"Humbug" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... succeed, I am sure, and you may make a great deal of money, but we don't need money. What we need is the happiness which we have always had until now. Now there will be companies, and patents, and lawsuits, and experiments, and people calling you a humbug, and other people saying they discovered it long ago, and all sorts of persons coming to see you, and you'll be obliged to go to all sorts of places, and you will be an altered man, and we shall never be happy ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... humbug me! I am not a court lady!" she cried hastily, almost petulantly, to cover the unwonted and unwelcome weakness; while, to make good the declaration and revindicate her military renown, she balanced herself lightly on the stone ledge of her oval hole, and sprang, with a young wildcat's easy, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... who were enamored by the Misses Bimpa were skeptical of this, and affirmed that it was a "humbug," but this question will be settled in the evening. Meanwhile, the commotion around the circus is increasing each moment. From among the long, low wooden buildings surrounding the canvas circus there comes the roar of the lions and elephant; ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... make me feel, eh?" said Kitty quickly. "That I've been in love with a man who didn't care a straw for me, and that I'm dying of love for him? And this is said to me by my own sister, who imagines that...that...that she's sympathizing with me!...I don't want these condolences and humbug!" ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... would have been all one to him. He'd have put off thinking about it until about an hour before, and then would have made all his arrangements and done the whole business quietly and respectably, without humbug, but without any flashness either. You couldn't put him wrong, or make him do or say anything ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... believer as to an unbeliever. And he who pretends to have found religion, holiness, the Holy Ghost, or whatever else he may call it, and can therefore no longer prevaricate against the law, is, to common-sense people, nothing but a sanctified humbug or ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... his circumlocutions are roundly called lies, and his silence is vilified as treachery. And on the strength of peccadillos, reprehensible in an author, but excusable in a son, the Anglo-Saxon race is accused of prudishness, humbug, pretentiousness, deceit, cunning, and bad cooking. Personally I think it was rash of Mr. Strickland, in refuting the account which had gained belief of a certain "unpleasantness" between his father and mother, to state that Charles Strickland in a letter written from Paris ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... a hint that, on arriving at Tripoli, there would be exhibited a good deal of fantazia, ("humbug[10]") by the health-office department. Accordingly, after we had been an hour in port, the health officer came alongside, and affected great surprise at our not having passports, and asked me, with great pomposity, what was my ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... Homburg vor der Hoehe, which, as was to be expected, passed off in a satisfactory manner. It should, nevertheless, be recalled to mind that the King expressed himself very ironically on the subject of The Hague Conference, which, he asserted, was a humbug. And Sir Charles Hardinge, who entered into negotiations with Secretary of State von Tschirschky, also voiced the opinion that the conference should offer no opportunity for serious interference with England's naval policy. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... given him marks enough to make him captain, just to show good fellows, like you and me, what a saint can do. It is all humbug! Why, he got more marks than Kendall, Gordon, Haven, and the rest of those cabin nobs, who are fit to enter the senior class in a college. I am satisfied that his merit-roll was doctored so as to make it come out ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... had great doubts whether a venture thus started by direct help and patronage of the fiend would succeed; and Amyas himself, disliking the humbug, told Ayacanora that it would be better to have told the tribe that it was a good deed, and pleasing ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... word Bombay says, either about Maula or the hut; for Maula, whose duty necessarily obliged him to take my servants before her majesty, had primed her with a lot of falsehoods on the subject; and she had a fondness for Maula, because he was a clever humbug and exceeding rogue—and sent Bombay back to fetch me, for nobody had ever dared ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... resolution now before the Senate, to speak modestly, as I look at it, with all due respect to the great men who met here to consider this matter, who deliberated for many days, and presented this as the result of their deliberations, is a cheat, a deception, a humbug—nothing that any State can take as a final settlement of the questions that are now giving trouble to this country, nothing that can settle permanently those difficulties. We must have something more definite, something more certain, or there can be no Union even of the States that ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... Nimrod, whose orthodox toes Are seldom withdrawn from the stirrup; Dr Humdrum, whose eloquence flows, Like droppings of sweet poppy syrup; Dr Rosygill puffing and fanning, And wiping away perspiration; Dr Humbug who proved Mr Canning The ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... pecuniary risks that no man can fairly be asked to run. And the healthier the world becomes, the more they are compelled to live by imposture and the less by that really helpful activity of which all doctors get enough to preserve them from utter corruption. For even the most hardened humbug who ever prescribed ether tonics to ladies whose need for tonics is of precisely the same character as the need of poorer women for a glass of gin, has to help a mother through child-bearing often enough to feel that he is not living ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... discouraged as you are, and the present government pleases me, because it has no principle, no metaphysics, no humbug. I express myself very badly. Moreover you deserve a different response, but I am ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... have then; but I wish you would just step across the yard, and see if that stupid ostler has rubbed them dry, as I told him. You understand those things, I know, Hurst—the fellows won't humbug you very easily; as to Hawthorne, I wouldn't trust him to see to any thing of the sort. Flora here knows more about a horse than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... to be: it is hard work—harder than any but a growing boy can understand; it requires attention, and you are not strong enough to attend to your bodily growth, and to your lessons too. Besides, Latin and Greek are great humbug; the more people know of them the more odious they generally are; the nice people whom you delight in either never knew any at all or forgot what they had learned as soon as they could; they never turned to the classics after they ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... is a vast amount of thinking which ought to be in the market. We hold our best thoughts and give our second best."... "We do a good deal of shirking in this life on the ground of not being geniuses. The truth is, there is an immense amount of humbug lurking in the folds of those specious theories about genius. Let a man or woman go to work at a thing, and the genius will take ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... youth, who seek By subtle snares the Infant's steps to trip, And catch the Minor in their harpy grip. To his Twelve Labours, against monsters grim, Who might have lived in safety but for him, To snare, to slay, to humbug, and to cozen, Herschelles, just to make a baker's dozen, Adds a Thirteenth! A wily, wicked wight, Dwelling in noxious nooks as dark as night, Beyond the radius of the housemaid's broom, And thence dispensing dire disgrace and doom Long time our homes hath haunted. Greedy Ghoul, As furtive ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... of a clergyman of private means who came to this parish as a curate; but he had given up "taking duty," because, he said, "it was all humbug reading prayers, and all that." He drove a tandem,' and smoked all day instead; nevertheless, he was the object of much and earnest prayer. He also happened to be at church the day I preached about the clock; and declared likewise that I ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... effectively work falsehood? Can they consequently be treated distinctively as the truth-builders? It is the INHERENT RELATION TO REALITY of a belief that gives us that specific TRUTH-satisfaction, compared with which all other satisfactions are the hollowest humbug. The satisfaction of KNOWING TRULY is thus the only one which the pragmatist ought to have considered. As a PSYCHOLOGICAL SENTIMENT, the anti-pragmatist gladly concedes it to him, but then only as a concomitant ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... "Just for hokkerben, to humbug them. I suppose he had oils rubbed on his heels. But when he had drawn the rats away and asked for his money, they would not give it to him. So then, what ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... sentimentality parade themselves on almost every page. For all his "Oh heavenses," "courageous little souls," and "ay de mis," he never once guessed the nature of his offence, never realized the beastliness of that moral and religious humbug which to himself seems always to have justified him in playing tyrant and vampire to a ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... gnomic aphorisms which constitute the stock-in-trade of all religious cheap-jacks, the bribe of future life, the sacerdotal tinge with its complement of mendacity, the secrecy of doctrine, the pretentiously-mysterious self-retirement, the "sacred quaternion," the bean-humbug . . . ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... not think I quite know myself, unless it was because I have been on my good behavior since you came, and, being a humbug, as I tell you, was forced to unmask in spite of myself. There are limits to human endurance, and the proudest man longs to unpack his woes before a sympathizing friend now and then. I have been longing to do this for some time; but I never like to disturb mother's ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... with some spice of caricature, in a mock defiance given to Francis Jeffrey, "King of Blue and Yellow," by the facetious Maginn, under his pseudonym of Morgan Odoherty: —"Christopher, by the grace of Brass, Editor of Blackwood's and the Methodist Magazines; Duke of Humbug, of Quiz, Puffery, Cutup, and Slashandhackaway; Prince Paramount of the Gentlemen of the Press, Lord of the Magaziners, and Regent of the Reviewers; Mallet of Whiggery, and Castigator of Cockaigne; Count Palatine of the Periodicals; Marquis of the Holy Poker; Baron ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... even-balance as humour. The schoolmaster without this humanising virtue never yet won your love and admiration, and to miss your affection and loyalty is to lose one of life's chiefest delights. You are as quick to detect the humbug who hides his mediocrity behind an affectation of dignity as was dear old Yorick, of whom you will read when you have got to know the sweetness of Catullus. This Yorick it was who declared that the Frenchman's epigram ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... "Psha;—congratulations! I hate such humbug. If you've no feelings about it, I'm sure that I've none. Indeed I don't know what's the good of feelings. They never did me any good. Are you ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... Not in the least. It proves the humbug of the Bimetallic position up to the hilt. Of course, you must assume, that the cannibals desire to dress in evening clothes. I confess that has to be considered, and then the question lies in a nutshell. There can't be two opinions ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... chiefly to disappear or to make disappear. Thus, a deserter "skyugled," and sometimes he "skyugled" a coat or watch. Slanganderin' - Foolishly slandering. Slasher gaffs - Spurs for cocks, with cutting edges. Slibovitz - A Bohemian schnapps. Slumgoozlin' - Slum or sham guzzling, humbug. Slumgullion - A Mississippi term for a legislator. So mit,(Ger.) - Thus with. Solidaten,(Ger. Soldaten) - Soldiers. Sonntag,(Ger.) - Sunday. Soplin - A sapling, young tree. Sottelet,(Ger. Gesattelt) - Saddled. Sound ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... old humbug! It's the truth. You ate till I was ashamed of you, and then you lay down to sleep about this time yesterday, and here you are now as sleepy as ever. If you don't get up I'll go and tell the doctor ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... verra real hell, Alton Locke, laddie—a warse ane than any fiend's kitchen or subterranean Smithfield that ye'll hear o' in the pulpits—the hell on earth o' being a flunkey, and a humbug, and a useless peacock, wasting God's gifts on your ain lusts and pleasures—and kenning it—and not being able to get oot o' it for the chains of vanity ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... presents from men and other ways of living and obtaining presents must be resorted to. Thus there will be a finer chance of reformation than ever there was before. To urge moral reforms, to talk sloppy nonsense about liberty, about the poor prostitute, police interference, and all that humbug; to seek cover under "the unequal action of the laws between men and women," or any other form of excuse, is willfully to falsify the position. For myself, I assert without a shadow of hesitation, that I would quite gladly be wrongfully accused ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... angry, and, taking Harry with me, went at once to the address the old rascal gave me, a dirty court out of Hanover Street No such person had ever lived there, and my white-haired saint was a humbug. Harry laughed at me, and Mamma forbade me to bring any more thieves to the house, ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... States in 1857 De Bow's Review, the leading financial journal of the South, declared: "The wealth of the South is permanent and real, that of the North fugitive and fictitious. Events now transpiring expose the fiction, as humbug after humbug explodes[655]." On March 4, 1858, Senator Hammond of South Carolina, asked in a speech, "What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? I will not stop to depict what everyone ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... these composite characters: he had much good and much cleverness in him; but he was absurd, and he afforded a subject of conversation to the two friends as they proceeded on their walk. "I wish there was less of fudge and humbug everywhere," said Sheffield; "one might shovel off cartloads from this place, and ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... take interest—that's the mischief; there isn't time to work—that's the truth! I shall scrape through the Trip, and then I shall have done with all this nonsense about the classics; it really is humbug, isn't it? Such a fuss about nothing. The books I like are those in which people say what they might say, not those in which they say what they have had days to invent. I don't see the good of that. Why should I work, when I ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... You must side with me actively, for your assistance is absolutely necessary to bring that mad girl to terms. I'm married to her. She's my wife. I must have control of this place at once; and I'll tolerate no farther opposition from her, or humbug from you. I've come now to tell you this ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... Belle, make up your mind, and let us be off to America; and leave priests, humbug, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... whose orthodox toes Are seldom withdrawn from the stirrup. Dr. Humdrum, whose eloquence flows, Like droppings of sweet poppy syrup; Dr. Rosygill puffing and fanning, And wiping away perspiration; Dr. Humbug, who proved Mr. Canning The ...
— English Satires • Various
... "It isn't humbug, Mr. Stacy, but a question of benignant morality, which it is every woman's duty to take up and hurl back, till she totters on the brink, martyr-like, between heaven and earth! Don't you think so, ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... good-for-nothing, and yet (if you'll understand me) be missed from a garden where there are ladders to fix and mazzard cherries to pick; and likewise, though liable to be grumbled at, a boy has his uses in the gathering of cockles. Though she knew him to be an anointed young humbug, there's no denying that Aunt Barbree had missed Nandy and his help. She was getting past fifty, and somehow the last ten days had reminded her of it. . . . The long and short of it was that, after a couple of hours fruit-picking—and it took ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "All humbug and nonsense," interrupted Mr. Middleton, angrily; "I only hope that he will soon make up his mind to give up all thoughts of you, ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... Then give my compliments to the doctor, you Barnabas, an' tell 'im to cheese it." 'Dolph—short for Godolphus—pricked both ears and studied the sky-line. Perceiving nothing there—not even a swallow to be chased—he barked twice (the humbug!) for sign that he understood thoroughly, and at once fell to new capers by way of changing the subject. Tilda became severe. "Look here, Godolphus," she explained, "this is biz-strict biz. You may wag your silly Irish tail, but that don't take me in. ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... poetry that came in her way, and copied books full of it; but she could no more have appreciated one of Milton's or Shakspere's smallest poems than she could have laughed over a page of Chinese. She liked to hear this and that popular preacher, and when her husband called his sermons humbug, she heard it with a shocked countenance; but was she better or worse than her husband when, admiring them as she did, she permitted them to have no more influence upon her conduct than if they had been the merest humbug ever uttered by ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... fool, Gerty!" said he, in downright anger. "You know it is no use your trying to humbug me. If you think the ways of this house are too poor and mean for your grand notions of state—if you think he has not enough money, and you are not likely to have fine dinners and entertainments for your friends—if ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... "an innocent!"—this a girl who had no mind to be formed! In that presence he could not be cynical; could not speak of Nature as a mechanism, a lying humbug, as he had done to the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... everyone concerned. Frankly, the Green family exasperate me," declared Mrs. Fielding. "I can put up with Jack. He's such a smart, good-looking boy, and he can drive like the devil. But I've no use for the other two, and never shall have. I think Green's a humbug. Is he going to join your picnic-party on ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... been respected, at any rate by its authors. It was not. A few weeks later the Premier ordered the publication of the text of the Treaty, although, in the meantime, it had not been signed by M. Poincare. "The excuse founded upon Article 8 was, therefore, a mere humbug," flippantly ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... wished not to hurt the fellow; but he called me a swindler. Well, I knew the man was in a passion, and I did not care. I only said, 'How dare you, Sir?' and I threw the piece of iron just to frighten him. Well, to be sure, the blackguard fell down like a bull, and I thought it was a humbug. I laughed and said, 'None of your gammon;' but he was dead. I think the thing must have struck something on the way, and so swerved against his head. I wished not to kill the fellow—I ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... Cuvier, Coleridge's hatred of him was more to our taste; for (though quite unreasonable, we fear) it took the shape of patriotism. He insisted on it, that our British John Hunter was the genuine article, and that Cuvier was a humbug. Now, speaking privately to the public, we cannot go quite so far as that. But, when publicly we address that most respectable character, en grand costume, we always mean to back Coleridge. For we are ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... definition of a ghost is just the reverse of truth; it makes one consist of a soul without a body, while really a specter, an illusion, a humbug of the eyesight and the touch, is a human body not vitalized through and ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... "The humbug then was in the tone my perfectly sincere speech took from herself. She gives things, I recognise, rather that sound. It's her weakness," he continued, "and perhaps even one may say her danger. All the more reason you should help her, as I believe you're supposed ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... as fashionable accomplishments. An author was, according to him, a man who turned out books as a bricklayer turns out houses or a tailor coats. So long as he supplied a good article and got a fair price, he was a fool to grumble, and a humbug ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... things sometimes, doctor, and though a great deal of it seems to be humbug, it is as you say—I know some are sincere, and I know there is a right way. I have been more than half tempted many times during the last few weeks to discover for myself the secret of power, but I am deterred by certain considerations, which you would, doubtless, think ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... for giving a thing a pretty turn! Youre a humbug, you know, Lord Summerhays. John doesnt know it; and Johnny doesnt know it; but you and I know it, dont we? Now thats something that even you cant answer; so be off with you for ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... I love the unhighschooled ways Ol' farmers hed when I was younger— Their talk wuz meatier and would stay, While book-froth seems to whet your hunger. For puttin' in a downright lick 'twixt humbug's eyes, there's few can metch it. An' then it helves my thoughts as slick, ez stret grained ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... travelling amongst Hindoos, his caste obtained him everything, while money alone availed me. I took him roundly to task for his treachery, which caused him secretly to throw away a leg of mutton he had concealed; I also threatened to expose the humbug of his pretension to caste, but it was then too late to procure more food. Having hitherto much liked this man, and fully trusted him, I was greatly pained by ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... rooms to let," commenced Miss Manning, a little timidly, for she knew that the house was a finer one than with her limited means she could expect to enter, and felt a little like a humbug. ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... them to be different. That is the sound way to begin. I say to myself, 'Here is a truly dreadful person! I would abolish and obliterate him if I could; but as I cannot, I must try to get him out of this mess, that we may live more at ease,' It is simple humbug to pretend to like everyone. You may not think it is entirely people's fault that they are so unpleasant; but if you really love fine and beautiful things, you must hate mean and ugly things. Don't let there be any misunderstanding," he said, smiling round the table. ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... an opportunity to represent the airy Gaul as something repulsive, degraded, and ungentlemanly—I have already noticed. Then George Cruikshank has never been able to surmount a vague notion that steamboats and steam-engines are, generically speaking, a humbug, and that the old English sailing craft and the old English stage-coach are, after all, the only modes of conveyance worthy the patronage of Britons. Against exaggerated hoop-skirts he has all along set his face, and seldom, if ever, condescends to delineate a lady in crinoline. His beau-ideal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... knew better than 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 ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... has written to Mrs. Thrale, without even mentioning the existence of this mob; perhaps at this very moment he thinks it "a humbug upon the nation," as George Bodens ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... of a humbug with it. I thought so, and the doctor endorses my ideas. He likes being ill and nursed and petted with the best food, so as to keep out of the hard work. I don't like the fellow a bit. There, you've talked enough now, so I'll ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... James writes in his usual frank and above-board manner: "If the Indians are to audit accounts against the Indians (agreeably to the Senate's alteration of the treaty), there will be a pretty humbug made of it; then he that has most whisky ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... large and filthy pocket-book, all with the gravity of Solomon. He then thanked me profusely, remarking that such little services were due between countrymen; shook hands with me, "for add lang syne," as he said; and took himself solemnly away, radiating dirt and humbug as he went. ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... prisoner, Hogginarmo sent a letter full of servile compliments and loathsome flatteries to King Padella, for whose life, and that of his royal family, the HYPOCRITICAL HUMBUG pretended to offer the most fulsome prayers. And Hogginarmo promised speedily to pay his humble homage at his august master's throne, of which he begged leave to be counted the most loyal and constant defender. Such a WARY old BIRD as King Padella was not to be caught by ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... man who is wretched at having left me. You will find what I may call the most penetrating cordiality about him; he is winning; he is chivalrous. To him, all women are madonnas. One must live with him long before we get behind the veil of this false chivalry and learn the invisible signs of his humbug. His tone of conviction about himself might almost deceive the Deity. You will be entrapped, my dear child, by his catlike manners, and you will never believe in the profound and rapid arithmetic of his inmost thought. But enough; let us leave him. I pushed indifference so far as to receive them ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... Frank, Smith, Crozier! Why, the thing is a farce! Not a man of them ever goes to church. 'Whereas, the Presbyterians are quite unable to assume any financial obligation in support of a minister.' Why, the whole outfit doesn't contribute a dollar a month. Isn't it preposterous, a beastly humbug! Who is this young whipper-snapper, Lloyd, pray?" Father Mike's tone was ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... told you, I feel considerable difficulty about from the part which we have both taken. With respect to the Finance plan, I feel convinced that it must end where it ought to have begun, in an appropriation of part of the Sinking Fund, and that this will be done with more or less disguise and humbug, but that no regard for consistency will be sufficient to prevent ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... stumbleth not." Yet all this was done in an honest, and, as I believe, a secretly humorous spirit of a serious nature, for Gordon was as opposed to cant and idle protestations as any man. There is a strikingly characteristic story preserved somewhere of what he did when a hypocritical, canting humbug of a local religious secretary of some Society Fund or other paid a visit to a house while he was present. Gordon remained silent during the whole of the interview. But when he was gone, and Gordon was asked what he ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... takee up anysing that Missee want,' said the Chinaman gallantly. 'Ah Moy velly, velly fond of Missee. He no come to Slunday-school at all if teacher no come too! Slunday-school is a great big bluff most allee time—it seem to me. Humbug, eh?' ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... you, Chang, my boy, is it?' said Joe. 'What! are you glad to have me, old chappie? No humbug about yer, are yer sure? ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... bending forward confidentially, "isn't it awfully dry and uninteresting? There! I wouldn't dare lisp it before my husband, but isn't there a good deal of—of—well, humbug, ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... lost my temper," said she, after they had sat a while in silence enjoying the ameliorating influence of the blaze, "but I do hate a humbug. We will let this stove stand here all summer to remind you that neither your house nor your wife is perfect, and to keep me warm when the ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... fury] What! That impostor! that humbug! that toadying ignoramus! Teach him my methods! my discoveries! You take one step in his direction and I'll wring your neck. [He lays hands on her]. ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... members of such an expedition are mere killers on a large scale, and to kill or to hunt a thing is to not know it at all. Further, the men in such expeditions are not hunters even. They are destroyers who destroy while keeping themselves in safety. They have their beaters. Their paid natives. Humbug! That's the only word to describe that kind of thing. Staged effects they have. Then they come back here to pose as heroes before a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... humbug! Yes, very possibly she is there before us. I have had a feeling that she would be for these ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... grateful for, and he regards a friendly move suspiciously. But he admires a master, and will humbly yield to almost any kind of tyranny, especially from one of his own race. The poorer classes rather like to be imposed upon in the same way as the Americans appreciate a humbug. ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... and your faculties turn in rebellion. I may be a hard taskmaster, but I strive to be a good one. When I am through with you, you will know architecture from the ground up. You will know its virtuous reality and you will know the fake and the fraud and the humbug. I will spare nothing—for your sake. I will stir up the cesspool to its utmost depths of stench, and also the pious, hypocritical virtues of our so-called architecture—the nice, good, mealy-mouthed, ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... that sort of school, because I have never yet lost my ancient suspicion touching that curious coincidence that the boy with four brothers to come always got the prizes. In fact, and short, I do not like that sort of school, which is a pernicious and abominable humbug, altogether. Again, ladies and gentlemen, I don't like that sort of school—a ladies' school—with which the other school used to dance on Wednesdays, where the young ladies, as I look back upon them ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... let me tell you that the world has very little to give. What can I do? Where can I turn? Oriel, if there be an empty, lying humbug in the world, it is the theory of high birth and pure blood which some of us endeavour to maintain. Blood, indeed! If my father had been a baker, I should know by this time where to look for my livelihood. As it is, I am told of nothing but my blood. ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... detached phrases of Clerambault's pamphlet and brandished them as an act of treason. A personal letter would not have satisfied his virtuous indignation; he chose a loud "yellow journal," a laboratory of blackmail despised by a million Frenchmen, who nevertheless swallowed all its humbug with open mouths. ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... To over-reach, or impose; also to steal.—Cant. —Biting was once esteemed a kind of wit, similar to the humbug. An instance of it is given in the Spectator: A man under sentence of death having sold his body to a surgeon rather below the market price, on receiving the money, cried, A bite! I am to be hanged in chains.—To ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... is exposed for sale in the market, are of the utmost benefit to the public. The bear is then a benefactor to the community, and when he pulls down and tears to pieces the rotten carcass of some gigantic humbug, strewing the highway with its remains, we cannot ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... many wrong and unmanly men about, then,' said Alaric. 'Look through the Houses of Parliament, and see how many men there have married for money; aye, and made excellent husbands afterwards. I'll tell you what it is, Charley, it is all humbug in you to pretend to be better than others; you are not a bit better;—mind, I do not say you are worse. We have none of us too much of this honesty of which we are so fond of prating. Where was your honesty when you ordered the coat for which you know you cannot pay? or when you ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... I was not more than eight or ten years old, when a rather awkward-looking greenhorn had come down from New Hampshire and made his appearance at the swimming- place. The boys, one after another, tried him by putting mocking questions or attempting to humbug him with some large story. He received it all with patience and good nature until one remark seemed to sting him from his propriety. He turned with great dignity upon the offender, and said, "Was that you that spoke, or was ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... to tell me if I'd raise her pay, she'd stop stealin' and—and raise some honest children." Mr. Killibrew threw back his head broke into loud, jelly-like laughter. "Why, don't you know, Peter, she's an old liar. If I gave her a hundred a week, she'd steal. And children! Why, the old humbug! She's too old; she's had her crop. And, besides all that, I don't mind what the old woman takes. It isn't much. She's a good old darky, faithful as a dog." He arose from his swivel-chair briskly and floated Peter out before him. "Tell her, if she wants a raise," he concluded heartily, "and ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... ken best what's been Between that door and you. It's crazy and old, But, it looks innocent, wooden-faced humbug: yet I don't trust doors myself; they've got a knack Of shutting me in. But you'll be snug enough In the other room: I'd advise you to lie down, And rest; you're looking trashed: and, come to think, I've a deal to say to the ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... to humbug those who are so eager to be humbugged as people are in this world of humbug—We show ourselves excessively ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... desirable. The illusion was very pleasant while it lasted; but—it is over. Ten days of real sea life have converted the "bright uncertainty of future joys" into a dark and decided certainty of future misery, and left me to mourn the incompatibility of poetry and truth. Burton is a humbug, Tennyson a fraud, I'm a victim, and Byron and Procter are accessories before the fact. Never again will I pin my faith to poets. They may tell the truth nearly enough for poetical consistency, but their judgment ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... we proceed; old Pere la Chaise cheek by jowl with the American Presidents; Cagliostro, who died before the word his career incarnated had become indispensable to the English tongue—the apotheosis of humbug; Marmontel, dear to our novitiate as royal leaders; and near to the original Pamela; Chateaubriand's ancestor the Marshal; Bisson going below to ignite the magazine, rather than "give up the ship;" and the battered war dog, with a single eye and leg, ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... fourth appearance. I very much wished you had been there; you would have seen that the public does not hate your friend. I appeared in a box, and the whole pit clapped their hands at me. I blushed, I hid myself; but I should be a humbug if I did not confess to you that I was sensibly affected. It is pleasant not to be dishonored in one's ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... disciplined army and navy and a well-filled treasury could not preserve itself when attacked by an unarmed, undisciplined, unorganized minority. All this talk about the dissolution of the Union is humbug, nothing but folly. We do not want to dissolve the Union; you ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... who are to blame.... You ought to have brought the captain here by main force.... He's a humbug, that's ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... Henderson; "what pangs of conscience it will suffer in the flames! Give it not the glory of such martyrdom. Walter," he continued, in a lower voice, "I hope that you'll have nothing to do with this humbug?" ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... of a trip to America," said Mr. Richard, cracking an egg. "I am sick of Europe. After all, what is the good of a man like me pretending to belong to 'an old family', with 'a seat' and all that humbug? Money is the thing now, my dear uncle. Hard cash! That's the ticket ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... that makes children distrust, even dislike them, and probably venturing to pinch her cheek or pat her on the shoulder into the bargain, accepted the situation with another type of smile—the Smile-that-children-expect. As a matter of fact, children hate it. They see through its artificial humbug easily. They prefer a solemn and unsmiling face invariably. It's the latter that produces chocolates and sudden presents; it's the stern-faced sort that play hide-and-seek or stand on their heads. The Smilers are bored at heart. They mean to escape at the first ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... not to be beaten. He had known for many years that Biddy was a kindly humbug. He knew that if he didn't now get rid of her Roscarna would become nothing more than a warren in which her innumerable relatives might swarm. He purged Roscarna of Joyces, Biddy included. He buried Jocelyn decently according to the ritual of the Church of Ireland, and ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... well! But I warn you that you mustn't reckon on me. No, not that! I'm in the detective service; and in the detective service I remain. Nothing doing. I've tasted honesty and I mean to eat no other bread. No, no, no, no! No more humbug!" ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... his great soul was not to be shaken by trifles! he looked around him, and solemnly ejaculated the word "Humbug!" then slinging the bridle across his arm, walked slowly on in the ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... was the equally grave reply. 'I'm saying only what I mean; it's no time for humbug now. Think it over, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... not, and he began to wonder whether it was not really his duty to report her. She was carrying the thing too far; it would not do at all any longer, this humbug with these cabbage-leaves ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... know me personally yelled with delight at the aspect of the evening; the Governor was beside himself, and poor Isaacs thought he was undone! Alas, it was I! A boy in the gallery cried in a loud tone, "It's all an infernal humbug," just as Dennis, waving his hand, commanded silence, and tried No. 4: "I agree, in general, with my friend the other side of the room." The poor Governor doubted his senses and crossed to stop him,—not in time, however. The same gallery-boy shouted, "How's your mother?" and ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... humbug who had the folly and indecency to pick up the name of Napoleon second-hand at a sale of old pledges, has been thrashed and is a prisoner. Except the Army of the West, and the division on the Mar road, which is commanded by an old woman, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which can instruct one to read the human countenance correctly; and some special circumstance must have roused the suspicions of these four persons so much as to cause them to make these observations, and they were not as usual deceived by the humbug of this skilled actor, a past master in ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... whims; will unhesitatingly accept your report of your own sensations and your hypotheses as to their cause; and, Esmeralda, when once your eyes behold that model man, be content, and go and take lessons of another, for either he is a pretentious humbug, careless of everything except his fees, or he is ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... into buying what neither he nor the public really cares for. If he does his best he may feel that he is as fairly earning his livelihood as his fellow workmen, the blacksmith and the stonecutter, and is as little dependent as they upon either charity or humbug. The best that government has done for art in France is the commissioning of the great decorative paintings of Baudry and Puvis. In this country, also, governments, national, State, or municipal, are patronizing ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... will have ceased to take any interest in the matter. What a humbug you are, Mr. Harding; one never knows when you are serious. But what has all this to do with that poor boy who has ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... of these writers. Beyle is an ignorant braggart, not only in music, but in art generally, and such esprit as his art criticisms exhibit would be even more common than it unfortunately now is, if he were oftener equalled in conceit and arrogance. The pillorying of a humbug is so laudable an object that the reader will excuse the digression, which, moreover, may show what miserable instruments a poor biographer has sometimes to make use of. Another informant, unknown to fame, but apparently more ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Unquestionably they ought. Ingratitude, we are told, is as the sin of witchcraft, and although the table of exports exhibits our fair island as hastening to a state of ruin, and the despatch tells us that "by the united influence of mock philanthropy, religious cant, and humbug," a reformed parliament was forced "to precipitate the slavery spoliation act under the specious pretext of promoting the industry and improving the condition of the manumitted slaves," still we maintain, and the reasonable ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the wonderful machinery there must be to produce such articles and would no doubt have thought the tools we had there were sufficient to make a clock. We carried on this kind of business for two or three years and did very well at it, though it was unpleasant. Every one knew it was all a humbug trying to stop the pedlars from coming to their State. We removed from Richmond to Hamburg, S.C., and manufactured in the same way. This was in 1835 ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... way we rule circumstances," said Jack dryly, sitting down in his own room, and taking up Carlyle. "What an amount of humbug is talked in ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... within himself of which he knew nothing, begin to assert themselves, and the man commonly reported to possess a strong will, is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. This factor, this man of business, this despiser of humbug, to whom the scruples of a sensitive conscience were a contempt, would now lie awake in the ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... rights with ourselves?" "I would, most certainly. Look at our great Declaration of Independence; look even at the constitution of our own Connecticut, and see what is said in these about liberty." "I regard all this talk about rights as mere humbug. The Bible is older than the Declaration of Independence, and there I take my stand. The Bible furnishes to us the armour of proof, weapons of heavenly temper and mould, whereby we can maintain our ground against all attacks. But this is true ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... the while the broad still moon stared down on them grim and cold, as if with a saturnine sneer at the whole humbug; and the silly birds about whom all this butchery went on, slept quietly over their heads, every one with his head under his wing. Oh! if pheasants had but understanding, how they would split their sides with chuckling and crowing at the follies ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... the concert," Deleah explained, pushing them across to him. "Ten-shilling ones. Poor Mr. Boult hates music. I heard him say once that he believed every one hated it, and that when they pretended to like it it was only affectation and humbug. What pleasure can he possibly get in giving us these tickets for which we ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... SLINKERS, is a polish'd, skarcastic writer. Folks in these parts will not soon forgit how he used up the "Eagle of Freedom," a family journal published at Snootville, near here. The controversy was about a plank road. "The road may be, as our cotemporary says, a humbug; but OUR aunt isn't bald-heded, and WE haven't got a one-eyed sister Sal! Wonder if the Editor of the "Eagle of Freedom" sees it?" This used up the "Eagle of Freedom" feller, because his aunt's head does present a skinn'd appearance, and his sister ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... old humbug! If you decoy us on a wild goose chase I shall feel like cutting one of your ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Newman, "if the old man turns out a humbug, you may do what you please. I wash my hands of the matter. For the girl herself, you may be at rest. I don't know what harm she may do to me, but I certainly can't hurt her. It seems to me," said Newman, "that you are very well matched. You are both ...
— The American • Henry James
... the house.' And, sure enough, the very first time I carried her up those stairs over there, all my fine, cranky, crotchety bachelor notions flew out of my head. I knew then, in a flash, that all my knowledge and all my queer ideas of life were just humbug! I had missed the Child in the House. Yes,"—his voice dropped with a strain of soft regret,—"I had missed many children in the house. James, I was born in that little room up there. The room I sleep in. And one day, please God, ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... may be asked, no genuine beggars? And the answer is, Not one. My old soldier was a humbug like the rest; his ragged boots were, in the stage phrase, properties; whole boots were given him again and again, and always gladly accepted; and the next day, there he was on the road as usual, with toes exposed. His boots were his method; they were the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and mate talking together in the friendliest way possible. That Hudson is a humbug; there is some mystery between him ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... am a humbug?" said Florence. A look came into her eyes which he could not quite fathom. It was a hungry look. They lit up for a moment, then faded, then an expression of resolve ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... this article ever will be printed," says ROBERT KEABLE, the English author of "Simon Called Peter." (It is). Mr. Keable, a minister from Africa, wrote of the war as he saw it in France, and in a way which offended people with mental blinders. He declares that the war quite completely knocked humbug on the head and bashed shams irreparably. "Rebels," says he, meaning those who speak their mind and write of things as they see them, "must be drowned in a ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... said the younger man blankly, "what a ridiculous old humbug it is! And how he used to frighten me in the old days with his confounded cavalry bluster! I rather think I will look him up: and I'll dine with him three times a week if he likes. Meanwhile, it's time for me to go and meet old Rainham, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... placidly, without saying a word; at length, after drawing at the pipe for some time rather vigorously, he removed it from his mouth, and emitting an accumulated cloud of smoke, he exclaimed in a slow and measured tone: 'As I was telling you just now, my good chap, I have always been an enemy of humbug.'" {35c} ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... annoyance of Brown's hastiness and dangerous concessions to the enemy.[468] Brown, however, impressed his contemporaries by his ability. Sydney Smith is probably reporting the current judgment of his own circle when he says[469] that in metaphysics Stewart was a 'humbug' compared with Brown. I certainly think that Stewart, whom I should be sorry to call a humbug, shows less vigour and subtlety. Brown, at any rate, impressed both the Mills, and his relation ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... From early manhood he had roughed life in the very roughest and wildest scenes of the wilderness, and was now returning to those scenes after a short visit to his native land. The doctor was a nondescript; a compound of gravity, fun, seriousness, and humbug—the latter predominating. He had been everywhere (at least, so he said), had seen everything, knew everybody, and played the fiddle. It cannot be said, I fear, that he played it well; but, amid the various vicissitudes ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... address to Mugs by a Humbug. That's what it ought to be called. I was looking forward to having a good crack with you the night, but sure a newspaper man need never hope to have ten minutes to himself. I've given Miss Squibb orders to have a good warm supper ready for you. That's a thing ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... her smile revealed Clara's failure to her, if she had not realized it before. She read there that the aristocratic and aesthetic additions which she had made to the guests Olive originally divined had not sufficed; the party remained a humbug. It had seemed absurd to invite anybody to meet two such little, unknown people as the Hubbards; and then, to avoid marking them as the subjects of the festivity by the precedence to be observed ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... say so well. Mere exaggerated language, as we have seen, is not strength; but if there is real strength in the criticism, and it is proportionate and appropriate, it will effect its purpose. It will free the genius, or it will crush the humbug. A good ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... that advertising is "unethical" among dentists as among physicians. Humbug and imposition are supposed to go inevitably with self-advertising by the methods used in selling shoes or automobiles. Therefore such advertising is prohibited. But what seems to be forgotten in this definition of ethics ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... interruption, a desecration, and a bore; to get married merely to go on as they were at present, would, in the eyes of Alfieri, have been a profanation of the poetry of their situation, a perfectly unnecessary piece of humbug. ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... thinks of believing, on a warm summer day, that the sun has a special liking for himself, and is looking so beautiful and bright all for himself. It is perhaps unjust to accuse the man, always overflowing in geniality upon everybody he meets, of being an impostor or humbug. Perhaps he does feel an irrepressible gush of love to all his race: but why convey to each individual of the race that he loves him more than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... is two-edged, for while it strikes at unselfishness it also strikes at selfishness, and at present we cannot easily conceive a time when "there is no self"; we should be more disposed to regard it as a time when there is much humbug. Yet for the individual this conception of the constructive power of love ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... months as they have been for her!" said the Rector, shaking his head. His face was very lugubrious, for though as a parson he was essentially a kindly, easy man, to whom humbug was odious, and who dealt little in the austerities of clerical denunciation, still he had his face of pulpit sorrow for the sins of the people—what I may perhaps call his clerical knack of gentle condemnation—and could ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... given over to robbery, to conquest, to vanity, to ignorance, to humbug, to the worship of ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford |
