and all materials were introduced that were needful for their ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... good and ready, James. I've told too many lies on your account already not to make myself a present of this joyful reunion. Has Miss Annesley any idea of the imposture?" ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... curious particulars anent our subject:—"Robin Drury," he says, "among those who knew him (and he was known to many, being a porter at the East India House), had the character of a downright honest man, without any appearance of fraud or imposture. He was known to a friend of mine (now living), who frequently called upon him at his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, which were not then enclosed. He tells me he has often seen him throw a javelin there, and strike a small mark at a surprising distance. It is a pity," ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... of that fatal volume whose deceptive and glowing statements were alone sufficient to ensure Popanilla's fate. It was in vain that the author avowed that he had never written a line of his own book. This only made his imposture more evident. The little philosopher with whom he had conversed at Lady Spirituelle's, and who, being a friend of Flummery Flam, had now obtained a place under Government, invented the most condemning evidence. The Marquess of Moustache ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... to feel Meredith's bumps, and no man whose bumps we are allowed to feel can continue for five minutes the pretence of being an Olympian. He becomes a human being under a criticizing thumb. We discover that he had a genius for imposture, an egoist's temper, and a stomach that fluttered greedily at the thought of dainty dishes. We find all those characteristics that prevented him from remaining on good terms first with his father, next with his wife, and then with his son. At first, when one reads the full story of Meredith's ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... war talkin', Bill turns in the way he was sleepin' into an aisier imposture; and as soon as he stopped snorin' ould Tim Donovan's courage riz agin, and ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... An old chief, who had been specially selected to deal with the Indian agent, and who kept a small trading outpost, had been killed and his goods despoiled by a reckless Redwood packer. The murderer had coolly said that he was only "serving out" the tool of a fraudulent imposture on the Government, and that he dared the arch-impostor himself, the so-called Minyo chief, to help himself. A wave of ungovernable fury surged up to the very tent-poles of Elijah's lodge and demanded ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... in our nature, attributing to the higher everything good and noble, while the lower ought to be persecuted and despised, Mandeville declares the fancied higher parts to be the region of vanity and imposture, while the renowned deeds of men, and the greatness of kingdoms, really arise from the passions usually reckoned base and sensual. As his views are scattered through numerous dissertations, it will be best to summarize them ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... be forgotten by those of my time ... the downfall of the most magnificent imposture ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... nature is easily preserved among servants, when the master of the family thinks his interest is concerned in supporting the imposture. The melancholy produced from her confinement, and the vivacity of her resentment under ill usage, were, by the address of Anthony, and the prepossession of his domestics, perverted into the effects of insanity; and the same interpretation was strained upon her most indifferent ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... framework of the book of life falls to pieces, and the revelation of God to man, as we Christians know it, is a delusion and a snare." Another, who had shown excellent qualities as an observing naturalist, declared the Darwinian view "a huge imposture from the beginning." ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... may be never so skilfully planned—when the eyes of deep wisdom rest on it, it becomes like a trivial show that we offer to very small children at nightfall: some magic-lantern performance, whose tawdry imposture a last gleam of sunshine lays bare. Can you conceive Jesus Christ—nay, any wise man you have happened to meet—in the midst of the unnatural gloom that overhung Elsinore? Is not every action of Hamlet induced by a fanatical impulse, which tells him that duty consists in revenge alone? and does ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck |
