"Sanctimonious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Pharisaical, canting, dissembling, sanctimonious, insincere. Antonyms: sincere, unfeigned, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... free and sonorous a laugh, that it rang for quite a time through the vast apartment. D'Aigrigny and Baron Tripeaud started in indignation. The princess looked angrily at her niece. The doctor raised his eyes to heaven, and clasped his hands over his waistcoat with a sanctimonious sigh. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... than to contemn, the gods. That the common man, for whose benefit the grandees thus surrendered their judgment, now despised this faith and sought his remedy elsewhere, was a matter of course and will be seen in the sequel. Thus then the Roman "high church" was ready, a sanctimonious body of priests and Levites, and an unbelieving people. The more openly the religion of the land was declared a political institution, the more decidedly the political parties regarded the field of the state-church as an arena for attack and defence; which ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... many literary Englishwomen who had undoubted humor. Hannah More did get unendurably poky, narrow, and solemn in her last days, and not a little sanctimonious; and we naturally think of her as an aged spinster with black mitts, corkscrew curls, and a mob cap, always writing or presenting a tedious tract, forgetting her brilliant youth, when she was quite good enough, and lively, too. She was a perennial favorite in London, meeting all the notables; ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... cottage, leaving the luckless Mrs. Binks to repent her presumption at leisure, and to feel that she had hazarded her hopes of Christmas bounties, and enhanced the chances of her detested rival of three doors off, Mrs. Trotter, a sanctimonious widow, with three superhuman children, who never had so much as a spot on their pinafores, and were far in advance of the young Binkses in Kings and Chronicles; indeed the youngest Trotter had been familiar with all the works of ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... finally, turning a summerset or two, and giving a prolonged closing note, as odd and unearthly as that of a steam-whistle, she came suddenly down on the carpet, and stood with her hands folded, and a most sanctimonious expression of meekness and solemnity over her face, only broken by the cunning glances which she shot askance from ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... essayed a cigarette. The result had been distinctly unsatisfactory, and after some two or three attempts, I had abandoned, for the time being, all further endeavour; excusing my faint-heartedness by telling myself with sanctimonious air that smoking was bad for growing boys; attempting to delude myself by assuming, in presence of contemporaries of stronger stomach, fine pose of disapproval; yet in my heart knowing myself a young hypocrite, disguising physical cowardice in the robes of moral courage: a self-deception ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... State is inseparable from the existence of slavery. The antique State and antique slavery—manifest classical antagonisms—were not more intimately connected than is the modern State with the modern huckstering world—sanctimonious Christian antagonisms. If the modern State wishes to abolish the impotence of its administration, it would have to abolish the present-day mode of living. If it wishes to abolish this mode of living, it would have to abolish itself, for it exists only in opposition to the same. No living person, ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... very thought of such unmentionable things: but there are circles in society in which such sanctimonious shuddering is a mighty thin veil of hypocrisy. Infinitely more common, and little, if any, less unnatural and abominable are the crimes that are killing off the old stock that once possessed the land and making the country dependent for increase of population ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... men and women by the use of the rack, twistings, blows, indignities, an exact description of which could not be printed. These details were left to priests, sanctimonious men who did their work with pious zeal and therefore were not accountable. Church and State were wedded. To doubt Scripture was to be in league against the State. Heresy and treason were one. To laugh at a priest might be death. To ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... hoped that if sanctimonious John wrote any love-letters to Amonata they had less cant in them than this. But it was pleasing to Sir Thomas Dale, who was a man to appreciate the high motives of Mr. Rolfe. In a letter which he despatched from Jamestown, June 18, 1614, to a reverend friend ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... passed along down street everything was as quiet as a funeral; and although every man may have wanted to laugh, they all looked sober and sanctimonious, and as we imagined, took extra precautions to look sorrowful and sympathetic, as we rode along, looking savagely at them, apparently ready to spring from the wagon and pounce upon them at ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... her virgin knot before All sanctimonious ceremonies may With full and holy rite be minister'd, No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall To make this contract grow; but barren hate, Sour-ey'd disdain, and discord, shall bestrew The union of your bed with weeds ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... going over to the convento to visit the sanctimonious rascal there, the little curate? Yes! Well, if he offers you chocolate which I doubt—but if he offers it remember this: if he calls to the servant and says, 'Juan, make a cup of chocolate, eh!' then stay without fear; ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... strides, and stopped again. Suddenly, changing my attitude, I fold my hands, hold my head to one side, and ask, with an unctuous, sanctimonious tone of voice: "Hast thou appealed also to him, my child?" It did ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... enemy assembled for prayer, and the vulgarity and wickedness of such paragraphs would certainly not commend itself to the best sentiment of the British army. Again and again the Boers are described in the Press as "canting hypocrites" or their thanksgivings to God as "sanctimonious". What right have we as Christians to bring such wholesale charges against our Christian enemies? Several thousand burghers advanced from Jacobsdal to reinforce Cronje, and as it marched the entire force sang the Old Hundredth in unison. There is something ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... are passed around in a sensational romance, and the disappearance of two police officers lends the charms of mystery to the embellished rumor. Cassier—the hero of the tale, the unsuspected guilty one—went around and told the news with all the sanctimonious whining and eye-uplifting of a ranting preacher. In the meantime he matured his plans, and before suspicion could point her finger at him he fled to another retreat to elude for a while the justice of man to meet his awful doom from the ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... minister, to bless the tablecloth after dinner, as he had begged Dr. Bulders to utter a benediction on the first course, Hunch and Bulders were both angry. He subscribed to the races—what heathenism! to the missionaries—what sanctimonious humbug! And the worst was that Barnes being young at that time, and not able to keep his tongue in order, could not help saying not to but of such and such a man, that he was an infernal ass, or a confounded old idiot, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not?—practically scared into the first solidly suitable marriage offered—seizing the unfortunate Howard with both hands for fear he'd get away and leave me alone with only a queer family record for company! Very well! Now then, I want to ask you why everybody, in my case, didn't go about with sanctimonious faces and dolorous mien repeating: 'Her grand-mother eloped! Her mother ran away. Poor child, she's ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... public for francs, like the French, for the law forbids it, but I don't believe that any one, except we bankers and brokers, realizes how widely exists the habit of playing the stock-market. Thousands of people, big and little, sanctimonious and highly respectable, put up their margins and reap their profits or their losses. Oh no, the country doesn't approve of it, especially those who lose. I assure you that the letters which pass through the post-office ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... up at Grandma, then endeavored to put on as a sort of apology for what he felt was inevitably coming, a sanctimonious expression which was most unnatural to him, and which soon faded away as the sweet unconsciousness of slumber overspread his features. His head fell back helplessly, his mouth opened wide. He snored, ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... when there was little custom in the store, Tom entered one of the rear rooms, where were Zeigler and two other clerks. The fellow's heart rankled at the snubbing he had received, and he was plotting some way of "getting even" with the sanctimonious fellow, who would never swear or ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... Sir Chetwynd, gloating on the exquisite beauty of the Princess Ziska's form as she still danced on in her snowy white attire, her lovely face alight with mirth at the surprise she had made for her guests, tried his best to look sanctimonious and signally failed in ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... much as ever, the ride had been gay, and the one regret on Betty's mind as they dismounted was that she had not more time before her to try what she could do. Pitt, as yet at least, had not grown a bit precise or sanctimonious; he had not talked nonsense, indeed, but then he never had paid her the very poor compliment of doing that. All the more, she as well as the others was startled by what came out ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... favorite hot weather resort for the well-to-do Siamese. Here, in a bungalow that had been placed at their disposal by the King, the missionary and his charges proposed to spend a glorious fortnight away from the city's heat. Now do not draw a mental picture of a sanctimonious person with a Prince Albert coat, a white bow tie and a prominent Adam's apple. He was not that sort of a missionary at all. On the contrary, he was a very human, high-spirited, likeable fellow of the type that at home would be a Scout Master or in France would have made good ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... legalized, we are not to thank Protestantism for that. Wherever it has sway in the family, in the town council, or the assembly, there the cloven foot of intolerance and persecution is seen from under the sanctimonious gown it puts on. Indeed, although the compulsion of the conscience is not enforced by State laws, it is attempted, as far as practicable, where its effects are more galling, and its existence more intolerable,—namely, in ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... tongue, Richard; she could help it, she knew it all the time, and she's a hateful, sanctimonious little stuck-up viper, and so I tell her ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... his early friends as the seaman uses the log, to mark his progress. Every now and then we throw an old schoolmate over the stern with a string of thought tied to him, and look—I am afraid with a kind of luxurious and sanctimonious compassion—to see the rate at which the string reels off, while he lies there bobbing up and down, poor fellow! and we are dashing along with the white foam and bright sparkle at our bows;—the ruffled bosom of prosperity and progress, with ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... 'Yesterday you said you had no money.' 'I had that,' he answered, 'but I didn't want to spend it. You see it was a gift from my dyin' mother, and I wanted to keep it for her sake.' With that he rolled up his eyes and looked sanctimonious. Then I asked him how it happened that he was ready to spend ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger
... and then he bent above his glass of beer and blew aside the froth. "She is sure to arrive," he went on, after a minute. "The only thing I question is whether you may not have to hustle a good deal, to keep up with her. You're a born student, Brenton, and a sanctimonious grind. Nevertheless, when it comes to the worldly question of arriving, you're a confoundedly lazy lubber, and I suspect you always ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... far to live and die Under the brave black flag I fly, Than play a sanctimonious part With a pirate head and a pirate heart. Away to the cheating world go you, Where pirates all are well-to-do; But I'll be true to the song I sing, And live and die a Pirate King. For I am a Pirate ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... chapel was a range of native houses; rented from a chief, and handsomely furnished. Here lived the priests; and very comfortably, too. They looked sanctimonious enough abroad; but that went for nothing; since, at home, in their retreat, they were a club of Friar Tucks; holding priestly wassail over many a good cup of red brandy, and rising late in ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... lovely compatriots were the same three hundred years ago. Will Dona California be pleased to observe that whale spouting in the bay? There is the tree beneath which Junipero Serra said his first mass in this part of the country. What a sanctimonious old fraud he must have been, if he looked anything like his pictures! Did you ever see bay bluer than that? or sand whiter? or a more perfect semicircle of hills than this? or a more straggling town? There is the Custom-house on the rocks. ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... boys. If any proof of it is needed, it is only too true that if a boy applies any of the three adjectives holy, saintly, or pious to a person, it is not intended to be a compliment. The words in their mouths imply sanctimonious pretension, and a certain Pharisaical and even hypocritical scrupulousness. It is a great mistake to overlook this fact; I do not mean that a preacher should not attempt to praise these virtues, but if he does, he ought to be able to translate his thoughts into language ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... shrieked Sister Roberga, turning fiercely on me. "You want a chance to show your power, of course. You poor, white-faced, sanctimonious creature, only just promoted, and that because every body voted for you, thinking you would be easily managed— just like a bit of putty in any body's fingers! And making such a fuss, as if you were so humble and holy, professing not to ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... must come for all who have sinned, and it must dawn for you. Beware lest it come so late that the prayers of yonder sanctimonious ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... company, you may remember that Jack, who had turned his face northward, got into high favour with the landlord of the North Farm Estate, who, being mightily edified with his discourses and sanctimonious demeanour, and not aware of his having been mad before, or being, perchance, just as mad himself—took him in, made much of him, gave him a cottage upon his manor to live in, and built him a tabernacle in which he might hold forth when the spirit moved him. In process of time, however, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... sanctimonious tone, which by many is deemed a symbol of goodness. I would not say it is a symbol of hypocrisy, as many very pious men have it. One man acquires a tone, and those who study with him learn to associate it with his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... behold; Long had the school-boy, as he passed it by, And maiden viewed it with presaging eye; Oft had the wealthy deacon with a frown Glared on the pile he longed to batter down, And reckoned oft, with sanctimonious air, What rents 'twould fetch if purified with prayer;[6] While through the green-room whispered rumors went, That heaven and earth were ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... accomplished the ruin of his victim, and most cruelly and sacrilegiously abused the confidence of his friend, the young priest opened the door of the room and said, with a sanctimonious air, "You may enter to pray with me, while I give the last sacrament to our dear ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... a great many priests about Julfa, and as I visited the place on a Sunday the people looked so very demure and sanctimonious—I am speaking of the Armenians—on their way out of church; taciturn and with head low or talking in a whisper, all toddling alongside the wall—as people from church generally do,—that I must confess I was glad when I left ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... is said she is altogether advised by Sir Kenelm Digby, who indeed hath written over letters to some of his noble friends of the privy council, wherein he hath set down what a convert this lady is become, so superlatively virtuous and sanctimonious, as the like hath never been seen in men or women; and therefore he does most humbly desire their lordships to farther this lady's peace, and that she may return into England, for otherwise she does resolve to put herself into some monastery. I hear his Majesty does utterly dislike that the ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... upon the stage. With the first Puritan began the quarrel with the players. As Isaac Disraeli has observed, "we must go back to the reign of Elizabeth to comprehend an event which occurred in that of Charles I." A sanctimonious sect urged extravagant reforms—at first, perhaps, in all simplicity—founding their opinions upon cramped and literal interpretations of divine precepts, and forming views of human nature "more practicable in a desert than ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... kind of brown morocco binding. I must tell you one reason why I fixed upon the pale-blue. You know that aristocratic-looking young man, in white cravat and black pantaloons and waistcoat, whom we saw at Saratoga a year ago, and who always had such a beautiful sanctimonious look, and such small white hands; well, he is a minister, as we supposed, "an unworthy candidate, and unprofitable husbandman," as he calls himself in that delicious voice of his. He has been quite taken up among us. He has been asked a good ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... flesh—yes, no doubt," returned the Deacon, scornfully, "and, perhaps, even in a worldly sense, for those who value the vanities of life; but he is lost to us, for all time, and lost to eternal life forever. Not," he continued in sanctimonious vindictiveness, "but that I often had my doubts of Brother Masterton's steadfastness. He was too much given to imagery ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... ourselves and our house presentable in the eyes of my chief parishioner? A man would think that thirteen years in Virginia would teach any fool the necessity of standing well with a powerful gentleman such as this. I'm no coward. Damn sanctimonious parsons and my Lord Bishop's Scotch hireling! If they yelp much longer at my heels, I'll scandalize them in good earnest! It's thin ice, though,—it's thin ice; but I like this house and glebe, and I'm going to live and die in them,—and die drunk, if I choose, Mr. Commissary to the ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... of which the donor is requested to inscribe his name and the amount of his gift, in order that it may be acknowledged in due form by the proper officers of the institution. Small favors are thankfully received, and they depart, assuring you in the most humble and sanctimonious manner that "the Lord loveth a cheerful giver." If you cannot give to-day, they are willing to call to-morrow—next week—any time that may suit your convenience. You cannot insult them by a sharp refusal, or in any way, for like Uriah ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... fool, my boy. Anybody can see that—after they get to know yo' all. That's what comes of bein' one of them smooth New Yorkers. They 'pear mighty sanctimonious on th' outside, but on th' inside they're ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... parting company with the sanctimonious seyud, I encounter a prosperous-looking party of dervishes. Some of them are mounted on excellent donkeys, and for dervishes they look exceptionally flourishing and well to do. As I ride slowly past, they accost me with their customary "huk yah huk," and promise to ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... expressions, unmeaning remarks, jestings and jokings, regardless of the assumed sanctity in the hour of public worship, it is a life after the manner of the world, and betrays a heart devoid of God's sober, solemn, holy presence, and the sanctimonious appearance on sacred occasions is but an effort of the human will, and not the deep piety and spontaneous reverence of the heart. Jesus said that for every idle word that men shall speak they shall give an account thereof in the day of judgment: ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... No matter how sanctimonious, religious or correct a person may act when his position or the occasion demands it, if he has a round, "moon" face he is not really straight-laced at heart. Any one who knows him well enough to know his real nature will ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... at the foot of the cupboard, grows taller and wider and splits its paper wrapper, whence issues a mawkish and hypocritical being, dressed in a long coat half blue and half white, who goes up to MYTYL with a sanctimonious smile.) ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... half a dozen voices; "you needn't roll your sanctimonious eyes; that game don't take in this country. Come, straddle the rail, and REMEMBER ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... nests of filth and pestilence, drunkenness and degradation. Careless, superstitious, imbecile law!—leaving the victims to die unhelped, and then, when the fever and the tyranny has done its work, in thy sanctimonious prudishness, drugging thy respectable conscience by a "searching inquiry" as to how it all happened—lest, forsooth, there should have been "foul play!" Is the knife or the bludgeon, then, the only foul play, and not the cesspool and the curse of Rabshakeh? Go through ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... the duenna, with a most sanctimonious look, "I am innocent—innocent, as the child unborn: yet if it so pleaseth Heaven, that I should be immured in a cloister, the Lord's will be done; a convent has no terrors for me; alas! a poor humble sinner can desire no better abode; but think, Senor, ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... that preaching, sanctimonious Katherine Minturn has influenced you against me," hotly retorted ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... them, although this was frequently done. The first-foot was an important episode. To visit empty-handed on this day was tantamount to wishing a curse on the family. A plane-soled person was an unlucky first-foot; a pious sanctimonious person was not good, and a hearty ranting merry fellow was considered the best sort of first-foot. It was necessary for luck that what was poured out of the first-foot's gift, be it whiskey or other drink, should be drunk to the dregs by each recipient, and it was requisite ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... are criticizing God when you criticize the business conditions he has put into the world. I did not know that you were a socialist, but what you have just said explains your course," the old man reproved sadly and sanctimonious. ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... reverence, As is ever due and fitting, To the God who there descendeth. Now behold the people gathered; They are all as one together, But their thoughts are widely parted. Some are earnest, true, and godly, Others wicked and regardless; Some are semi-sanctimonious, (Most obnoxious of deceivers.) Let us see their inward purpose. One doth offer true oblation— Praise and worship, as he seemeth; While the thoughts of one near by him Are among the world's pleasures; And another has come hither To give homage, style, and fashion; And another thinks of feasting ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... Mr. Weld lodged, on principle, in a colored family in New York, even submitting to the inconvenience of having no heat in his room in winter, and bearing with singular charity and patience what Sarah calls the sanctimonious pride and Pharisaical aristocracy of his hosts. He, also, and the sisters when they were in the city, attended a colored church, which, however, became to Sarah, at least, a place of such "spiritual famine" that she gave ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... assumes religion's name, And wears the sanctimonious garb of faith Only to colour fraud, and license murder, ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More
... occurs, on the pretext of going into the country, indulges in the gaieties and vices of London fashionable life. He is visited by an old friend, Captain Murphy Maguire, who persuades him to renounce boldly the sanctimonious customs of the "Serious Family," and enjoy with unshackled freedom the pleasures of the world. To this he consents; but he has not courage to alter the family customs. Captain Maguire aids his plans by convincing Mrs. C. Torrens that unless she provides in ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... this?" he cried, as they rose from the table and he first caught sight of Ben Greenway. "Is this your chaplain? He looks as sanctimonious as an empty rum cask. And that baby boy there, what do you keep him for? Are they for sale? I would like to buy the boy and let him keep my accounts. I warrant he has enough arithmetic in his head to divide the prize-moneys among ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... and Miss Evelina are still on the "look out." The wife of the clergyman at Wilston, having died about a year since, Miss Calista, ever ready to take advantage of any opening, began immediately to attend church very regularly, and with a vary sanctimonious and attentive air. It remains to be seen ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... you back much, any how, as kicking's generally best to be considered on. You see old Bradly is one of those sanctimonious, long-faced hypocrites who put on a religious suit every Sabbath day morning, and with a good deal of screwing, manage to keep it on till after sermon in the afternoon; and as I was a Universalist, ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... effective champion. Never has hypocrisy, the besetting vice of this age, been so mercilessly exposed as in the works of Dickens. It is not only in such a character as Pecksniff that its ugliness is revealed, but wherever pretence hides guilt behind a sanctimonious countenance, the mask is surely torn off. Dickens hated hypocrisy as Thackeray hated snobbism. And both, in their zeal, occasionally saw the hypocrite or the snob where he did not exist. Dealing, ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... people fooled, Curry has," replied Pitkin with unnecessary profanity, "but I've had his number right along. He's a crook, but he gets away with it on account of that long-tailed coat—the sanctimonious old scoundrel! Don't you have anything to do with ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... a better heart, and was a truer Christian than many of those sanctimonious critics, who sought to restrain the joy and gladness with which God filled his soul. It was this good Samaritan who came upon the suffering stranger whom the three Puritans had condemned in their own minds as ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... "Whar's that sanctimonious cuss of a steward!" inquired he. "I've shouted clean through the hull ship, and I'm durned ef I ken find him to git some grub; for I feels kinder peckish arter that there muss. I guess the critter has ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... that the day Of early bliss would pass away; No retrospect can be more fair That that I see behind me there, Friend William Graham, I wish thee well, But this to thee I need not tell. Who is he with the cassock on, Who bursts my second sight upon, A merry twinkle in his eye, Not sanctimonious, nor yet sly, His country, one can scarcely miss Such pure Hibernian brogue is his? Tis surely Father Heron's gait, Bytown's first priest in '28. Close in canonical degree, John Cannon's stately form I see, In bigotry no stern red-tapist, Favorite ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... never heard. One would have thought they would have gone raving mad. The sanctimonious partner was the worst of the lot. He threatened me with the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen, and went on till I thought he would have ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... river. A great many negroes from the neighboring plantations came to see us, among them an elderly colored man, whose sanctimonious bearing indicated that he was a minister of the Gospel. The boys insisted that he should preach to them, and, after some hesitation, the old man mounted a stump, lined a hymn from memory, sang it, and then commenced his discourse. He had not proceeded very far when he uttered this sentence: ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... Medes and Persians, not to be altered, innovated, or even discussed; and the punctilios exacted by Owen in their business transactions, for he was a great lover of form, more especially when he could dictate it ex cathedra, seemed scarce less sanctimonious in their eyes. This tone of deep and respectful observance went all currently down with Owen; but my father looked a little closer into men's bosoms, and whether suspicious of this excess of deference, or, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them, like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well: I belonged to it, and ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... These are all that ought to be necessary to any candidate. What business have lawyers with elections? And, ought the people to want any committee, to tell them their duty? The Morning Chronicle takes a more sanctimonious tone. It says on the 2d of July, (in the form of a letter from Bristol): "It is much to be regretted, that the regularity and peaceable demeanour with which our elections were formerly conducted, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... the stick, though by the Holy Rood thou wilt be disappointed; but I would fain have a little argument with thee, to know whereof thou complainest. Well indeed were it with me, didst thou but place me on an equality with Ercolano's wife, who is an old sanctimonious hypocrite, and has of him all that she wants, and is cherished by him as a wife should be: but that is not my case. For, granted that thou givest me garments and shoes to my mind, thou knowest how otherwise ill bested I am, and how ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... stingy thing, Gwen Gascoyne! I don't know why you should have taken it into your head all of a sudden to be so sanctimonious. You've not been so remarkably square before that you need turn saint now. You promised you'd stand by me, and this is how you keep your word, is it? I'll know better another time than to help you. You may get out ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... these satanic-looking people, fed them with a hundred loaves, and induced them, for the good of their health, to make themselves miserably less. We next hear of them in Italy, in 1422. After leaving Asiatic Turkey, and in their wanderings through Russia and Germany, the Asiatic, sanctimonious, religious halo, borrowed from their idolatrous form and notions of the worship of God in the East, had suffered much from exposure to the civilising and Christianising influences of the West; and the result was ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... Little John restored the baskets to their owners, and, assuming a sanctimonious bearing, joined two brothers of Fountains Abbey, whom he implored to give him a little money. Because they turned a deaf ear to his request, Little John went with them, acting so strangely that he annoyed them sorely. Seeing this, ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... and the influence of interested and crafty individuals among them who feel themselves something in the present order of things and fear to become nothing in any other. These persons inculcate a sanctimonious reverence for the customs of their ancestors; that whatsoever they did must be done through all time; that reason is a false guide, and to advance under its counsel in their physical, moral, or political condition is perilous innovation; that their duty is to remain as their ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... every Sabbath stands in his pulpit to declaim against wickedness and fleshy lusts. Mark his libidinous eye, as he follows that painted strumpet to her filthy den. There's hypocrisy. Then turn your eyes toward a sister city, and mark that grey-headed, sanctimonious editor, who every week solemnly prates of honesty, sobriety, and their kindred virtues. 'What an excellent man he is,' exclaim the whole tribe of fat, tea-drinking old women in mob-caps, raising their pious eyes and snuffy ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... saw confest, Where all was good, Religion best; And at her unpolluted Heart He aim'd his most envenom'd Dart. He knew the Interest of Hell Cou'd never on the Earth go well, While pure Religion did maintain O'er Man a sanctimonious reign. With her he wag'd malicious War, He might, if not destroy her, mar Her Face; might with false Lights misguide, And make her Combat on his side. Highly did his Ambition burn Heav'n's Arms against itself to turn. Nor would his Malice triumph less, ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... removing the reproach attached to his intrigue with Eleanora degli Albizzi, and, consequently, when in December 1566, a little girl was born to him, the whole of Florence was conventionally shocked. Duchess Giovanna, Don Francesco's sanctimonious Austrian wife, offered a vigorous protest, and declined to have anything to do with the unfortunate young mother and her dissolute old lover. Her feeling ran so strongly, both with respect to the liaison of Cosimo and ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... foolish sensibility be turned to exasperation; let me curse those proud Republicans, in whose heart there is no flesh, whose flag bears impiously against Heaven the stripes and the scars of the slaves! These I cursed, and those who in the hypocrisy of their souls, and their sanctimonious pretensions to Church freedom, received the gold tainted with the blood of the slave, to build up their Free Kirk! But why curse? What impotence! Why not leave the avenging bolt of wrath to that God, who "hath made of one blood all the nations of men, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... sanction the purchase, that if these so purchased slaves were set free, they might apostatize!" Now, who were the judges in such a court? Oh! the villany of the whole conclave!—yet was each individual, perhaps, of demure and sanctimonious manners, to whom the moral eye of a people looked—villains all in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... sought to ensnare him.[1093] Through the parable Jesus answered His own question as to whether the baptism of John was of God or of man. The Lord's affirmation, "Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you," was condemnatory of the corrupt though sanctimonious polity of the hierarchy throughout. It was not wholly without intimation of possible reformation, however. He did not say that the repentant sinners should enter, and the priestly hypocrites stand ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... might become in time like two relatives from a Shaker establishment in Ohio, who visited the Boltons about this time, a father and son, clad exactly alike, and alike in manners. The son; however, who was not of age, was more unworldly and sanctimonious than his father; he always addressed his parent as "Brother Plum," and bore himself, altogether in such a superior manner that Ruth longed to put bent pins in his chair. Both father and son wore the long, single breasted collarless coats of their society, without buttons, before or behind, ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... it all over?" said mademoiselle from her bed, as the concierge entered her room about eleven o'clock, on his return from the cemetery, with the black coat and the sanctimonious ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... born again, the mad fear of her raged with such panic in certain minds that, when Savonarola lit his great bonfire so subtle a servant of beauty as Botticelli, fallen into a sort of religious dotage, cast his own paintings into the flames—to the lugubrious rejoicings of the sanctimonious Piagnoni—as Savonarola's followers were called; predecessors of those still gloomier zealots who, two centuries later, were to turn England into a sort of whitewashed prison, with crop-headed psalm-singing religious maniacs for gaolers. When ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... indignation. By these means it frequently happens that the deference of the prince to the wishes of the priests has the effect of alienating the hearts of his most faithful subjects, and brings him that execration which ought in justice to be heaped exclusively upon his sanctimonious instigators. ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... failings with the mask of devotion, men were encouraged to obtrude with Cynic impudence all their most scandalous vices on the public eye. Because he had punished illicit love with barbarous severity, virgin purity and conjugal fidelity were made a jest. To that sanctimonious jargon which was his Shibboleth, was opposed another jargon not less absurd and much more odious. As he never opened his mouth except in scriptural phrase, the new breed of wits and fine gentlemen never opened their mouths ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Girondists—were sent by one decree to the guillotine. Danton, vainly pleading for mercy, saw that the Committee of Safety machine was being made an instrument of slaughter. "France must be purged of all vice!" was Robespierre's sanctimonious reply to his passionate protest. Not long after, the rival masters of France faced one another in the hall of the Revolutionary ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... in tones of warning, She hailed me through my brief career; And kiss and buffet, night and morning, Told me my grandmamma was near; Whether she praised me high and clear Through her unrivalled circulation, Or, sanctimonious insincere, She damned me with a misquotation - A chequered but a sweet relation, Say, was it not, my ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to avoid the legal obstructions placed in the way of play-acting. "Histrionic academies" tried to sneak in on the stage; and in 1762 a clever manager gave an entertainment whose playbill I present as the most amusing example of specious and sanctimonious truckling extant. ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... hooked nose, were relieved by a moustache, and a beard square and slightly forked in the midst. This moustache hid a mouth which was the characteristic feature of the face. No physiognomist would have placed the slightest confidence in the owner of that mouth. It was at once sanctimonious and unstable. The manners of its possessor might be suave or severe; his reputation might be excellent or execrable; but with that mouth, a Pharisee and a hypocrite at heart he must be. This gentleman found it convenient not to be too invariably known by a single ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... own contradictions to discourage us from trying to find consistency in others; but we try all the same. We have a fine sense of proportion and harmony when we analyze our fellow-beings, but none whatever when we turn the faculty introspectively. The sanctimonious undertone in which this young man spoke struck me as being false, for there was nothing in him that I could discover which linked him to the ascetic ideal of life. But then the question arose, Why was he there? He was strong ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... Reverend Darius Borwell, in whose congregation sat sanctimonious malefactors of vast wealth, whose pockets bulged with disease-laden profits from the sales of women's bodies and souls. Reverend Borwell came to offer the sufferer the dubious consolations of religion—and inquire if his ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Christian, must be something else—that Christianity received into nature and life is only one of the elements of manhood—and that a man may become starved and mean and bigoted and essentially insane by feeding exclusively upon religion. What means the vision of these sapless, sad, and sanctimonious Christians—these poor, thin, stingy lives—but that all ideas save the religious one have been shut out from them? Is it not notorious that a minister who has fed exclusively upon religion is a man without ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... daughter sit beside him and took her hand affectionately in his, assuming at the same time the expression of sanctimonious superiority he always wore when he mentioned the cares of his household or was engaged in regulating any matter of importance in his family. Flavia used to imitate the look admirably, to the delight of her brothers and sisters. He smiled meaningly, pressed the girl's fingers, ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... begin on the Old Home stuff," he replied, testily. "I haven't changed any more than you have. Why, ma used to think you'd play dead or jump through whenever she snapped her finger, but—you're getting tough-bitted. You're getting sanctimonious in your old age. Where you got it from I don't know—not from ma, surely, nor from dad; he's a ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... holy zeal for my spiritual and temporal welfare, resolved to bestow upon me a wholesome and severe flogging, being aided and abetted in the formation of that laudable resolution by my religious aunt and my sanctimonious brother, the latter of whom had turned informer against me. Sweet relatives? how I love to think of them—and never do I fail to remember them in my prayers. Well, I was lugged up into the garret, which was intended to be the scene of my punishment. If I recollect rightly, I was then about twelve ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... bygone dames who haunt the grand Chateau, the only one I detest is probably the most irreproachable of all—Madame de Maintenon. There is something so repulsively sanctimonious in her aspect, something so crafty in the method wherewith, under the cloak of religion, she wormed her way into high places, ousting—always in the name of propriety—those who had helped her. Her stepping-stone to Royal favour was handsome, impetuous Madame de ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... nights he travelled, and at noon of the third day, at a lonely railroad station in a prairie country that rolled like a heavy sea, he was lifted, crate and all, off the train. A lean, pale-eyed, sanctimonious-looking ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... one Saturday the pastor of it came ashore to ask if some American clergyman in our party would preach on his ship the next morning. He was an old-time, orthodox Presbyterian, and from the tips of his broad-soled shoes to the severe part in the hair above his sanctimonious brow he looked the type. I was not present when he called at our hotel, and my absence gave my fellow-clergymen an opportunity to play a joke on the gentleman from the gospel-ship. They assured him that "Dr. Shaw" would preach for him, and the pastor ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... sanctimonious fools with their endless drivel about the Church of the Spirit of Mankind Incarnate. It's enough to make a man wish for ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... canters, says he, preaching and picking your pocket. What about sanctimonious Cromwell and his ironsides that put the women and children of Drogheda to the sword with the bible text God is love pasted round the mouth of his cannon? The bible! Did you read that skit in the United Irishman today about that Zulu ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... parts, that he would fain hold himself the wrong side out, to the end that all the world may duly appreciate and admire him. Naturally, too, the more he hangs over his own moral beauty, the more pharisaical and sanctimonious he becomes in his opinion and treatment of others. For the glass which magnifies to his view whatever of good there may be in himself, also serves him as an inverted telescope to minify the good of those about him; and, which is ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... sanctimonious hypocrites of the papacy, publicans and harlots are not bad. They at least feel remorse. They at least do not try to justify their wicked deeds. But these pretended saints, so far from acknowledging their errors, justify them and regard them ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... James and Anne and the two first Georges, under which, gallows-trees were erected on the hill side for our conversion or extinction; we have even survived the iron heels and ruthless sabres of Cromwell's sanctimonious troopers; and we can go back upon the history of those times calmly enough now. But this "sad misgiving" of Mr. Dickens; this patronizing condescension; this contemptuous pity, is more than provoking. It is probable he ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... over again, and understood that if the King recommended me to be firm, it was because he needed to be firm himself. I soon mastered my emotion, and looked at things in their real light. It was easy to see that sanctimonious fanatics had forced the King to act. Bossuet was not sanctimonious, but, to serve his own ends, proffered himself as spokesman and emissary, being anxious to prove to his old colleagues that he was on the side of what they styled moral conduct ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... name,—is in no wise addicted to dicing, or horse-racing, or cock-fighting, or any of those sinful or riotous courses to which so many of our genteel youth—even to those of the first Quality—devote themselves. He is no Puritan; (for I did ever hate your sanctimonious Banbury-men); but he has a Proper Sense of what is due to the Honour and Figure of his family, and refrains from soiling his hands with bales of dice and worse implements among the profligate crew to be met with, not alone at Newmarket, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... of which I give you this delicious morsel: 'No blacks, no cotton, such is the finality.' At page 609, he speaks of the 'incompatibility of confiscation of property with the present state of civilization.' At page 609, he quotes, with evident delight, the sanctimonious despatch of Lord John Russell about sinking ships in Charleston harbor, which his lordship calls a 'project only worthy the times of barbarism;' and the American annotator, who could use page after page to degrade his own Government for emancipating ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... literary qualities has been compared to Rabelais, so his satirical pencil has been likened to Hogarth's. Boldness, drollery, dramatic spirit, force, and spontaneous satire characterize both artists. He does not mount a pulpit and speak to the erring masses with sanctimonious self-righteousness; but he enters the Ship himself to lead the babbling folk in motley to the land of wisdom. His own folly is that of the student, and he therefore ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... of pen and sword, nor sanctimonious fool, Shall never win this Southern land, to cripple, bind, and rule; We'll muster on each bloody plain, thick as the stars of night, And, through the help of God, the Wrong shall perish ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... is for mortals to unlearn Beliefs bred in the marrow of their bones! How hard it is for mortals to discern The truth that preaches from the silent stones, The silent hills, the silent universe, While Error cries in sanctimonious tones That all the light of life and God is hers! Lo in the midst we stand: we cannot see Either the dark beginning or the end, Or where our tottering footsteps turn or trend In the vast orbit of Eternity. Let Reason be our light—the only light That God hath given unto ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... GERALD. Slightly sanctimonious. I think I liked you better before. I don't think I like you with this touch of aureole. People seem to me so horribly self-satisfied when they get a change of heart—they take such a fearful lot of credit to themselves ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... say such things to me!" he cried. "I've heard that sanctimonious stuff before. It's of no use. You can't fool me! I don't know any ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... and with sanctimonious mien continued his journey. But as he and the badger passed a convent, and some plump hens crossed their path, Reynard forgot all his promises and began to chase the chickens. Sharply recalled to a sense of duty by Grimbart, Reynard reluctantly gave up the chase, and ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... isn't always a Laura near to point out the superiority of the girl in plain white," returned Alene with a sanctimonious air at ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... called advertisin' a rich man's luxury, and said an audit was an insult to his partners. Said he'd welcome a sheriff sooner'n he would an expert accountant—and in the long run, that's exactly what he did. Involuntary bankruptcy—found his sanctimonious old cashier'd been sanctimoniously lootin' the till for eighteen years." He paused, and eyed his cigar. "Well, Mirabelle's cut more or less off the same piece. Lord, I wish she could go through some kind of bankruptcy, if 't would ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... that he sometimes led the meetings. Rankin can't lie—or won't—so he said right out that he was doing what little he could to save precious souls. That part was all right, of course; but he was so beastly solemn and sanctimonious that he came near sending my soul—maybe it isn't as precious as those he was laboring with—straight ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... against the "sanctimonious" attitude and pose assumed by certain "good" people of the churches, who would make a display of their adherence to and observance of forms. Jesus, as a true mystic, detested all religious posing and neglected no opportunities to condemn ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... week or so her love for Florent abated. She consoled herself, however, with the story of the inheritance, no longer calling Lisa a strait-laced prude, but a thief who kept back her brother-in-law's money, and assumed sanctimonious airs to deceive people. Every evening, while Muche took his writing lesson, the conversation turned ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... Larsen, he kept repeating in sanctimonious tones that he had never been more astonished in his life, though to tell the truth he had never thought much of this breed of pointers. He was very sorry, he said, very sorry. But any one, peering at him from the ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... that I do condemn a married life, For tis no doubt a sanctimonious thing: But for the care and crosses of a wife, The trouble in that world that children bring; My vow is in heaven in earth to live alone, Husbands, howsoever good, ...
— The London Prodigal • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... to his feet, his soft suction pads gripping the floor as though preparatory to a spring. Gone was the sanctimonious unction of his former behavior; the ruthless savage glared out of the red eyes, the flattened ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner |
