"Sham" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... division was to be of 8,000 to 12,000 men against Ferozepore, under Sham Singh Attareewallah, whose estates adjoin the place against which it was to act. Against Hurreekee is to go Rajah Lal Singh; against Loodianah, Sirdar Tej Singh, the new commander-in-chief; and against Roopar, a brother ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... little woman, whose worldly experience was bounded by the suburbs of Barlingford, be otherwise than delighted by the glare and glitter of foreign cities? Georgy was childishly enraptured with everything she saw, from the sham diamonds and rubies of the Palais Royal, to the fantastical ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... the people all of the time." P. T. was an able judge of the public, and it is just this inability to fool all of the people all of the time that accounts for the sudden disappearance from the public eye of some one who only fooled all of the people for a little while. That person was a sham, a bluff, a gamester. He, or she, as the case may be, ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... reassessed the odds. There were five of them, he saw. He should be able to incapacitate two or three and break out. But the fact that they had been expecting him meant that others would very probably be waiting outside. His best course now was to sham ignorance. He relaxed. ...
— Monkey On His Back • Charles V. De Vet
... You are not content with yourself. The desire to be more truly literary persists in you. You feel that there is something wrong in you, but you cannot put your finger on the spot. Further, you feel that you are a bit of a sham. Something within you continually forces you to exhibit for the classics an enthusiasm which you do not sincerely feel. You even try to persuade yourself that you are enjoying a book, when the next ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... presumed to dictate to the sovereign. The citizens of London assembled by tens of thousands to burn the Pope in effigy. The government posted cavalry at Temple Bar, and placed ordnance round Whitehall. In that year our tongue was enriched with two words, Mob and Sham, remarkable memorials of a season of tumult and imposture. [21] Opponents of the court were called Birminghams, Petitioners, and Exclusionists. Those who took the King's side were Antibirminghams, Abhorrers, and Tantivies. These ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... my name, whose day is done * With shifts of time and chances 'neath the sun, Know I am Shaddad's son, who ruled mankind * And o'er all earth upheld dominion! All stubborn peoples abject were to me; * And Sham to Cairo and to Adnanwone;[FN119] I reigned in glory conquering many kings; * And peoples feared my mischief every one. Yea, tribes and armies in my hand I saw; * The world all dreaded me, both friends ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... there was a Triumph on the river at Westminster, with a sham-fight and a great shooting of guns and hurling of balls of wild-fire. The Queen was there, and the ambassadors of France and Venice, with the Duke of Lennox and the Earls of Arundel and Southampton. Master Carew took a wherry to Whitehall, and from the green there they watched ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... de Segur. At Paris curiosity was the prevalent feeling; but the jokes were bitter. "The comptroller-general has raised a new troop of comedians; the first performance will take place on Monday the 20th instant," said a sham play-bill: "they will give us the principal piece False Confidences, followed by Forced Consent and an allegorical ballot, composed by M. de Calonne, entitled The Tub of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the room, and acordingly off he set a warking up and down in it for three quorters of a hour, without not no wittels nor no drink! till "the King of all good fellers" coodn't stand it not no longer, and sent me out to him with sum sangwidges and a bottel of Sham. He woodn't not touch no sangwidges, and ony took one glass of wine, and told me to put by the bottel for his dinner, which I did in course; but somehows, when he arsked for it arterwards, the cork had got out, and the wine had got out, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... my own epitaph. The pleasure remained with me until I reached the end. How admirably I strutted in front of myself! And I and the better self of me that was flourishing about in the book—we pretended not to know each other for what we were. He was myself with a wig and a sham visiting card, and I owed it to myself to respect my disguise. I made him with very red hair—my hair is fairly dark—and shifted his university from London to Cambridge. Clearly it could not be the same person, I argued. But I endowed him with ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... and the secular part of the college discipline I will say nothing, except that it was generally inefficient. The theological and Biblical teaching was a sham. We had come to the college in the first place to learn the Bible. Our whole existence was in future to be based upon that book; our lives were to be passed in preaching it. I will venture to say that there was no book less understood either by ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... he, in the following month, by Elias el-Fuaz. The friendly governor was at length set aside for one more in sympathy with their persecutors. On the two following Sabbaths, the Bible-men were stoned in the streets, and Elias el-Fuaz was seriously wounded; while the governor made only a sham resistance, that emboldened the evil-doers, as he intended it should, till the native preacher was driven from the place, and some of the Protestants fled to Lebanon. Others, wearied with persecutions to which they could see no end, complied so far with the demands of the Patriarch, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... everything changed. What she said of me I don't know but it made a most amusing difference. General Walker galloped a half mile across the desert to give me his own copy of the directions for the sham battle, and I was to have met Cromer at dinner tete-a-tete, and General Kitchener sent apologies by two other generals and all the subalterns called on me in a body. That was the day before I left. I don't know what Lady Gower-Browne said, but it made a change which I am sorry I could ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... lying prone on his bed with a sprained ankle, and taking, as was whispered, in one day as many as seven hundred drops of laudanum? Some said he took these doses to deaden the pain. But others, and among them his brother Cumberland, declared that the sprain was all a sham. I hope it was. The thought of a voluptuary in pain is very terrible. In any case, I cannot but feel angry, for Georges own sake and that of his kingdom, that he found it impossible to keep further aloof from ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... on the branches fifty earthen saucers full of grease, with wicks in them. At a given signal they are to light these instantaneously and retire. At another signal they are to rush upon the open space in front of the garden-house, and there engage in a sham fight. While thus engaged, men who have been taught will set fire to the mildest of our fireworks. When these are about to go out I will myself ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... has not escaped the malice of Porphyry, supposes some error and passion in one or both of the apostles. By Chrysostom, Jerome, and Erasmus, it is represented as a sham quarrel a pious fraud, for the benefit of the Gentiles and the correction of the Jews, (Middleton's Works, vol. ii. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... or sham about my castle. Like a fair and frank republican, I built it all of pure freestone, from the doorsteps up to the observatory. This observatory—I will speak of it while I think of it—holds a telescope exactly like the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... prison, and died there. As for his pupil, the king contemptuously sent him into his kitchen, and condemned him to the servile office of turnspit. Afterwards, as young Simnel showed some intelligence and loyalty, he was made one of the king's falconers. And so ended the story of this sham Plantagenet. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... her to throw some paradox or odd saying at him, and watch his awkward attempts to catch it, and then while he was just on the point of getting at some idea of it to bewilder him with some new enigma. To her he seemed to be what he was not, simply a sham, a heavy piece of hypocrisy. Formalism and ostentatious piety she recognized as part of the business of a Nonconformist minister, in whom they were excusable, as his grave garb would be, but they seemed insufferably out of place when adopted by a layman and ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... minded, cautious, conservative, and responsible statesmen walk off with the portfolios of place and privilege and pay under their honest arms. But these are the unprincipled papists and infidels of a mushroom republic; and, thank God, such spurious patriotism, and such sham and selfish statesmanship, have not yet shown their miserable heads among faithful, fearless, straightforward, and uncalculating Englishmen. At the same time, if ever that continental vice should attack our national character, we have two well-known essays in our ethical ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... seemed a joyous one, enlivened by the sound of laughter, the popping of champagne corks, the joyous talk that emanated alike from the really light-hearted and those whose gaiety is only a mockery and a sham. The sun was sloping westward when Lady Eversleigh arose, absent and despondent, to give the signal for ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... books on hand-made paper absolutely untrimmed, with ragged edges that collect the dirt, are unsightly, and troublesome to turn over. So far has this craze gone, that machine-made paper is often put through an extra process to give it a sham deckle edge. ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... Yes, a Brother who despis'd his Life, When he believ'd yours lost or sham'd: But now the Prince will ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... had mock battles that became famous all around Blue Mountain. And of all the "two-pointers" that lived in that neighborhood, Nimble and his friend Dodger the Deer were known as the best sham-fighters. They could look fiercer and act angrier than any of their young friends. And the way they tore into each other was almost enough to frighten you, ...
— The Tale of Nimble Deer - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... which the New Caledonians observe at a certain period of mourning for the dead is a sham fight. Father Lambert describes one such combat which he witnessed. A number of men were divided into two parties; one party was posted on the beach, the other and much larger party was stationed in the adjoining cemetery, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... Lord has made is good. Go to the priests, then, and leave philosophers in peace! At any rate, do not ask us to accommodate our doctrines to the lessons you have been taught. That is what those rascals of sham philosophers will do for you. Ask them for any doctrine you please, and you will get it. Your University professors are bound to preach optimism; and it is an easy and agreeable ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... from Oman, says that the Simoom is worse in Sham (Yemen?) than in Oman: it blows for three or four hours. Butter eaten largely is the remedy against its ill effects, and this is also smeared on the body: in Oman a wetted cloth is put over the head, body, and ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... ancient constitution—all these topics, we say, would, if we were so inclined, supply us, as they have supplied Mr. Macaulay, with abundant opportunities of grave tautology and commonplace; but we decline to raise sham debates on points where there is no contest. We can have little historic difference, properly so called, with one who has no historical difference on the main facts with anybody else: instead, then, of pretending to treat any great questions, either of constitutional learning or political ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... needed then; what we need now is vigorous and conscious self-possession. To-day it is no easy and attractive business to bring our strong qualities to the surface; it implies an amount of conviction which it is hard to attain, and self-depreciation means a pitiful faint-heartedness. But all sham goods offered by babblers, by selfish interests, prophets of hate and commercial travellers ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... move their political puppets. Emotional susceptibility, once recognized as a legitimate force, thus becomes an instrument of intrigue and constraint. The Assembly, having accepted theatrical exhibitions when these were sincere and earnest, is obliged to tolerate them when they become mere sham and buffoonery. At this vast national banquet, over which it meant to preside, and to which, throwing the doors wide open, it invited all France, its first intoxication was due to wine of a noble quality; but it ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... for a spruce imitation of the nineteenth. We shall no longer see the dwelling-place either of Robert the Devil or of Henry Fitz-Empress; in its stead we shall trace the last masterpiece of the reign of Napoleon the Third. Sham Romanesque is grotesque everywhere, but it is more grotesque than all when we see newly-cut capitals stuck into the windows of a roofless castle, when the grey hue of age is wiped away from a building which has stood at least seven hundred years, and when the venerable ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... those famous journals were printed, and which was laid on the table at breakfast in place of the real newspaper. Mistress Jocasta, who had plenty of wit, could not live without her Spectator to her tea; and this sham Spectator was intended to convey to the young woman that she herself was a flirt, and that Cymon was a gentleman of honor and resolution, seeing all her faults, and determined to break the ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... false, and generally of wood. It is built some three or four feet from the real wall of the room, thus forming a closet. As the whole room is papered and but dimly lighted, a visitor cannot detect the fact that it is a sham. A panel, which slides noiselessly and rapidly, is arranged in the false wall, and the chair with the visitor's clothing upon it is placed just in front of it. While the visitor's attention is engaged in another quarter, the girl's confederate, who is concealed in the closet, slides ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... ladies of quality. Well, if you were to accept of this kind offer, and go with him, you would find 'au troisieme; a handsome, painted and p——d strumpet, in a tarnished silver or gold second-hand robe, playing a sham party at cards for livres, with three or four sharpers well dressed enough, and dignified by the titles of Marquis, Comte, and Chevalier. The lady receives you in the most polite and gracious manner, and with all those 'complimens de routine' which every French woman has ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... and in the thickest part. It was necessary to beat a path, which would in the future form the most direct road to Prospect Heights and Mount Franklin. The trees, belonging to the species already discovered, were magnificent. Herbert found some new ones, among others some which Pencroft called "sham leeks"; for, in spite of their size, they were of the same liliaceous family as the onion, chive, shallot, or asparagus. These trees produce ligneous roots which, when cooked, are excellent; from them, by fermentation, a very agreeable liquor is made. ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... to go, and she doesn't want to have me," he protested to his daughter; "yet she must have me and I must go. The great god Sham again, Daisy." ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... were resentful, often bitter, toward the church and hostile toward all kinds of organized religion. They accused the church of not doing its duty toward them, and they declared that organized religion was a sham and a hypocrisy. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... a sham! Last night it pretended to be on the very edge of the road and hanging over our heads at an awful height. Now it has gone a long way back, is not so very high, and certainly does not hang over. I ought not to have ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... envisage the past, collect it, display it in her lap without fear. "Here's my life's work, so far as it has gone. Now beat me, if you will; I'm not afraid of honest blows." She knew there would be no sham outcries from this high-looking ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... which he has entered. No man worthy to be called a Christian scholar, deprecates the subjection of the Bible to any tests that are possible. It has withstood in the last two centuries quite too much of sham science to be in any way affected by the logic of Prof. Agassiz. Still, the appearance of such a paper in the Christian Examiner—the chief organ of American Unitarianism—is significant of a state of feeling and opinion to be regretted, and it should summon to the conflict the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... that month, Croyden had come to like Hampton immensely. The absence, in its society, of all attempts at show, to make-believe, to impress, to hoodwink, was refreshingly novel to him, who, hitherto, had known it only as a great sham, a huge affectation, with every one striving to outdo everyone else, and all as hollow ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... known, Save that the Universe is wholly evil! And even this poor result is only plain To Genius—which, of course, is quite a rarity. I should have thought this would have given it pain, And moved it to both modesty and charity; But what surprises me (—ZOILUS, to mock sure, Will whip me with sham-epigrams would-be witty,—) Is that Agnostics seem so awfully pure, And Pessimists ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... life is another man's riddle, and if he succeeds in guessing its solution he cries out that it is a sham and was not worth guessing ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... the left of the dock, were the stalls reserved during the sham trial for the counsel for the defence. As yet they were only occupied by the junior advocates, Sir Colman O'Loghlen and John O'Hagan. The benches at the right of the dock, and nearer to the bench, reserved for the Attorney-General and his retainers, ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... oldest and rarest of the books. It was a very thick door, with a projecting frame, and it had been the fancy of some ancestor to cross it with shallow shelves, filled with book-backs only. The harmless trick may be excused by the fact that the titles on the sham backs were either humorously original, or those of books lost beyond hope of recovery. I had a great liking for ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... Spanish lackeys; and the gallant Spaniard led Maquinna's only daughter to the seat at the head of the spread, where the young squaw did the honors with all the hauteur of the Indian race. Maquinna then entertained his visitors with a sham battle of painted warriors, followed by a mask dance. Not to be outdone, the whites struck up fife and drum, and gave a wild display of Spanish fandangoes and Scotch reels. In honor of the day's outing, it was decided to name the large ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... we can do anything," De Pascal said. "We have heard that these torchlight gatherings are part of a plan for a sham attack on a castle, or something of that sort, for the amusement of the king. Doubtless the soldiers are gathered for that purpose. We cannot arouse La Rochefoucauld, at this hour of the night, that ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... the Portrait of a Slav Prince at the Hermitage, where a man in the alembic of Rembrandt's imagination has become a type. Also in The Reconciliation of David and Absalom at the Hermitage, where behind the sham trappings of the figures shine the eternal ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... I crossed in Eli's boat with the pair. The woman—a dark gipsy creature—was tricked out in violet and yellow, with a sham gold watch-chain and great aluminium earrings: and the gamekeeper had driven her down in his spring-cart. As Eli pushed off, I saw a small boat coming down the river across our course. It was These-an'-That, pulling down with vegetables for the fair. I cannot say if the ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... by columns into three compartments, of which the centre should be the largest, with several small contiguous ante-rooms, the entrances to which, if so desired, might be concealed, for uniformity or completeness of appearance, by filling them with sham or dummy book-backs, the titles of which may be made an occasion for witticism or joking allusion to local and ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... letter. It is, as you say, very genuine, truthful, affectionate, maternal—without a taint of sham or exaggeration. Mary will love her child without spoiling it, I think. She does not make an uproar about her happiness either. The longer I live the more I suspect exaggerations. I fancy it is sometimes a sort of fashion for each to vie with the other ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... somewhat indifferent to the adventure, was caught by the redness and whiteness, the brandnewness and compactness of the little houses; she was seduced beyond prudence by the sham porphyry pillar. ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... owned honestly, "but when Fay was first engaged she and Hugo used to sing those songs to each other—it seemed all day long—and this afternoon I couldn't bear it. It seemed such a sham somehow—so false and unreal, if it only ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... entertained by the public that the execution was a sham—that the Government dared not put him to death; and that, to avoid disclosures, a man of straw was hung in his place. In proof of this assertion, it was gravely and strongly alleged that Kidd had been seen alive and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... stability. They are actually associated with Pangbourne for over a century, but even this experiment in lineage broke down, through the extinction of the direct line. In 1776, by a sham continuity consonant to the whole recent story of English land, it passes to yet another family on the condition of their assuming the name of ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... that the Revolution had gained from absolutism, including manhood suffrage. In the first Cortes summoned after the Restoration, thanks to the good sense of Castelar, the Republican party, from being conspirators, became a parliamentary party in opposition. Zorilla alone, looking upon it as a sham, retired to France in disgust. By the new constitution of 1876, the power of making laws remained, as before, vested in the Cortes and the Crown: the Senate consists of three classes, Grandes, Bishops, ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... belief is far more practically consolatory and stimulating than a belief in a God who can do all things by any means and who consequently does not need our help. In our view, we are engaged not in a sham warfare with an evil that is really {86} good, but in a real warfare with a real evil, a struggle in which we have the ultimate power in the Universe on our side, but one in which the victory cannot be won without our help, a real struggle in which ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... the European Powers lay dormant under the spell of the new doctrine of non-intervention, the King of Piedmont vigorously pursued his career of spoliation. Having accepted a sham plebiscitum, he annexed, by a formal decree of 18th March, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchies of Parma and Modena, and that portion of the Papal States known as the Legations, to his ancient kingdom of Sardinia and Piedmont. ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... now, look, You, the rouged stage female With a crook, Chalked Arcadian sham, You that made my soul's sleep's dream ail— Your soul fit to ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... to the precipice in returning, I saw many similar openings, not so deep, and perhaps only sham openings; and the water-line was fretted to honeycomb by the eating waves. Beneath the water-line, and revealed here and there when the waves receded, was a line of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... irreligious pseudo-education of the masses is to be blamed for it, which you have been spreading under the name of true wisdom, and by which you have eradicated religious belief and loyalty from the hearts of my subjects and alienated their affections from my person. This sham education, strutting about like a peacock, has always been odious to me. I hated it already from the bottom of my soul before I came to the throne, and, since my accession, I have done everything I could to suppress it. I mean to proceed on this path, without ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... with whom he was subsequently engaged in controversy did not suffer to sink into oblivion. [229] A still more infamous apostate was Joseph Haines, whose name is now almost forgotten, but who was well known in his own time as an adventurer of versatile parts, sharper, coiner, false witness, sham bail, dancing master, buffoon, poet, comedian. Some of his prologues and epilogues were much admired by his contemporaries; and his merit as an actor was universally acknowledged. This man professed himself a Roman Catholic, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... church, to which Mrs. Arnot had returned every Sabbath morning with increasing pleasure, became as repulsive as it had been sacred and attractive. To her sincere and earnest spirit anything in the nature of a sham was peculiarly offensive; and what, she often asked herself, could be more un-Christlike than this service which had ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... degenerates from the Old World, hovering around the richest and silliest women, their eyes glittering with eager avarice for a chance at their millions. It seemed a joke that any sane American mother could conceive the idea of selling her daughter to these wretches in exchange for the empty sham of a worm-eaten dishonoured title. And yet it had become so common that the drain on the national resources from this cause constitutes a ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... to take his students out once or twice a year to what was called an encampment—the lads marching to some spot where they could pitch their tents and go in for a touch of real army life, with target shooting, sham battles, and the like. In the next volume of the series, called "The Putnam Hall Encampment," I told how the cadets left the Hall and marched to a distant lake. Their camping outfit was sent ahead by ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... older authorities. Still it must be borne in mind that a similarity does not always establish an identity. There are few persons who cannot cite some droll instance of a sharper or greedy fellow, who, expecting an undeserved reward for some sham service, has found himself drolly overreached. So Rabelais dresses up for us anew the fable of the woodman, who, having lost his hatchet, and wearied Jupiter with prayers for its recovery, was tempted by Mercury with a golden ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... it—if it's so transparent—less of a sham, less of a dishonesty," she began impulsively, and then paused again, a little annoyed at the overemphasis of her words. Why was she explaining and excusing herself to this stranger? Did she propose to tell him next that she had borrowed her dress ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... is coarse, brutal, sordid, and grovelling. Even that grace, almost a virtue, which has its name from courts, seems not to exist in them in a genuine form; and instead of it we find only a hollow, glittering sham, which has but an outward semblance to real courtesy, and which itself even is produced only on occasions more or less public and for purposes more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... and the sentimentality plus orthodoxy of similar work in the nineteenth. Benassis no doubt plays Providence in a manner and with a success which it is rarely given to mortal man to achieve; but we do not feel either the approach to sham, or the more than approach to gush, with which similar handling on the part of Dickens too often affects some of us. The sin and the punishment of the Doctor, the thoroughly human figures of Genestas and the rest, save the situation from this and other drawbacks. We are not in the Cockaigne of perfectibility, ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... interestingly, almost thrillingly. A villa had escaped from the shadow of the Crystal Palace, thumped its way down by night, grown suddenly monstrous in a shower of rich rain, and settled itself insolently to stay. Ivy climbed about the opulent red-brick walls, but climbed neatly and with disfiguring effect, sham as on a prison or—the simile made me smile—an orphan asylum. There was no hint of the comely roughness of untidy ivy on a ruin. Clipped, trained, and precise it was, as on a brand-new protestant church. I swear there was ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... wide open to hear the street door knocks. When the housemaid knocked, into bed I got; an hour afterwards home came my mother and into my bed-room. She approved of the hot foot-bath, but insisted on my taking a febrifuge. To keep up the sham, I took it, Mary brought it and stood by, whilst my mother gave it to me; my prick was again standing like a prop at the sight of Mary, and as my mother pulled the bed-clothes over me, she might, if she had had eyes, seen my prick ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... shall not continually tarnish my poetry with your accursed science! I thank my Creator that He made me ignorant enough to admire the beauties of nature. You are continually peeping behind the scenes, and pointing out the grease paints, the lime-lights and the sham effects. Let me enjoy the beauty of the tableau, no matter how it is produced. I would give all of your pat knowledge for that feeling of profound awe which rises in the untutored breast at beholding the magnificent ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... tribe occupying the country from the Nari river and the outskirts of the Bolan as far as the plain of Sham near the Punjab boundary to the east, allowances are paid directly for tribal services and for good behaviour. These people have given considerable trouble on several ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... lullaby and set the girls to work at it. I am afraid that, instead of doing their best, they only sang in mockery. Fiona Campbell made a pretence cradle of her arm, and rocked it for Mary Parsons' benefit; and Gipsy put an amount of sham sentiment into her execution calculated to convulse the others. At the end of the lesson the class trooped away in a ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... to tell you, that my uncle begged the Duke of Newcastle to stifle this report of the sham Pretender lest the King should hear it and recall the Duke, as too great to fight a counterfeit. It is certain that the army adore the Duke, and are gone in the greatest spirits; and on the parade, as they began their march, the Guards vowed that they would neither give nor take quarter. For ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... as we understand it, or West India, that is, America. Stephano probably alludes to the sham wonders from America that were often exhibited by ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... better bestir herself and give more thought and attention to what was going on in that superbly shaped head of his—about her, about her and him. "Oh, I don't just know," replied she, quite honestly. "It seems to me now that there'll be too much fuss and care and—sham. And I intend to interest myself in your work. You've hardly spoken of it since I ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... clear-sighted, pass and repass beside a Paz and never recognize him. Yes, many a Paz is unknown and misconceived, but—horrible to think of!—some are misconceived even though they are loved. The simplest women in society exact a certain amount of conventional sham from the greatest men. A noble love signifies nothing to them if rough and unpolished; it needs the cutting and setting of a jeweller to give it ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... to sham All talk and no cider Condition my room is always in when you are not around Deprived of the soothing consolation of swearing Frankness is a jewel; only the young can afford it Genius defies the laws of perspective Hope deferred maketh the heart sick I never greatly ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Mark Twain • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... must have gone wrong, for he certainly sallied forth, after no very great interval, with an air quite desolate and chapfallen. Oh, these women! these women! Could that girl have been playing off any of her coquettish tricks? Was her encouragement of the poor pedagogue all a mere sham to secure her conquest of his rival? Heaven only knows, not I! Let it suffice to say, Ichabod stole forth with the air of one who had been sacking a henroost, rather than a fair lady's heart. Without ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... great truth in what you say. I could name you a magistrate who, I believe, as a magistrate, could not very aisily be bate, and yet who, without being a downright coward, is for all that no hairo to his valley de sham, as they say." ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... scarce knew whether he dare chance offending Komal or not, for so strong is the power of superstition that even though we know that we have been reverencing a sham, yet still we hesitate to admit the validity of our ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... only between conservation of what is imperfect and the attempt to erect an airy fabric which has no basis upon the solid earth; and Browning on the whole preferred a veritable civitas hominum, however remote from the ideal, to a sham civitas Dei or a real Cloudcuckootown. "It is true, that what is settled by custom, though it be not good, yet at least it is fit; and those things, which have long gone together, are as it were confederate within themselves; ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... after the First Empire style, hung and furnished in yellow satin, whose high white panels were decorated with trophies of antique weapons carved in wood and gilded. A dauber from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts would have branded with the epithet "sham" the armchairs and sofas ornamented with sphinx heads in bronze, as well as the massive green marble clock upon which stood, all in gold, a favorite court personage, clothed in a cap, sword, and fig-leaf, who seemed to be ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... described. I have sometimes tried to speak above my breath, when, being about to leave the car, I have made a virtue of offering my place to the prettiest young woman standing, but I have found it impossible; the genius loci, whatever it was, suppressed me, and I have gasped out my sham politeness as in a courteous nightmare. The silencing influence is quite successfully resisted by none but the tipsy people who occasionally ride out with us, and call up a smile, sad as a gleam of winter sunshine, to our faces ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... faces! They enters, looks round, gives a shy sort of sniff, Seem to contemplate doing a guy, brace their legs, keep their hupper lips stiff; Take their tickets, walk up to the counter, assumin' a sham sort of bounce, And ask, shame-faced like, for their gargle, 'as p'r'aps ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... said nothing because he wished to reserve for himself the satisfaction of pursuing the assassins and sham ghosts of the Chartreuse when the time came. He now arrived with full power to put that design into execution, firmly resolved not to return to the First Consul until it was accomplished. Besides, it was one of those adventures he was always seeking, at ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... amusement of the spectators. This was the Hobby-horse. The hue of this, spirited charger was a pinkish white, and his housings were of crimson cloth hanging to the ground, so as to conceal the rider's real legs, though a pair of sham ones dangled at the side. His bit was of gold, and his bridle red morocco leather, while his rider was very sumptuously arrayed in a purple mantle, bordered with gold, with a rich cap of the same regal hue on his head, encircled with gold, and having ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... must forgive me," I interrupted, "but you are overlooking facts. The fall over the cliff was premeditated, the sprained foot was a sham, the whole affair was clearly planned in order that he might be left alone in my room. Besides, there ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... done he had altogether shirked. While he was writing to Durgin, and pretending that he could justly leave this affair to him, he was simply indulging a bit of sentimental pose, far worse than anything in Mrs. Vostrand's sham appeal for his help. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... distinct from the humor of Goldsmith and Irving, and differs, in degree at least, from the comic almanac exaggeration and coarseness which preceded it, puts its foot on every bud of sentiment, holds few things sacred, and refuses to regard anything in life seriously. But it has no mercy for any sham. ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... the driveling, tiresome travel-letters of that period. They preached a new gospel in travel-literature: the gospel of seeing with an overflowing honesty; a gospel of sincerity in according praises to whatever seemed genuine, and ridicule to the things considered sham. It was the gospel that Mark Twain would continue to preach during his whole career. It became his chief literary message to the world-a world ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... him at the Distance of 10 or 20 Yards. Whenever Mr. Gore made a stand and faced them they stood also, and notwithstanding they were all Arm'd, they never offer'd to Attack him; but after he had parted from them, and they were met by Dr. Monkhouse and one or 2 more, who, upon making a Sham retreat, they throw'd 3 darts after them, after which they began to retire. Dr. Solander, I, and Tupia made all the haste we could after them, but could not, either by words or Actions, prevail upon them to come near us, Mr. Gore saw some up the Bay, who by signs invited him ashore, which ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... cited of George in his boyish days. He had seen his brother fitted out for the wars. He had heard by letter and otherwise of the warlike scenes in which he was mingling. All his amusements took a military turn. He made soldiers of his schoolmates; they had their mimic parades, reviews, and sham fights; a boy named William Bustle was sometimes his competitor, but George was commander-in-chief of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... and touched his helmet; he understood perfectly well. The two passed on together and the sham sailors crossed the road. Very quietly Field proceeded to the back of the house. It was a little dark here, and he guided himself by pressing his fingers to the walls. Presently he stopped, and a low ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... that the kind gentleman would give them sixpence, as they were poor strangers who had taken nothing all day. Mr. Howitt, who had made a special study of the gipsy tribe, perceived in an instant that these were only sham Romanys. He paid no attention to their pleading, but observed that he hoped they would enjoy their frolic, and only wished that he were as rich as they. Subsequently, he discovered that the mock-gipsies, who had been unable to coax a sixpence out of him, were none other than the beautiful ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... when permitted, dines devoutly. There are dishes, as there are wines, to which one should rise and bow. But hereabouts it is only by special dispensation that one gets them. In a hotel such as this there is an outward show of reverence, but it is sheer hypocrisy; of real piety there is none, a sham attempt to observe the sacred rites without knowing how. I admit I don't know either. From me the divine afflatus has been withheld. But elsewhere I have been conscious of the presence. Once or twice ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... to me for favour,—to me, because I am her friend. You cannot win her yourself, and think I may help you! I do not believe in your love for her. There! If there were no other reason, and I could help you, I would not, because I think your heart is a sham heart. She is pretty, and ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... worked myself into a rigorous sort of philosophic desperation which made me as cool as a cucumber. To seem to empty the contents of the wallet into my lap was my next object, and this I succeeded in, without his suspecting that my movement was a sham only. The purse thus made up, I emphatically told him was all I had—this was the truth—and then came the crisis. His trick was to be employed now or never. It was employed, but he had become so nervous, that I caught a sufficient glimpse of his proceedings. ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... place after about two years, visits being exchanged twice a year in the meantime. When the day comes the bridegroom proceeds with a large party of his friends, male and female, to the bride's house. Most of the males have warlike weapons, real or sham, and as they approach the village of the bride's family the young men from thence emerge, also armed, as if to repel the invasion, and a mimic fight ensues, which like a dissolving view blends pleasantly into a dance. In this the bride and bridegroom join, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... conversion." There was no subject on which Livingstone had stronger feelings than on purity of communion. For two whole years he allowed no dispensation of the Lord's Supper, because he did not deem the professing Christians to be living consistently. Here was a crowning proof of his hatred of all sham and false pretense, and his intense love of solid, thorough, ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... o' pop. By th' heart an' it wor pop too. "Dun yo mak this yoursen, mistress?" aw axed. "By gingo, this licks awr traitle drink into fits, yo mun give me th' resait, if yo have it." "This is shampane, sur," shoo said. "Aw dooant care whether it's sham or not, it's as gooid as owt o'th' sooart aw've tasted, aw'll thank you for another drop," "Help yourself, my friend," said th' maister, an aw did, aboon a bit, but ha long aw wor at it or ha monny bottles aw emptied aw niver ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley
... dedicated to me—flat out—and you even crossed out the dedication and tidied me out of the introduction. Listen to me, Pembroke. You've done people all your life—I think without knowing it, but that won't comfort us. A wretched devil at your school once wrote to me, and he'd been done. Sham food, sham religion, sham straight talks—and when he broke down, you said it was the world in miniature." He snatched at him roughly. "But I'll show you the world." He twisted him round like a baby, and through the open door they saw only the quiet valley, but in it a rivulet ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... answer again! And Stiva says he cannot go to Alexey Alexandrovitch. And I can't write again. I can do nothing, can begin nothing, can alter nothing; I hold myself in, I wait, inventing amusements for myself—the English family, writing, reading—but it's all nothing but a sham, it's all the same as morphine. He ought to feel for me," she said, feeling tears of self-pity coming ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... lives in the midst of environments where insincerity would not have been so painful; but in a home and a community where sham and hypocrisy were almost unknown these perpetual deceptions became more and more intolerable with every passing hour. Nothing could be more certain than that in a short time, like some foreign substance in a healthy body, his nature would force him out of this ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... horseback, and practised on a level meadow at some little distance from the house; and I soon became as expert as any of them. The ends of our lances were not only headless, but covered with a soft pad, so that we could charge at each other without much risk of serious injury; and one day, in a sham fight, I unhorsed all my opponents in succession. As I rode up to where the ladies—who had come out to witness our sports—were standing, they greeted me with loud applause, and Donna Isabella especially showed her satisfaction by the ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... is just by means of that that they deceive us. It creates an intimacy between us and an atmosphere of happy give-and-take of jests, which we think can exist only on one presupposition—and really it is all a sham. I cannot understand how any one can so treat the one he ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... to a military academy to make his way without the use of money. Life at an up-to-date military academy is described, with target shooting, broadsword exercise, trick riding, sham battles, etc. Dick proves himself a hero in the ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... moves on, coming closer and closer. With the moon behind his back, his face is in shadow, and cannot be seen by Clancy. But it is not needed for his identification. The dress and figure are sufficient. Cut sharply against the sky is the figure of a plumed savage; a sham one Clancy knows, with a thrill of fresh despair, recognising ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... wholly Charles and Phillis, his sister, in consequence of their elder brother's conduct. Sir Timothy, induced by old Trusty, begins a warm courtship of Phillis, and arranges with a parasite named Sham to deceive her by a mock marriage. Sham, however, procures a real parson, and Sir Timothy is for the moment afraid he has got a wife without a dowry or portion. Lord Plotwell eventually promises to provide for her, and at Diana's request, now she recognizes her mistake in trying to hold ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... and most boys have; and I couldn't be friends with them because you had forbidden that, so I took up the feud in a sort of way on my own account, and determined to make raids upon them, and have fights (sham-fights) and do as the Vikings did—in a kind of play, of course. They are the enemy; and we could make-believe to slaughter and capture ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby |
