"Cant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... souls of flame By recklessness amuse or shame Selfish nonentities around? That mind which yearns for space is bound? And that too often we receive Professions eagerly for deeds, That crass stupidity misleads, That we by cant ourselves deceive, That mediocrity alone Without ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... nevertheless with a certain reserve. He was not quite certain if Baltic's conversion was genuine, and if he found proof of hypocrisy, was prepared to fall foul of him forthwith. Sir Harry was not particularly religious, but he was honest, and hated cant ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... Baron, with great contempt. "You have learned that cant word in the Cabinet of the King himself, before he thrust you out. He eternally prates of justice, yet, much as I loathe him, I have no wish to compass his death, either directly ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... teeth of the wind and pendulous labor of rolling, the three cutters joyfully took the word to go. With a creak, and a cant, and a swish of canvas, upon their light heels they flew round, and trembled with the eagerness of leaping on their way. The taper boom dipped toward the running hills of sea, and the jib-foreleech drew a white arc against the darkness of the sky to ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... mother, always did go to hear the parsons. Parsons, as a rule, were hypocrites. He had met one or two of them in town under circumstances that showed they had really no more "nonsense about them" than other people, but in the pulpit they were bound to cant. Look at Mr. Whymper, for instance—the best specimen of them, by-the-by, he had ever known—who could doubt that his mind was wholly set upon the main chance? To what slights and insolences did he submit himself for ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... cant of the day to underrate the House of Commons, and the work which it performs; don't you suffer yourself to join in the chorus of the simpletons. Your time cannot be better employed than in endeavouring ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... till the 20th day of November, after which I have had my liberty to walk part over the City between sun and sun, notwithstanding there generous allowance of food I must inevitably have perished with hunger had not sum friends in this (city) Relieved my extreme necessity, but I cant expect they can always do it—what I shall do next I know not, being naked for clothes and void of money, and winter present, and provisions very skerce; fresh meat one shilling per pound, Butter three ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... and genuine honesty are demanded; and all cant, hypocrisy, double dealing, shirking, and unreality ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... employment, lonely and despondent, she is led to take her first step on the downward path. Soon daily contact with vice removes abhorrence to it. Familiarity makes it habitual, and another life is ruined. The heartless moral code of the cynical young pleasure-seeking male is summed up in the cant phrase anent women: "Find, ... and forget!" It is these girls, who are victimized by their lack of self-restraint or moral principle, their ignorance or weakness, who make possible the application ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... story. It happened in Markdale to an uncle of my mothers. He wanted to marry Miss Jemima Parr. Felicity says Jemima is not a romantic name for a heroin of a story but I cant help it in this case because it is a true story and her name realy was Jemima. My mothers uncle was named Thomas Taylor. He was poor at that time and so the father of Miss Jemima Parr did not want him for a soninlaw and told him ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... consummate his nuptials, suppose I should (as sure I should) kill myself, it were blasphemy to lay this fatal marriage to heaven's charge——curse on your nonsense, ye imposing gownmen, curse on your holy cant; you may as well call rapes and murders, treason and robbery, the acts of heaven; because heaven suffers them to be committed. Is it heaven's pleasure therefore, heaven's decree? A trick, a wise device of priests, no ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... teaching of life. We have forgotten the greater virtues, and we were becoming emasculated humbugs whose gods were our own weaknesses. Then came war, and the air was cleared. Germany, in spite of her blunders and her grossness, stood forth as the scourge of cant. She had the courage to cut through the bonds of humbug and to laugh at the fetishes of the herd. Therefore I am on Germany's side. But I came here for another reason. I know nothing of the East, but as I read history it is from the desert that the purification comes. When mankind is smothered ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... greed, envy, ambition, or desire, I see things in their true proportion. A dreamy spectator of the world's turmoil, I do not enter into the hectic hurly-burly of life; I merely withhold my approval from cant, shams, prejudice, formulae, hypocrisy, and lies. Such is the priceless ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... ABRAHAM-MEN. A cant term for vagabonds, who formerly begged about under pretence of having been discharged destitute from ships and hospitals; whence an idle malingerer wanting to enter the doctor's list is said to "sham Abraham." From a ward in Bedlam which was appropriated ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... stops, and current operates the sluggish press-magnet, causing its armature to be attracted, thus lifting the platen and its projecting arm. As the arm lifts upward, the pin moves along the under side of the lower arm of the rocking-lever, thus causing it to cant and shift the type-wheels to the right or left, as desired. The principles of operation of this apparatus have been confined to a very brief and general description, but it is believed to be sufficient for the scope of ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... yet to be performed—the loading of the grand piano. We found it necessary to remove the raft to a place where the bank was more shelving, so that the shore side of the structure would rest on the ground, because the weight of the piano on one side would cant it over so that we ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... the Parvis was frequented by serjeants at law: see Chaucer, Prol. Cant. Tales. There is a difference of opinion where it was situated: see Tyrwhitt's Gloss. The student in ecclesiastical history may compare Leo Allatius de Templis Graecorum, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... Professing to be Johnson's friend, that biographer has raised more objections to his character, than all the enemies to that excellent man. Sir John had a root of bitterness that "put rancours in the vessel of his peace." Fielding, he says, was the inventor of a cant phrase, "Goodness of heart, which means little more than the virtue of a horse or a dog." He should have known, that kind affections are the essence of virtue: they are the will of God implanted in our nature, to aid and strengthen moral obligation; they incite to action: a sense of benevolence ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... Knox here gives a minute and accurate description, took place on the 22d of July 1544, when Lord Gray's partizans were repulsed with a loss of upwards of sixty men.—(Adamson's Muses Threnodie, by Cant, pp. 70, 71, 112.) Lord Gray, in October that year, received from the Cardinal a grant of part of the lands of Rescobie in Forfarshire, for his "ready and faithful help and assistance in these ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... that it was past and over. You see I, in a manner, anticipated your wishes about letting you know what I think of the country, though, on reading it over, I don't really know whether I have talked a lot of rubbish or not. I have given you a lot of semi-political cant, when what you want to know is simply, how easy is it to make coin out here. Well, I think the answer to that is pretty easy. If a man is not ambitious, and would be content to be a common or garden farmer ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... reads his Bible; daily assembles his servants round him to worship God. He comforts persecuted ministers, is fond of preachers; nay, can himself preach,—exhorts his neighbors to be wise, to redeem the time. In all this what "hypocrisy," "ambition," "cant," or other falsity? The man's hopes, I do believe, were fixed on the other Higher World; his aim to get well thither by walking well through his humble course in this world. He courts ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... a sort of cant," said Sir Richmond in a fierce parenthesis, "that the supplies of oil are inexhaustible—that you can muddle about with oil anyhow.... Optimism of knaves and imbeciles.... They don't want to be pulled ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... quite well. i am quite well. Rubens is here and he is quite well. We dont no how he got here but i am verry glad. Ant Maria said well he cant be sent back now so he sleeps on my bed and i like London it is a kweer place the houses are very big and i like my cussens pretty well they are all gals their nozes are very ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... missionary's ready-made tie, dragged his shrinking cuffs into the open, set his hat at a killing cant and sidled toward the young woman. He made eyes at her, was taken with sudden coughs and "hems," smiled, smirked and went brazenly through the impudent and contemptible litany of the "masher." With half an ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... your back, for you are killing the one to cover the other." I blushed, but still could not help laughing. "You are mistaken Whiteley," said the other, "there is not a man in your company eats better than John." "Where does he get it?" said W. "he cant have above half a guinea a week for his salary, and the clothes now on his back must cost at least twenty half guineas, or perhaps half a year's pay." "Go on Whiteley," said the other, "discharge all your Irish nonsense ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... To go further in limitation, the average man, of whom he is thus the bard, is a rather sophisticated average man, without very deep thoughts or feelings, without a very fertile or fresh imagination or fancy, with even a touch—a little touch—of cant and "gush" and other defects incident to average and sophisticated humanity. But this humanity is at any time and every time no small portion of humanity at large, and it is to Moore's credit that he sings its feelings and its thoughts so as always to get ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... It would seem that love wounds the lover. For languor denotes a hurt in the one that languishes. But love causes languor: for it is written (Cant 2:5): "Stay me up with flowers, compass me about with apples; because I languish with love." Therefore love is a ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... Sally, sighing deeply, "if I am fated, I must; I know there is no resisting one's fate." This is a common cant with poor deluded girls, who are not aware that they themselves make their fate by their folly, and then complain ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... Her eyes said nothing about screaming for help. Her eyes said: 'I'm a woman; you're a man. How jolly!' Her eyes said: 'I was born to do what I'm doing now.' Her eyes said: 'Touch me—and we shall see'. But what chiefly enchanted Henry was her intellectual courage and her freedom from cant. In conversing with her you hadn't got to tread lightly and warily, lest at any moment you might put your foot through the thin crust of a false modesty, and tumble into eternal disgrace. You could talk to her about anything; and ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... and his friends and Anna believed in him, an he'd be hanged if he went back and confessed anything at all, admitted anything. It was all well enough to look facts in the face, but it was better still to keep on fighting until the gong rang. And when he was fighting against the cant purity and goodness of Mr. Mix, and the cold astigmatism of Aunt Mirabelle, he'd be hanged if he quit in the first round. No, even if Henry himself knew that he was beaten, nobody else was going to know it, and Anna ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... expected by the public. If something is left out of the portrait, the likeness will be imperfect; if the anxiety or the inquisitiveness of readers to know private details is left ungratified, the writer will be met by the current cant that the public has a right to know. The line is not easily drawn, and few subjects for the biographer can ever desire to be as candidly dealt with by him as Cromwell acted with Sir Peter Lely, in the request to be painted as he was, warts and all. Thus, too often the result will be but biography ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... of men, I cannot but think (were the thought permitted) that your pleasures are yet incomplete. Moreover, it is certain that a woman of parts who has once meddled with literature will never wholly lose her love for the discussion of that delicious topic, nor cease to relish what (in the cant of our new age) is styled "literary shop." For these reasons I attempt to convey to you some inkling of the present state of that agreeable art which you, madam, raised to its ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... yet I wish I could join heartily in that chorus of praise which the kind-hearted old bully has enjoyed. It is difficult to follow his own advice and to "clear one's mind of cant" upon the subject, for when you have been accustomed to look at him through the sympathetic glasses of Macaulay or of Boswell, it is hard to take them off, to rub one's eyes, and to have a good honest stare on one's own account ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... as milk to babies, Or water is to fish, or pendlums to clox, Or roots and airbs unto an Injun doctor, Or little pills unto an omepath, Or Boze to girls. Are is for us to brethe. What signifize who preaches ef I cant brethe? What's Pol? What's Pollus to sinners who are ded? Ded for want of breth! Why Sextant when we dye Its only coz we cant brethe no more—that's all. And now O Sextant? let me beg of you To let a little are into our cherch (Pewer are ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... be found that, while most of our counties have given family names, sometimes corrupted, e.g. Lankshear, Willsher, Cant, Chant, for Kent, with which we may compare Anguish for Angus, the larger towns are rather poorly represented, the movement having always been from country to town, and the smaller spot serving for more exact description. An ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... stuffed with religious and anti-slavery cant, and merely wanted a little of the teetotal nonsense to be a ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... that Johnson has exceeded the bounds of legitimate lexicography by the admission of vulgar and cant words. "It may be alleged that it is the duty of a lexicographer to insert and define all words found in English books: then such words as fishify, jackalent, parma-city, jiggumbob, conjobble, foutra, etc., are legitimate English words! ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... sleeper sits up in his dream, or rises from his couch and walks, so all of a sudden Abel Keeling found himself on his hands and knees on the deck, looking back over his shoulder. In some deep-seated region of his consciousness he was dimly aware that the cant of the deck had become more perilous, but his brain received the intelligence and forgot it again. He was looking out into the bright and baffling mists. The buckler of the sun was of a more ardent silver; the sea below it was lost in brilliant evaporation; and between them, suspended ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... log-rolling was always a great frolic and brought the people from far and near to lend a helping hand in building the new house. In handling logs, lumbermen have tools made for that purpose—cant-hooks, peevy irons, lannigans, and numerous other implements with names as peculiar as their looks—but the old backwoodsmen and pioneers who lived in log houses owned no tools but their tomahawks, their axes, and their rifles, and the logs of most of ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... great boat swung into the wind, a jostling crowd of men poured out on the ice from under the flapping sail. Each man bore a tool of some sort, either ax, cant-dog, iron-shod peavey-stick, or cross-cut saw; and the moonshine flashed on the steel surfaces. It was plain that the party viewed its expedition as an opportunity for reckless roistering, and spirits ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... I have occupied a good deal of time in exposing the cant of these gentlemen about the sanctity of the Missouri compromise, and the dishonor attached to the violation of plighted faith. I have exposed these matters in order to show that the object of these men is to withdraw from public attention the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... sequitur, ignotum per ignotius [Lat.]. misjudgment &c 481; false teaching &c 538. sophism, solecism, paralogism^; quibble, quirk, elenchus^, elench^, fallacy, quodlibet, subterfuge, subtlety, quillet^; inconsistency, antilogy^; a delusion, a mockery, and a snare [Denman]; claptrap, cant, mere words; lame and impotent conclusion [Othello]. meshes of sophistry, cobwebs of sophistry; flaw in an argument; weak point, bad case. overrefinement^; hairsplitting &c v.. V. judge intuitively, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... I'd earth myself, Rather than live to act such black ambition: But, sir, you seek it with your smiles and bows. This side and that side congeing to the crowd. You have your writers too, that cant your battles, That stile you, the new David, second Moses, Prop of the church, deliverer of the people. Thus from the city, as from the heart, they spread Through all the provinces, alarm the countries, Where they run forth in heaps, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... remarkable qualities. Their oddities, their courage, their imperfect knowledge of the distinctions of meum and tuum, their wondering, childlike simplicity, furnished themes for endless songs and caricatures; the comedy of "Les Zouaves" met with great success; and the cant name for them, "Zouzou," is to be heard at any time in the streets. In 1855, the Fourth Zouaves was created, consisting of but two battalions, and enrolled in the Imperial Guard; they are distinguished from the others by wearing a white turban, while that of the other regiments is green; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... spoke quickly. "It's not that kind, General," he said. "There's no cant in the boy. He's more popular for it— that's often so with the genuine thing, isn't it! I sometimes think"—the young Captain hesitated and smiled a trifle deprecatingly—"that Morgan is much of the same stuff as Gordon— ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... a sideways cant to my nose, that Tobin give me when we was to school. I don't know's you ever noticed it," said Mr. Briley. "We was scufflin', as lads will. I never bore him no kind of a grudge. I pitied ye, when he was taken away. I re'lly did, now, Fanny. I liked Tobin first-rate, and I liked you. ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... were coming in regularly, and the railways became choked with the logs dumped down on them from the sleighs. There were not enough men to roll them down to the river, nor to "deck" them there in piles. Work accumulated. The cant-hook men became discouraged. What was the use of trying? They might as well take it easy. They did take it easy. As a consequence the teamsters had often to wait two, three hours to be unloaded. They were ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... derived by some from its six (shash) leaves, and by others from its vivid cheerful brightness. "His lips are lilies" (Cant. v. 13), not in ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... observing the industry and application of those whom my situation in life gives me for companions. The pernicious and childish opinion that extraordinary genius cannot brook the slavery of plodding over the rubbish of antiquity (a cant so common among the heedless votaries of indolence), dulls the edge of all industry, and is one of the most powerful ingredients in the Circean potion which transforms many of the most promising young men into the beastly forms which, in sluggish idleness, feed ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... reason, they will simply look at the fact that you have failed." The truth in this remark is preeminently a truth for young people. The world, on one side of it, is very hard and cruel. It will apologize for failure in the abstract under tricks of speech, and cant about charity, but for individual failure it ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... two years, making rapid progress in singing and in playing all sorts of instruments, among others the clavier, violin, organ, and drum. He said afterward, with the unaffected piety, far removed from cant, that was characteristic of him: "Almighty God, to whom I render thanks for all his unnumbered mercies, gave me such facility in music that, by the time I was six years old, I stood up like a man and sang masses in the church choir, and could play a little on the clavier and violin." ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... musical composer has been left to the guardianship of the few sound and enlightened judges who thoroughly comprehend him, to the humble but honest admiration of professional performers, to the practice and imitation of effeminate amateurs, to the cant of criticism of the worthies on the free list, and to the instinctive applause of the popular voice. Even with these humbler hands to build up his monument, the great master of music has a perpetual ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... observed Squire Harwood, pointing southward with his hand. "I cannot forget my father's account of the times when Red-nosed Noll ruled the roost, and that arch-traitor Hutchinson held the castle, and insulted all the Cavaliers in the town and neighbourhood by his preaching, and his cant, and his strict rules and regulations; and now, forsooth, every man and woman in the place thinks fit to stand up for the usurper William, and not an expression of sympathy do I hear for the cruel fate of ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... from the west was, first a small tavern kept by Mr. Wentworth, familiarly known as "Old Geese," not from any want of shrewdness on his part, but in compliment to one of his own cant expressions. Near him were two or three log cabins occupied by Robinson, the Pottowattamie chief, and some of his wife's connexions. Billy Caldwell, the Sau-ga-nash, too, resided here occasionally, with his wife, who was a daughter of Nee-scot-nee-meg, one of the ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... have heard my uncle and many sensible people say the same; but, in order to acquire this species of it, both goodness of heart and a just way of thinking are required; and therefore many people content themselves with aping what they can pick up in the dress, or gestures, or cant expressions of the higher classes; just like the poor ass, which, dressed in the skin of a lion, was taken for the lion himself, till his unfortunate braying exposed the cheat." "Pray, madam, what ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... Industrious. It shou'd be a Maxim in every well governed State, but especially in Ireland, that Idleness shou'd be as severely punish'd as petty Larceny; and to beg with an Ability to Work, shou'd be regarded and treated as a Kind of training up Youth for Stealing, (when they have learn'd the proper Cant and Tricks of their Apprenticeship) and consequently to relieve a Vagabond, shou'd be as faulty and as corrigible as receiving stolen Goods. The proper Place for the Relief of sturdy Beggars, is a good County Work-house, where the Labours ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... the cant with which Viglius was ever ready to feed not only his faithful Hopper, but all the world beside. The president was naturally anxious that the fold of Christ should be entrusted to none but regular shepherds, for he looked forward to taking ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... The cant of civilization fatigues. Civilization is a fine and beautiful structure. It is as picturesque as a Gothic cathedral. But it is built upon the bones and cemented with the blood of those whose part in all its pomp is that and nothing more. It cannot be reared in the generous tropics, ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... opposition to dark; therefore some are said to be 'clear as the sun' (Cant 6:10). And again, 'the light shall not be clear nor dark' (Zech 14:6). In both these places, clear is to be taken for light, daylight, sunlight; for, indeed, it is never day nor sunshine with the soul, until the streams of this river of water ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... religious atmosphere which surrounds the college is as genial and cheerful as the natural atmosphere which bathes the hills and valleys around in October days. It has no element of sectarianism or bigotry. Free alike from cant, from looseness and indifference, the religious tone of the ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be that, in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... boast, Refinement. But deep dyes Oft mar the splendour of thy noontide skies: 230 Then Fancy, sick of follies that deform The face of day, and in the sunshine swarm; Sick of the fluttering fopperies that engage The vain pursuits of a degenerate age; Sick of smooth Sophistry's insidious cant, Or cold Impiety's defying rant; Sick of the muling sentiment that sighs O'er its dead bird, while Want unpitied cries; Sick of the pictures that pale Lust inflame, And flush the cheek of Love with deep, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... people will ever open their eyes about all this. The orators go in for virtue, freedom, etc., the cheap cant which will charm the constituencies. They are generous with what costs them nothing—Irish land, religious liberty, emancipation of niggers—sacrificing the dependencies to tickle the vanity of an ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... and crouch like spaniels, to lick the hand that beats us; but children's children at the farthest, will have outgrown such pitiful meanness, and will dare to do all that others have dared and done for the sake of freedom and independence. Then all this cowardly cant about the unhealthy climate, the voracious beasts, and venomous reptiles of Africa, will be at a discount, instead of passing current as now for ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. "I am no novel-reader—I seldom look into novels—Do not imagine that I often read novels—It is really very well for a novel." Such is the common cant. "And what are you reading, Miss—?" "Oh! It is only a novel!" replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. "It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda"; or, in short, only ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... of a hillside meadow I was hunting for the entrance of a path into a patch of woods. Auber, instead of helping me, kept gazing back at the fading light while he made random observations on the nature of the sky-line,—one of his cant hobbies. "See how crudely the character of everything is defined up there against the sky," I heard him say, while I continued to search for the path. "Now even a sheep or a cow, or an inanimate thing, like that stone ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... in the world who cannot bear to receive instruction when conveyed to them in a serious form, who shrink with loathing from the cant with which too many religious novels are loaded; and who yet might be induced to listen to precepts of religion and morality, when arrayed in a more amusing and attractive garb, and enforced by characters who speak and feel ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... she, but oh how fallen, how changed, what an Apostate! how lost to all that's gay and agreeable! To be married I find is to be buried alive; I cant conceive it more dismal to be shut up in a Vault to converse with the Shades of my Ancestors, than to be carried down to an old Manor-House in the Country, and confined to the Conversation of a sober Husband and an awkward Chamber-maid. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... but men of position and wealth, who had somewhat to lose and every desire to retain the same. They did not rave of patriotism, nor was there any cant of equality and fraternity. It seemed rather that, finding themselves placed in stirring times, they deemed it wise to guide by some means or other the course of events into such channels as might ensure safety to themselves and their possessions. And who can blame them for such foresight? ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... real, so wonderfully disinterested and so wholly free from cant, already had kindled something in the girl's heart which she had believed to be lifeless, and for ever cold. Now, his swift intuition and the grave sympathy in his beautiful voice imposed too great a test ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... where, only ten years ago, a man said, pointing to a porte-cochere in the upper town, the first ever built there: "By that door luxury has invaded Geneva." Calvin gave birth, by the sternness of his doctrines and his executions, to that form of hypocritical sentiment called "cant."[*] According to those who practice it, good morals consist in renouncing the arts and the charms of life, in eating richly but without luxury, in silently amassing money without enjoying it otherwise than as Calvin enjoyed power—by thought. Calvin imposed ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... affections, which remained unsullied and unshaken to the end of her days. She had, in common with her three brothers and her charming sister, the advantage of a wise and loving mother—a woman pious without cant, and worldly-wise without being worldly. Mrs. Porter was born at Durham, and when very young bestowed her hand and heart on Major Porter; an old friend of the family assures us that two or three of their children were born in Ireland, and that certainly ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... Paul and Esther had done nothing else for their children they had certainly done this; they had implanted in their minds a deep and strong feeling that one of the things to be most desired in life is honesty; clean, frank, wholesome honesty, free from cant and hypocrisy and double dealing. And Walter knew in his heart that what he was going to do was not honest to Bauer, even after he had juggled with his conscience and proved to himself that Bauer had ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... profess, and gospel we have preached, and holy sacraments rightly administered, we signify unto you to be our intent, so far as God will assist us to withstand your idolatry. Take this for warning, and be not deceived."[**] With these outrageous symptoms commenced in Scotland that cant, hypocrisy, and fanaticism which long infested that kingdom, and which, though now mollified by the lenity of the civil power, is still ready to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... old sundowners come, And cunningly ask if the master's at home, 'Be off,' she replies, 'with your blarney and cant, Or I'll call my son Andy; ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... proportionate to its constant supply. Dear reader, you are very difficult to please. My descriptions you call slow, my imaginings frivolous, science dry. Jokes are feeble and personalities tedious morality is stale, religion is cant. What, how can I write? You have had a taste of all and if you are not content the fault is—well, let me be on the safe side—either yours ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... Unbecoming in any writer, how absurd also is such a sentence from the pen of one who, (as we have lately seen,) no sooner descends to particulars than he makes himself ridiculous by betraying his own excessive ignorance.... "The letter for the spirit," also! which is one of the 'cant' expressions of Mr. Jowett and his accomplices in 'free handling,'—based evidently on a misconception of the meaning of 2 Cor. iii. 6. The contrast recurs at pp. 36, 357, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... she cried, running to him, "take me away from him: I cant bear——" I turned towards him, and shewed him my dog-tooth in a false smile. He felled me at one stroke, as he ...
— The Miraculous Revenge - Little Blue Book #215 • Bernard Shaw
... sake of peace. I dont see what a man has got to do interferin with the cookin, no how; a woman oughter 'tend to these matters. 'Pears to me, Mr. Moore, (captain, as you calls him,) is mighty fidjetty about bottles, all at once. But if he cant bear the sight of a brandy bottle in the house, bring 'em down here to me; I'll keep 'em out of his sight, I'll be bound. I'll put 'em in the corner of my old chist yonder, and I'd like to see him thar, rummagin arter brandy ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... misfortunes. There was a calm, collected, serenity of manner about him—a most unfeigned and unqualified resignation to the divine will—which marked him as an object at once of admiration and esteem. There was no boast—no cant—no formal sermonising. You saw what religion had done for him. Her effects spake in his discourse and in his life.... Over his piano hung a portrait of himself; very indifferently executed—and ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... HUI-HUI. A bargain or exchange; to barter or trade. Ex. Huyhuy la sille, change the saddle; huyhuy tumtum, to change one's mind. Mr. Andersen says this is a cant word of the Canadians, signifying a hasty exchange. Its origin has been suggested in oui ...
— Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon, or, Trade Language of Oregon • George Gibbs
... distinguish and characterize it. I have ever been of opinion that an abolition of this unnatural jargon would open the path to reformation. And my observations on these people have constantly instructed me that indulgence in this infatuating cant is more deeply associated with depravity and continuance in vice than is generally supposed. I recollect hardly one instance of a return to honest pursuits, and habits of industry, where this miserable perversion of our noblest and peculiar ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... Carlyle that there is a world diameter between the South hiring a man for life, and by force holding him in slavery. But Carlyle for three years poured out such vapid humbug, cant and hypocrisy as this, and never once was sound in his thinking or fair in his view-point ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the interviews—a collection of curiosities in utopianism, cant, ignorant fanaticism, provincialism, hypocrisy. These appeared strictly as news; for the cardinal principle of Howard's theory of a newspaper was that it had no right to intrude its own views into its news-columns. On the editorial page he riddled the interviews. By adroit ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... people,' could only be a black-hearted scoundrel. I can see Monsieur exactly the same as ever in the King. The bad brother who voted so wrongly in his department of the Constituent Assembly was sure to compound with the Liberals and allow them to argue and talk. This philosophical cant will be just as dangerous now for the younger brother as it used to be for the elder; this fat man with the little mind is amusing himself by creating difficulties, and how his successor is to get out of them I do not know; he holds his younger brother in abhorrence; he would ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... challenges all comers, his money against theirs, his fortune against theirs, is proscribed by your modern moral world. It is a conspiracy of the middle classes against gentlemen: it is only the shopkeeper cant which is to go down nowadays. I say that play was an institution of chivalry: it has been wrecked, along with other privileges of men of birth. When Seingalt engaged a man for six-and-thirty hours without leaving the table, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... write an explanation full, 625 Translating hieroglyphics into Greek, How the God Apis really was a bull, And nothing more; and bid the herald stick The same against the temple doors, and pull The old cant down; they licensed all to speak 630 Whate'er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese, By pastoral letters to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... others in 1831, 1853, and 1861. It was, however, subjected to some criticism and ridicule, and gave rise to the expression "bowdlerise," always used in an opprobrious sense. On the other hand, Mr. Swinburne has said, "More nauseous and foolish cant was never chattered than that which would deride the memory or depreciate the merits of B. No man ever did better service to Shakespeare than the man who made it possible to put him into the hands of intelligent and imaginative children." B. subsequently essayed a similar enterprise ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... to a Dyeing man and i Mustnt Tell Who cause if my mother was Home I Wood and she wood say yes. She always helps dyeing folks and sick ones one the boys will go and he can ride Moses or prince Which he likes. I guess marty so i Cant right any more the paper is so littul and ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... with cant, ere we were born, For feasts of death, and hatred's harvest wain Piled high, for princes from proud mothers torn, And soft despairs hushed in the ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... Where they cant of a Saviour's name, And yet waste men's lives like the vermin's For a few more ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... that constellation seem to manifest. Ilioneus calls him nimbosus, Anna, aquosus. He is tempestuous in the summer, when he rises heliacally; and rainy in the winter, when he rises achronically. Your lordship will pardon me for the frequent repetition of these cant words, which I could not avoid in this abbreviation of Segrais, who, I think, deserves no little commendation in ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... of the pagan world. Nor did that world produce any other book which, like his, remains as an unfailing companion to every generation of the modern age. The charm of these fragmentary meditations depends greatly on their convincing candour; there is not a trace of the cant and exaggeration that so taint the moralisings of lesser men. It depends also on their iron stoicism; there are here no doubtful comforts, no rosy illusions. But it depends chiefly on the admirable and lovable ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... the stalls in wet beds, having to sweep out the water without ceasing and suffering severely from clouds of mosquitoes. When at last the storm abated and they could return to the house, they found everything wet and mildewed and the cottage leaning with a decided cant to one side. Worst of all, one of the horses had become entangled in the barbed-wire fence that had been blown down by the wind, and was dreadfully injured. Thus they discovered that life in the tropics has its drawbacks as well as ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... In Susan's early life he objected on principle to all forms of frivolous amusement, such as music, dancing, or novel reading, while games and even pictures were regarded as meaningless luxuries. Such puritanical convictions might have easily degenerated into mere cant; but underlying all was a broad and firm basis of wholesome respect for individual freedom and a brave adherence to truth. He was a man of good business capacity, and a thorough manager of his wide ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... was a slight air of contempt in Carlton's voice and manner. "I hate to hear this everlasting cant, if I must so call it, about business; as if there were nothing else in the world to think or care about. Men bury themselves between four brick walls, and toil from morning until night, like prison-slaves; and if you talk to them ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... accorded sincerity as an extenuation of its mischievous tenets, affords the best excuse to be offered for the original abolitionists, but that can not be conceded to the political associates who joined them for the purpose of acquiring power; with them it was but hypocritical cant, intended to deceive. Hence arose the declaration of the existence of an "irrepressible conflict," because of the domestic institutions of sovereign, self-governing States—institutions over which neither the Federal Government ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... the devil take such cant! Say, once and always, Luca was a wittol, I am his cut-throat, you are ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... "the fiscal party in Alexandria was an overmatch for those who wished to testify the American sentiment." Indeed, he thinks it certain, he says in the same letter, "that Genet will be misled if he takes either the fashionable cant of the cities or the cold caution of the government for the sense of the public,"—falling himself, before he reaches the end of the sentence, into the cant of assuming neutrality in the government ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... placed it beside the chair. Doctor Hissong opened a drawer and brought forth an instrument that resembled a cant-hook, one of those tools used in overturning logs. This tooth extractor had a handle about six inches long, and a sort of steel hook on the end, and it would draw the tooth, if the jawbone did ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... Would force his features to a frowning sternness? Young lord! I tell thee, that there are such beings,— Yea, and it gives fierce merriment to the damn'd, 100 To see these most proud men, that loathe mankind, At every stir and buz of coward conscience, Trick, cant, and lie, most whining hypocrites! Away! away! Now let me hear ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... says I, "the case is as you say, and I think verily I must yield to him; but then," said I, moved by conscience, "don't talk any more of your cant of its being lawful that I ought to marry again, and that he ought to marry again, and such stuff as that; 'tis all nonsense," says I, "Amy, there's nothing in it; let me hear no more of that, for if I yield, 'tis in vain to ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... Cambridge. He was an excellent specimen of an English gentleman of the nineteenth century. Free from all affectation and pedantry, still his whole nature seemed to revolt from anything slangish or low. No oaths, nor anything which would be considered one, nor any cant expressions, ever escaped his lips. Yet he was full of life and spirits, the soul of every society in which he moved. He had numerous friends, and so mild and quiet was his disposition that he seldom or never made enemies; or rather, I may say, if he made an enemy, he quickly ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... and I mention them only that Dr. Johnson's opinion of the works may be known; but many of them are examples of elaborate criticism, in the most masterly style. In his review of the 'Memoirs of the Court of Augustus,' he has the resolution to think and speak from his own mind, regardless of the cant transmitted from age to age, in praise of the ancient ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... 'Shut up cant, d'you hear! It served him thunderin' well right. What'd he want to come pokin' into the mine at all fer? What the devil did the other one interfere in what didn't concern him fer? But we've got it in spite of 'em.' Rogers had plunged ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... into ridicule for the diversion of himself and of chance comers-in. "The Elf—da," says he, "was too exquisitely pretty; I could make no fun out of that."' Piozzi's Anec. p. 37. I doubt whether Johnson used the word fun, which he describes in his Dictionary as 'a low cant ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... instant of that highly dramatic declaration. It was not his tale; it was the little people's! And observe: not only was the secret kept, the story was told with really guileful craftsmanship. The conduct of both actors is (in the cant phrase) psychologically correct, and the emotion aptly graduated up to the surprising climax. I am awake now, and I know this trade; and yet I cannot better it. I am awake, and I live by this business; and yet I could not outdo - could not perhaps equal - that ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... then the mode; men and women were in general expounders and preachers; ordinary conversation was interlarded with Scripture phrases; common events were providences; political misconstructions of the sacred story were prophecies; and a fluency of cant was inspiration. No man (to borrow one of their favourite terms) was more gifted this way than Cromwell; he had discerned the current of the public humour, and could adopt the disguise which suited his ambition. ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... cant, if ye please, James Moore. That'll aiblins go doon wi' the parsons, but not wi' me. I ken you and you ken me, and all the whitewash i' th' warld'll ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... the preceding verses, seems to have been a cant term among the early Shakers for a sluggard and selfish fellow, a kind of creature they have pretty thoroughly extirpated; and presumably by such free speech as is used ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... Dekker are marked by a fiery yet careful style, Oriental richness of imagery, and originality and independence of thought. He wrote as social reformer, and attacked with unrivaled power of sarcasm all manner of cant, sham, and red-tape. His works betray the disappointment of a defeated idealist. He was a man of marked individuality, and strongly attracted or repelled others. For the last few years of his life he ceased to write, and lived ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... find peace and pleasure and wisdom and worth, I should find fascination and a measure of success in it—out of the din and the dust and the scramble, the world of party labels, party cries, party bargains and party treacheries: of humbuggery, hypocrisy and cant. The cleanness and quietness of it, the independent effort to do something, to leave something which shall give joy to man long after the howling has died away to the last ghost of an echo—such a vision solicits me in the watches of night ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... the poor one often hears words which make one suspect that they do NOT believe it. I am very much afraid that a great many have got into the trick of saying that it was God's mercy that they were cured, and that it pleased the Lord to raise them up from a sick bed, very much as a piece of cant. They say the words by rote, because they have been accustomed to hear them said by others, without thinking of the meaning of them; just as, on the other hand, a great many people curse and swear without thinking of the awful oaths they use. Ay, and ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... can hardly be the same peace and the same pleasure in hugging the old proprieties. Hegel will be to the next generation what Sir William Hamilton was to the last. Nothing will have been disproved, but everything will have been abandoned. An honest man has spoken, and the cant of the genteel tradition has become harder for young lips ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... what his mind is capable of. I argue on no sectarian, no religious grounds even. Is it possible to make a man's self his most precious possession? Anyhow, I work to that end. A doctor purges before building up with a tonic. I eliminate cant and hypocrisy, and then introduce self-respect. It isn't enough to employ a man's hands only. Initiation in some labour that should prove wholesome and remunerative is a redeeming factor, but it isn't all. His mind must work also, and awaken to its capacities. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... this book I have been strictly honest with myself, from first page to last. Whether everything I have written is the truth, I do not know. But at least I believe that it is—or I would not have written it. And I can solemnly say that the book is free from any cant, hypocrisy, falsehood, exaggeration or compromise, nor has any attempt been made in any chapter to conciliate the stupid, the ignorant, the ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... distracted, when he is no other than a wandering and dissembling knave." This writer here points out one of the grievances resulting from licensing even harmless lunatics to roam about the country; for a set of pretended madmen, called "Abram men," a cant term for certain sturdy rogues, concealed themselves in their costume, covered the country, and pleaded the privileged denomination when detected ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... the forest," may have been conferred by the popular voice on more than one favorite general, distinguished for irresistible valour? Is it not also possible that "BUONA PARTE" may have been originally a sort of cant term applied to the "good (i.e., the bravest or most patriotic) part" of the French army, collectively; and have been afterwards mistaken for the proper name of an individual?[23] I do not profess to support this conjecture; but it is certain that such mistakes may and do occur. ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... describe the SPIRIT OF CANT, Of popular humbug, and vulgar rant, And tell how he looks in a tangible form, And give the length of his horns and claws, The spread of his wings, the width of his jaws, And detail the other proportions grim, Which belong to a powerful demon like him. Go and ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... rebuke me all the way home to-night for saying it, my heart sat somewhat nearer to those old people who were perhaps a little too dumpish in their repentance and their faith and their hope that morning, than it did to those who took to the table with a light heart. I know all your flippant cant about gospel liberty and against Highland introspection, as you call it—as well as all your habitual neglect of a close and deep self-examination, as Paul called it; but I tell you all to-night that it would be the salvation of your soul if you too worked your way up to every ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... 1645, and acted as Colonel Okey's chaplain before he entered into political life. Anthony a Wood (who incorrectly describes him as the son of Dr. Calybute Downing, vicar of Hackney) calls Downing a sider with all times and changes: skilled in the common cant, and a preacher occasionally. He was sent by Cromwell to Holland in 1657, as resident there. At the Restoration, he espoused the King's cause, and was knighted and elected M.P. for Morpeth, in 1661. Afterwards, becoming Secretary ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... I cant begin to tell jest where we went or what we see, enough 'tennyrate I felt to last me through life, but time hurried on jest as usual and brought the last days of ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... not know whether intentionally or not, but we have here assembled some of the favourite symbols of the Virgin—the moon, the star, the "terribilis ut castrorum acies" (Cant. vi. 10), ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... the charges, of whatever nature, involving any serious tendency—in fact, all that exceeded a misdemeanor—in the regular chronological succession according to which they came before the magistrate. Here, in this vast calendar of guilt and misery, amidst the aliases or cant designations of ruffians, prostitutes, felons, stood the description, at full length, Christian and surnames all properly registered, of my Agnes—of her whose very name had always sounded to my ears like the very echo ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... satisfied a natural want for which I had risen. To rush to her, to embrace her tenderly, to fasten the door, and compel her, not much against her will, to come towards the bed, to beg her to lie on her belly on the bedside, to cant her petticoats up, to kneel and gamahuche her cunt from behind until she begged me to rise and fuck her, was but the work of a minute or two. And then my stiff-standing pego, aided by the mouthful of ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... ashamed of that ragged regiment of shallow thinkers, and obscure writers and talkers who at present infest our literature, and whose parrot-like repetition of their own stereotyped phraseology, mingled with some barbarous infusion of half Anglicised German, threatens to form as odious a cant as ever polluted the stream of thought or disfigured the purity of language. Happily it is not likely to be more than a passing fashion; but still it is a very unpleasant fashion while it lasts. As in Johnson's day, every young writer imitated as well as he could ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... John W. Bullock, Brocton. Bronze medal Grapes Concord F. D. Burger, Pulteney Grapes Catawba, Iona, Isabella Mrs. Hiram Burgess, Newark. Bronze medal Apples White Graft, Smokehouse F. W. Campbell, Esopus. Silver medal Apples Greening Thomas Cant, Clarksville. Silver medal Apples Spitzenberg, Fall Pippin, McIntosh Pears Lawrence, Sheldon, Anjou, Howell O. J. Chamberlain, Brocton. Bronze medal Grapes Concord, Niagara Austin L. Champion, Schenectady. Bronze medal Apples Spitzenberg, Baldwin, Northern Spy, Red Winter ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... of unchastity, who, while she was plighting her troth to this same Eugene, were not ashamed to prostitute her to Strozzi! Cease your disgusting cant, and learn that I acknowledge and respect the tie that binds your daughter to her real spouse: and woe to you, if you dare trouble the current of her peaceful life! Farewell. Say to his majesty that I shall be forever grateful ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... monarchs to their people to fortify themselves in the principles of the Saviour, no less than the confession that they themselves ruled only by a delegation of power from Christ, was regarded by the Protestant Americans as religious cant. The power behind the throne was more likely force of arms. The provision that other nations professing these principles should be "received with as much readiness as affection in this holy alliance" was regarded as a bid and possible conspiracy for the extension ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... Russian, and called Princess Anne), whom Friedrich at one time thought of applying for, in his distress about a Wife. These two, will they side with Prussia, will they side with Austria? It was hardly worth inquiry, had not Fortune's wheel made suddenly a great cant, and pitched them to the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... English language by traducing all who now write that tongue. "None seek the audience, fit, though few, which contented the ambition of Milton, and all writers for the press now measure their glory by their gains," and so indefinitely onward,—which is simply cant. Does Sylvanus Cobb, Jr., who honestly earns his annual five thousand dollars from the "New York Ledger," take rank as head of American literature by virtue of his salary? Because the profits of true literature are rising,—trivial ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... apples from ungrafted limbs—as was enterprising enough to grow and ripen without tending or harvesting. The trunks of the neglected trees were studded with knobs like enormous wens, and the branches had a jaunty earthward cant that made climbing the easiest sort of work, and swinging an irresistible temptation. In the higher boughs were cosey crotches where one could sit, and read, and even sleep, without danger of falling. I and my court of small darkies had spent one whole July Saturday in and under the "big sweeting," ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... in consequence of my application to him) that she is at present indisposed to the marriage; but he is not prepared to say positively that she will not consent to it. Now all this, coming from him in the most frank and unaffected manner, and without any appearance of cant, caution, or reserve, I take to be most important as it respects your views, whatever they may be; and certainly much more favourable to them (I confess it) than I was prepared to expect, supposing ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... the heavier stuff, so they could cant the boat and spill the bilge water out of her. The tarpaulin was thrown over some willow bushes for a shelter, and under this they piled their grub boxes and dunnage rolls. The beds were all in watertight canvas bags, and so were their ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... annually at Houston and another at Struan, both known as Fillan's Fair. In Strathfillan are the ruins of St. Fillan's chapel, and hard by is the Holy Pool, in which the insane were formerly bathed {19} to obtain a cure by the saint's intercession. Scott refers to it in Marmion (Cant. I. xxix): ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... are as current as copper coin, and about as valuable. They serve equally the first capacities and the lowest, and they are, at least, as useful to the worst men as the best. Of this stamp is the cant of Not men, but measures; a sort of charm, by which many people got loose from every honourable engagement. When I see a man acting this desultory and disconnected part, with as much detriment to his own fortune as prejudice to the cause of any party, I am not persuaded that he ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... so as to torpedo us the moment we should arrive within range, or was she trusting that her presence was undetected, and waiting patiently for the moment when we should cross her bows as she lay? The latter, I believed, for she could not cant toward us without going either ahead or astern, and she could not do either without her periscope raising a ripple; and I was certain that nothing of that sort had happened. I determined to risk something, after all, to put that submarine out of ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... the miser was all panic. His hands groped towards his waist, then suddenly flew upward beneath his moleskin pillow, and there lay clutching something out of sight. Meantime, to himself he incoherently mumbled:—"Confidence? Cant, gammon! Confidence? hum, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... he will flash a ray of cheerfulness into the haunts of pessimism, or throw a new pathos into common situations. And Mr. Davidson possesses a large measure of this many-sidedness, this versatility of sympathy. He appears a very human man, a man unfettered by cant or creed, observing men and things from various sides, and entering into their circumstance. Is he without a creed? From his verses on the Making of a Poet ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... conversation, like his serious writing, is his best. No one ever stammered out such fine piquant, deep, eloquent things, in half a dozen sentences, as he does. His jests scald like tears; and he probes a question with a play upon words. There was no fuss or cant about him. He has furnished many a text for Coleridge to preach upon." (I. Plain Speaker.) Charles was frequently merry; but ever, at the back of his merriment, there reposed a grave depth, in which rich colors and tender lights were inlaid. For his jests ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... th' shareholders can have ther choice whether they tak it aat i' tripe or trotters; an if th' first years' profit doesn't run to as mich as'll be a meal a piece, it'll be carried to a presarve fund, though what presarved tripe 'll be like aw cant tell." ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... stirred up a man's blood like sea-bathing; and the whole thing was clean gone from me, and I was dreaming England, which is, after all, a nasty, cold, muddy hole, with not enough light to see to read by; and dreaming the looks of my public, by a cant of a broad high-road like an avenue, and with the sign on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... generally lie on the surface, and often consist of nothing more than a mere play upon words; so that, if to be a punster is to be a metaphysician, Marino is a poetical Heraclitus. But Johnson had caught the cant of the age, in which it was usual to designate almost any thing absurd or extravagant by the name ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... to by Mr. Digby Wyatt did not counteract that proposition. Modern and ancient forms of life might be different, nor could all men be judged by formal canons, but a true human heart was in the breast of every really great artist. He had the greatest detestation of anything approaching to cant in respect of art; but, after long investigation of the historical evidence, as well as of the metaphysical laws bearing on this question, he was absolutely certain that a high moral and religious training was the only way to get good fruits from our youth; make them good men first, and only ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... James Hamilton, in Dumfreis, Bernard Sanderson, John Levingstoun, James Bonar, Evan Camron, David Dickson, Robort Bailzie, James Cuninghame, George Youngh, Andrew Affleck, David Lindsay, Andrew Cant, William Douglas, Murdo Mackenzie, Coline Mackenzie, John Monroe, Walter Stuart Ministers; Archbald Marquesse of Argyle, William Earle Marshall, John Earle of Sutherland, Alexander Earle of Eglingtoun, John Earle of Cassils, Charles Earl of Dumfermeling, John Earle of Lauderdale, ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... things ordered, such as half a dozen scythes and stones, curry combs and brushes, weeding and grubbing hoes, and axes, and that now he must buy them in America at exorbitant prices. Not long afterward he wrote again: "I have received my goods from the Recovery, and cant help again complaining of the little care taken in the purchase: Besides leaving out half and the most material half too! of the Articles I sent for, I find the Sein is without Leads, corks and Ropes which renders it useless—the crate of stone ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... at a brisk trot, but she had easily kept pace with him. She also harnessed him into the sleigh with no difficulty. The animal seemed docile, and as if he were to belie his hard reputation. There was, however, a proud and nervous cant to his old white head, and he set his jaw stiffly against ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... spoke his own, and not the Nations sense. And tho he praised was by Shimei's Muse, The Jews of many Crimes did him accuse. Harim, a man like a bow'd Ninepence bent, Had tried all the ways of Government: Was once a Rebel, and knew how to cant; Then turn'd a very Devil of a Saint: Peevish, morose, and some say, prov'd a fool, When o're the Edomites he went to rule. When to his bent the King he could not bring, He fairly then went over to the King. Old Amalack, a man of cunning head, Once in the cursed School of ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... never yet seen a chaplain refuse his ration. And of the salt of the good God's earth are the chaplains. There was Major the Reverend John Pringle, of Yukon fame, whose only son Jack was killed in action after he had walked two hundred miles to enlist. No cant, no smug psalm-singing, mourners'-bench stuff for him. He believed in his Christianity like a man; he was ready to fight for his belief like a man; he cared for us like a father, and stood beside us in the mornings as we drank our stimulant. Again, I repeat if a man ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... to hear any cant about my father," cried Mark, changing colour a little. "Tell me what ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... 'that a single ray of it dissipates pain and care and melancholy from the person on whom it falls. In short,' says he, 'its presence naturally changes every place into a kind of heaven.' After he had gone on for some time in this unintelligible cant, I found that he jumbled natural and moral ideas together into the same discourse, and that his great secret ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... recommended me strongly to become a saka, or water-carrier. 'You are young, and strong,' said he: 'you have a good voice, and would entice people to drink by a harmonious cry. You have besides a great talent for cant and palaver, and for laughing at one's beard. The number of pilgrims who come to Meshed to perform their devotions at the tomb of the Imam is great, and charity being one of the principal instruments which they use for the salvation of their souls, they ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... hard earnings of the poor, on such occasions, but I do not know that the castle of Biberich was erected by any means so foul. The general denunciation of everything that does not happen to enter into our own system, has no more connexion with true republicanism than cant has to do with religion. Abuses of this nature have existed beyond dispute, and the public money, even among ourselves, is not always honestly or prudently expended; but these are the errors inseparable from human nature, and it is silly to quarrel with all the blandishments ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... CANT. Cant is a kind of affectation; affectation is an effort to sail under false colors; an effort to sail under false colors is a kind of falsehood; and falsehood is a term of Latin origin which we often use instead of ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... and so the new work is well introduced. Both Tennyson and Thackeray, it is said, got well taken notice of in this way by their comrades. But there was no plan at the bottom of it—nothing to constitute them a name. The Apostles were always inveighing against cant—always affecting much earnestness, and a hearty dislike of formalism, which rendered them far from popular with the high and dry in literature, politics, or religion. They were eyed with terror by the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... unceasing subterraneous fires at some great depth beneath those parts of this island; see on this subject Botanic Garden, Vol. II. Canto IV. l. 79, note. For an account of the noxious vapours emitted from volcanoes, see Botanic Garden, Vol. II. Cant. IV. l. 328, note. For the milder effects of central fires, see Botanic Garden, Vol. I. Cant. I. l. 139, ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... fatigued and disgusted with this cant:—"The Carnatic is a country that will soon recover, and become instantly as prosperous as ever." They think they are talking to innocents, who will believe that by sowing of dragons' teeth, men may come up ready grown and ready armed. They who will give ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... pause a moment and take full account of the idea, Arbitration, on the right hand and on the left? Noble and beneficent in its true outlines, it too may share, may even now be sharing, the liability of the loftiest conceptions to degenerate into catchwords, or into cant. "Liberty, what crimes have been wrought in thy name!" and does not religion share the same reproach, and conscience also? Yet will we not away ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... mercantile part of the people, the diction is in a great measure casual and mutable; many of their terms are formed for some temporary or local convenience, and though current at certain times and places, are in others utterly unknown. This fugitive cant, which is always in a state of increase or decay, cannot be regarded as any part of the durable materials of a language, and therefore must be suffered to perish with other things ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... in Belgium. If so, I like to think of him at a regimental mess, suggesting doubts, or, if that is an impossible breach of military discipline, keeping silence, when the loud-voiced major explains that the sympathy of the English for Belgium is all pretence and cant. ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... American republic. Their object was pursued with a cold-blooded disregard of all right, human and divine, worthy of the pagan brutality of the Roman Triumvirate. Prating about the "Constitution" with hypocritical cant, they trampled upon every safeguard of popular liberty, and at last, in defiance of even the forms of law, plunged the people of the Southern States into a war with the government, which, even if successful in securing a separation, ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride |
