"Quack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like a setter, with a double nose; That one for Erato, for Clio this; He flushes both—not his fault if we miss;— Judge of the painter's art, who'll straight proclaim The hue of any color you can name, And knows a painting with a canvas back Distinguished from a duck by the duck's quack;— This thinker and philosopher, whose work Is famous from Commercial street to Turk, Has got a fortune now, his talent's meed. A woman left it him who could not read, And so went down to death's eternal night Sweetly unconscious ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... without withdrawing them, until, losing his balance, he discovered that it was not quite so easy to go aloft with his hands in his pockets. In fact, there was no getting up his hands, even when all hands were turned up. He had another peculiarity, which was, that he had taken a peculiar fancy to a quack medicine, called Enouy's Universal Medicine for all Mankind; and Mr Pottyfar was convinced in his own mind that the label was no libel, except from the greatness of its truth. In his opinion, it cured everything, ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... warriors—left no posterity behind them; or has the presumption of General von Mack imposed upon the judgment of the Counsellors of his Prince? This latter must have been the case; how otherwise could the welfare of their Sovereign have been entrusted to a military quack, whose want of energy and bad disposition had, in 1799, delivered up the capital of another Sovereign to his enemies. How many reputations are gained by an impudent assurance, and lost when the man of talents is called upon to act and the fool ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... caw, caw." There was no need of looking to see who that was. Peter Rabbit knew without looking. Mrs. Quack knew without looking. Just the same, both looked up. Just alighting in the top of a tall tree was Blacky the Crow. "Caw, caw, caw, caw," he repeated, looking down at Peter and Mrs. Quack and Mr. Quack and the six young Quacks. "I hope I am not interrupting ...
— Blacky the Crow • Thornton W. Burgess
... good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come. The world has outlived much, and will outlive a great deal more, and men have contrived to be happy in it. It has shown the strength of its constitution in nothing more than in surviving the quack medicines it has tried. In the scales of the destinies brawn will never weigh so much as brain. Our healing is not in the storm or in the whirlwind, it is not in monarchies, or aristocracies, or democracies, but will be ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... And I say: what are all his vapourings and fatidical croonings on the tripod of pseudo-prophecy as compared to Anna Karenina? There is implicit drama, implicit morality in its noble pages, and a segment of the life of a nation in War and Peace. With preachers and saviours with quack nostrums the world is already well stocked. Great artists are rare. Every day a new religion is born somewhere—and it always finds followers. But art endures, it outlives dynasties, religions, divinities. It is with Tolstoy ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... North, as you may remember. Grafton came in from Kent and invested Marlboro' Street. He himself broke the news to Mr. Carvel, who took to his bed. Leiden was not in attendance, you may be sure, but that quack-doctor Drake. Swain sent me a message, and I killed a horse getting here from New York. But I could no more gain admittance to your grandfather, Richard, than to King George the Third. I was met in the hall by that crocodile, who told me ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... is perhaps the only quack doctor extant who greedily swallows his own medicine and foolishly imagines that ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... of abasement of life, the knowledge is used, by both him and them, to teach what constitutes its essential elevation; and by the very coarseness and vulgarity of the materials employed we measure the gentlemanliness and beauty of the work that is done. The quack in morality will always call such writing immoral, and the impostors will continue to complain of its treatment of imposture, but for the rest of the world it will still teach the invaluable lesson of what men ought to be from what they are. We cannot learn it more than enough. We cannot ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... the wags, who in the early freshness of the journey had cried, "Quack, quack," when they went through the water, are now becoming rare and gloomy; gradually the jokers are damped down. The rain begins to fall heavily. The daylight dwindles, and the confusion that is space contracts. The last lingering light welters ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... doctor happened to be a misanthrope. He was not aware that in the Materia Medica of Nature's laboratory there is a substance called "joy," which sometimes effects a cure when all else fails—or, if he did know of this medicine, he probably regarded it as a quack nostrum. ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... weather was splendidly bright, and the sun shone on all the green trees. The Mother Duck went down to the water with all her little ones. Splash! she jumped into the water. "Quack! quack!" she said, and then one duckling after another plunged in. The water closed over their heads, but they came up in an instant and swam capitally; their legs went of themselves, and there they were, all in the water. The ugly gray Duckling ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... The advertising quack who wearies With tales of countless cures, His teeth, I've enacted, Shall all be extracted By terrified amateurs: The music-hall singer attends a series Of masses and fugues and "ops" By Bach, interwoven ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... the forfeit. But I never believed in Burr's talent for conspiracy. He is too sanguine and visionary. He desires power, office, and emolument—rewards for his henchmen before they desert him; but I believe he'd go—or get—no farther, and the country is strong enough to stand a quack or two; while, if ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... compromises of party warfare gives. Among other sallies of his splenetic humor it is related, that Mr. Fox having, upon one occasion, retired from the hustings, and left to Sheridan the task of addressing the multitude, Tooke remarked, that such was always the practice of quack-doctors, who, whenever they quit the stage themselves, make it a rule to leave their merry-andrews behind. [Footnote: Tooke, it is said, upon coming one Monday morning to the hustings, was thus addressed by a pietism of his opponent, not of a very reputable character—"Well, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... Rhymer—we thought we saw evidence of a warm and generous sympathy with the poor and the wronged, a desire to ameliorate human suffering, which would have done credit to the "philanthropisms of Exeter Hall" and the "Abolition of Pain Society." Latterly, however, like Moliere's quack, he has "changed all that;" his heart has got upon the wrong side; or rather, he seems to us very much in the condition of the coal-burner in the German tale, who had swapped his heart of flesh ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... improvement, as a resort, over any south coast town we had yet seen. It is not gay, it is rather sedate, and certainly eminently respectable and dignified. Giant wheels, hurdy-gurdies, and quack photographers are banished from its beach and esplanade, and one may stroll undisturbed by anything but perambulators and bath-chairs. Its sea-front walk of a couple of miles or more is as fine as any that can be found from ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... time that I made the harrowing discovery that I had been working evil on myself ... through an advertisement of a quack in ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... eyes sparkling with indignation. "Sir Arthur, I have so often warned you of the knavery of that rascally quack, that I really wonder you should quote him ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... so happened that the poor girl was attacked by a disorder in her right hand, which ate into the two bones belonging to the little finger and the next. [1] Owing to her father's carelessness, she had been treated by an ignorant quack-doctor, who predicted that the poor child would be crippled in the whole of her right arm, if even nothing worse should happen. When I noticed the dismay of her father, I begged him not to believe all that this ignorant doctor had said. He replied that he had ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... 'It was not Dr. Quack, was it?' I asked; 'because, poor fellow, he came to an untimely end the other night,—had his head bitten off, and his body was then dragged across the yard, as I suppose ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... de chicken coop, crowin' foh day; Horses in de stable goin' 'Nay, nay, nay;' Ducks in de yard goin' 'Quack, quack, quack!' Guineas in de tree ...
— The Arkansaw Bear - A Tale of Fanciful Adventure • Albert Bigelow Paine
... political squibs in verse to the Examiner, one being the 'Quack Doctor's Proclamation,' to the tune of 'A Cobbler there was,' and another called 'The ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... Buckingham, the king absolutely refused to abandon his favourite, against whom all kinds of rumours were astir. Nothing was too bad to be believed of him, and popular fury spared neither him nor his friends. Dr. Lamb, an astrologer and quack doctor, was set upon in the city as being one of the latter, and was nearly done to death one night whilst returning home from supper. None would receive into his house the almost lifeless body of the necromancer—the duke's devil, as he was called—who supplied him with love potions ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... stye, or like hungry curs of all sorts of mis-begotten and degenerate breeds. I believe that the famous Mr. WEBB HALL, who was then a practising attorney in Bristol (of the firm of Jarman and Hall); I believe that this profound agricultural quack of 1821, was, in 1812, one of the formidable phalanx which was ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... know that water-fowl that cries, Quack! Quack!? Full often have I seen a waggish crew 30 Fasten the Bird of Wisdom on its back, The ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... so far as my knowledge goes the United States stands out as preeminently the "Land of Contrasts"—the land of stark, staring, and stimulating inconsistency; at once the home of enlightenment and the happy hunting ground of the charlatan and the quack; a land in which nothing happens but the unexpected; the home of Hyperion, but no less the haunt of the satyr; always the land of promise, but not invariably the land of performance; a land which may ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... two children, mournful very, Seeing neither bridge nor ferry; Take us upon your white back, And row us over, quack, quack!" ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... placed in by a blethering idiot, who can argue with equal volubility on either side, but with more conviction when in the wrong. Bull must have been drunk, and drunk on stupid beer, when he placed his heart strings between the finger and thumb of a quack like that, who, whatever the result, whether we get Home Rule or not, has ruined the ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... earth, professors of all sorts prowled round me feeling for an unhealthy spot in me on which they could fasten. The doctors of medicine bade me consider what I must do to save my body, and offered me quack cures for imaginary diseases. I replied that I was not a hypochondriac; so they called me Ignoramus and went their way. The doctors of divinity bade me consider what I must do to save my soul; but ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... de Pompadour treated Saint-Germain as a person of consequence. 'He is a quack, for he says he has an elixir,' said Dr. Quesnay, with medical scepticism. 'Moreover, our master, the King, is obstinate; he sometimes speaks of Saint-Germain as a person of ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... on his way back from the pond of Paddy the Beaver deep in the Green Forest. He had just seen Mr. and Mrs. Quack start toward the Big River for a brief visit before leaving on their long, difficult journey to the far-away Southland. Farewells are always rather sad, and this particular farewell had left Peter with a lump in ...
— The Adventures of Lightfoot the Deer • Thornton W. Burgess
... conjuror. It had the effect of introducing among the higher order of artists habits of nice and accurate workmanship in executing delicate pieces of machinery; and the same combination of mechanical powers which made the steel spider crawl, the duck quack, or waved the tiny rod of the magician, contributed in future years to purposes of higher import,—the wheels and pinions, which in these automata almost eluded the human senses by their minuteness, reappearing in modern times in the stupendous mechanism ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... leggings, crackled beneath my feet, showering the brown earth with blossoms, and the brake bowed and billowed along my path. From tufts of heath rabbits scurried away through the bracken, and among the swamp grass I heard the wild duck's drowsy quack. Once a fox stole across my path, and again, as I stooped to drink at a hurrying rill, a heron flapped heavily from the reeds beside me. I turned to look at the sun. It seemed to touch the edges of the plain. When at last I decided that it was useless to go on, and ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... Dr. Drake wid 'is college waddle An' Latin inscriptioms on 'is noddle, Would part wid 'is gait an' 'is shimmerin' back To perscribe a crowin'-powder an' nuver say "Quack!" But he ain't by 'isself in dat, in dat— But he ain't by ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... "That rascally quack would make my fortune were he to stay in Edinburgh," said the graduate; "this is the seventh nervous case I have heard of his making for me, and all by effect of terror." He next examined the composing draught ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... experienced the appearance of the secretion from Cowper's glands and wholly misunderstanding its nature have feared that they were losing some vital fluid. This misunderstanding of the nature of this fluid makes the young man especially subject to the misrepresentations of the advertising quack and charlatan who allege that he is losing vital fluid and will, if not treated, undergo general debility and loss of procreative power. This brief explanation of the significance of the secretion of Cowper's glands will protect the young ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... a low ebb. Only two clergymen accepted my offer to come and help hoe my potatoes for the privilege of using my vegetable total-depravity figure about the snake-grass, or quack-grass as some call it; and those two did not bring hoes. There seems to be a lack of disposition to hoe among our educated clergy. I am bound to say that these two, however, sat and watched my vigorous combats with the weeds, and talked most beautifully ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... a speech delivered at a mass meeting of from fifteen to twenty thousand men at Waterford, in September, 1883, Michael Davitt said, "It was better for all concerned that the truth should be plainly and bluntly told, in order that English quack statesmen might be saved the trouble of proposing half measures to satisfy the Irish people.... Let the landlords of Ireland resign their unpopular positions, follow the example of Captain Boycott, and nobody would molest them, but if they did not, they would ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... trammels of the Faculty, and gone to the Water Cure in spite of the warnings of their medical men, and their friends' kind predictions that they would never live to come back; and hypochondriac men, who have tried all quack remedies in vain, and who have come despairingly to try one which, before trying it, they probably looked to as the most violent and perilous of all. And the change of life is total. You may have ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... 'Spectator Club' met at 'Button's Coffee-house,' and there the 'Spectator Papers' had their beginnings. There Addison, Steele, Pope, and others, spent their leisure hours. Some of the London clubs of the eighteenth century had very queer names!" she continued. "There was the 'Ugly Club,' the 'Quack Club,' the 'Beefsteak Club,' the 'Split-Farthing Club,' and the 'Small Coalmen's Music Club,' for example. Here, at the Cheshire Cheese, Goldsmith often came with Dr. Johnson. Can't you imagine the two sitting over at that table, with ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... August we had all sorts of music to wake us up for an early breakfast. I nearly laughed a rib loose watchin' them baby ducks waddle around solemn, every one with that cut-up look in his eye. Say, they're born comedians, ducks are. I'll bet if you could translate that quack-quack patter of theirs you'd get lines that would be a reg'lar scream on ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... and the vile priest, the detestable Balue. If I ever get out of this danger, I will tear from his head the Cardinal's cap, though I pull the scalp along with it! But the other traitor is in my hands—I am yet King enough—have yet an empire roomy enough—for the punishment of the quack salving, word mongering, star gazing, lie coining impostor, who has at once made a prisoner and a dupe of me!—The conjunction of the constellations—ay, the conjunction.—He must talk nonsense which ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... to be an alarmist, for there are imaginary invalids among the poor as well as elsewhere, but more frequently the poor neglect the earlier symptoms of sickness altogether, or else dose themselves with patent medicines. The quack doctors who advertise in the daily papers draw much of their custom from the very poor, who are also large consumers of cure-alls and proprietary medicines. We have seen how children's physical defects can pass unnoticed at home, and this is the case in a less degree with the ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... What if the top of the medical profession was composed of men who devoted themselves to fighting the public welfare for life! We have that kind of doctors—but we call them quacks. We don't allow 'em in our medical societies. We punish them by ostracism. But the quack lawyers who devote themselves to skinning the public—they are at the head of the bar. They are made judges. They are promoted to supreme courts. A damn nice howdy-do we're coming to when the quacks run a ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... of a man in your position going to an infernal quack like Professor Cyrus! Professor? Humph! The man's ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... "Some impudent quack," said the General, "who would force himself into business by bold assertions. Doctor Tourniquet and Doctor Lancelot are ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... you will admit that if he is not the greatest of all discoverers, he must be a dangerous quack. His process might kill you or make you insane. It must ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... a Christian teacher to a quack—"who promises to heal the sick, on condition that they keep from intelligent practitioners, lest his ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... man with an intense desire to understand life. As he says in this book: "A human being who is a philosopher in the first place, a teacher in the first place, or a statesman in the first place, is thereby and inevitably—though he bring God-like gifts to the pretence—a quack." But while he may dissociate himself from any clique, and disclaim any fixed opinion that might earn for him the offensive and fiercely rejected label, he nevertheless presents to us one unchanging attitude ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... would solemnly waddle to a certain hole in the fence well known to himself, and, by dint of much pushing with his strong, yellow feet, would squeeze himself through, and rejoin his companion with many a guttural quack and flirt of his tail. If "Chung" desired to take a bath, he would make for the brook, where "One Lung" would soon join him, always remaining, however, on the bank, where he would strut about and crow continuously. On one occasion, a chicken-hawk ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... he transmitted to two families, wholly and entirely to his own exertions. Though he bore a name already distinguished in the annals of the English landed gentry, he had to make his own fortune under conditions of some difficulty. He was born in North America, and began life, it is said, as a quack doctor. There is also a legend of his having made a first marriage with a person of obscure birth in America. Yet such was the charm of his address, the beauty of his person, the dignity of his bearing, and the vigour of his will, that he succeeded in winning the hands ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... The boding shepherd heaves a sigh, For, see! a rainbow spans the sky: The walls are damp, the ditches smell, Closed is the pink-eyed pimpernel; Hark! how the chairs and tables crack; Old Betty's joints are on the rack; Loud quack the ducks, the peacocks cry, The distant hills are seeming nigh. How restless are the snorting swine,— The busy flies disturb the kine. Low o'er the grass the swallow wings; The cricket, too, how loud it sings: Puss on the hearth with velvet paws, Sits smoothing o'er her ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... commencement of his acquaintance with the famous Arise Evans, a Welsh prophet: whose "Echo from Heaven," &c., 2 parts, 1652, 12mo., is a work noticed by Warburton, and coveted by bibliomaniacs. Yet one more quack-medicine entry: "March 11, 1681. I took early in the morning a good dose of Elixir, and hung three spiders about my neck, and they drove my ague away—Deo gratias!" p. 359. It seems that Ashmole always punctually kept "The Astrologer's ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... and common sense to enable them to put this thing quite out of their homes, so for every ailment, for spleen and spasms, for tooth ache and toe ache, for head ache and heart ache, this wonderful remedy was used. This greater than all quack medicines, for some of these do stop at some point in their healing power, but this was thought to be never failing in its virtue to alleviate, if not to cure. Women in the last few years have been wiser than the doctors, for while they looked only at alleviation ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm
... a flavouring of Almonds. The regular Practitioners, however, grew jealous of him, and beginning to ask him impertinent questions about his Diploma, he was fain to give up Legitimate practice, and to pick up a dirty Living as a mere Quack, and Vendor of Pills, Potions, Salves, Balsams, and Elixirs of Life. Then he came down in the world, owing to a Waiting Gentlewoman whose fortune he must needs tell, and whom, 'tis said, he cozened out of three quarters' ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... register, do you?" said the landlord in answer to Barnes' inquiry, as the latter entered the office, the walls of which were covered with advertisements of elections, auctions, sales of stock, lands and quack medicines. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... bindings of the sixteenth century; several volumes of Chinese, marbled, and other papers; early almanacks; a quantity of engravings of towns, costumes, trades, furniture, etc.; curious advertisements of tobacco, tea, quack medicines, etc.; specimens of fine writing; and many other miscellaneous ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... "Quack! quack!" said the duck; and all the babies quacked too. Then they looked all around. The mother let them look as much as they liked, for green is ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... Tansey bawled: "Yew low cuss, git outer this here taown! Yew air meaner 'n pussley an' meaner 'n quack-root, an' we air bound tew run yew ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... and most of it does seem to me to be dully conceived. In the absence of penetrating criticism, any impudent industrious person may set up as an "expert," organise and direct the confused good intentions at large, and muddle disastrously with the problem in hand. The "expert" quack and the bureaucratic intriguer increase and multiply in a dull-minded, uncritical, strenuous period as disease germs multiply in ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... he do to you?" Henrietta asked, frowning as if she were enquiring into the operations of a quack doctor. ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... approached the river mouth, they saw extending from the bank a salmon trap, and even to-day, the Indians will show at Lup-se-kup-se some old rotten sticks, which they affirm formed part of that same trap. The land was green, the wild duck's quack was heard among the reeds which edged the river bank, while flocks of geese were feeding on the grass which grows thickly upon the tidal flats, the ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... long time, when the moon had climbed high above the trees, and everything was very quiet, that a long, slim fox stole softly beneath the fence and came creeping—creeping across the barn yard. Mamma Goose was so frightened that she almost said "Quack! quack!" out loud, but still she kept her eyes on the big white cock, and that was ...
— The Wise Mamma Goose • Charlotte B. Herr
... the operation with the utmost fortitude; but, to everyone's joy, it was found there was no necessity for it; she had been deceived by a villainous quack, who knew too well how to make a wound hideous and painful, and had continued her delusion for ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... always imagine that they have something the matter, they are invariably the willing prey of quack doctors and every new ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... the Projected Villages, which afforded an ocular demonstration to all who saw them of the practicability of Mr. Owen's whole scheme. He comes into a room with one of these documents in his hand, with the air of a schoolmaster and a quack doctor mixed, asks very kindly how you do, and on hearing you are still in an indifferent state of health owing to bad digestion, instantly turns round and observes that 'All that will be remedied in his plan; that indeed he thinks ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... in his song, and settle down again among the blooms, to be hurried away almost immediately by a new rapture of music. He had the volubility of an Italian charlatan at a fair, and, like him, appeared to be proclaiming the merits of some quack remedy. Opodeldoc-opodeldoc-try-Doctor-Lincoln's-opodeldoc! he seemed to repeat over and over again, with a rapidity that would have distanced the deftest-tongued Figaro that ever rattled. I remember Count Gurowski saying once, with that easy superiority ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... quite functionless shareholder. He may be a heavy-eyed sensualist, a small-minded leader of fashion, a rival to his servants in the gay science of etiquette, a frequenter of race-courses and music-halls, a literary or scientific quack, a devotee, an amateur anything—the point is that his income and sustenance have no relation whatever to his activities. If he fancies it, or is urged to it by those who have influence over him, he may even ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... of those before his day, "it is certain that men did believe and think them true." If mankind has found the supply of all their spiritual wants within themselves, would they have clung in this way to the pretense of external revelations? Is not the abundance of quack doctors conclusive proof of the existence of disease, and of ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... means of hygiene and proper feeding. They think there is some fakery about it, for their professors, books and experience have taught them otherwise. They consider the views of the natural healer unworthy of serious attention and often call him a quack, which epithet closes the discussion. They are ethical and do not wish to be mired by ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... in an altered voice; "that thought is an insult. And even now, who knows if she really loves? does she know herself? She is enamored of genius, of the soul and intellect of that seller of verses, that literary quack; but she will study him, we shall all study him; and I know how to make the man's real character peep out from under that turtle-shell of fine manners,—we'll soon see the petty little head of his ambition and his vanity!" cried Butscha, rubbing his hands. "So, unless mademoiselle ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... to be found out, and reported to George Bickley, a miserable quack and 'confidence man,' a person long familiarly spoken of by the press as a mere Jeremy Diddler, but who has been a useful tool to shrewder men in managing for them this precious Order. The member is to do all in his power to 'build up a public sentiment in his State ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... illustrate the jokes these so-called doctors play upon the common people. In a country town was a "quack" doctor, who professed to be a "head examiner," giving people charts according to their "bumps," a fad which has many followers. "This, ladies and gentlemen," said the lecturer, holding out a small skull, "is the skull ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... and recovered his strength, succeeded to the agitation of this scene. "There is another thing," murmured Mazarin; "there are empirics and charlatans. In my country, those whom physicians abandon run the chance of a quack, who kills them ten times but saves them a ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Mrs. Quack preaching to me," cried Charlie, smiling to himself as he stood some little way in the pond. As he spoke, however, one of the stones of the pier slipped, and Charlie stumbled ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... based on the gleaming granite and stainless steel building dedicated to research in agronomy which bore the legend "Johnson Foundation" over the entrance. No one hearing him pronounce "magic formula" putting into the word all the contempt of the scientist for the quack, could ever put credence in the base slander. "What was this 'magic formula' you caused to be put ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Arcadia and its age of gold quickly vanished when the actual or fancied evils of the day were exposed to the lash. The abuse of the practice of taking tobacco flattered the prejudices of the king; the quack and the dishonest lawyer were stock butts of contemporary satire; Colax and Techne, the he and she coney-catchers, have maintained their fascination for all ages. Pistophanax, the disseminator of false doctrine, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... would, the same things happened. He was solicited to cure "all the ills that flesh is heir to." He was not aware (any more than the reader very possibly may be) that in some parts of England the country people have an idea that a quack doctor rides a piebald horse; why, I cannot explain, but so it is, and that poor Dumps felt to his cost. Life became a burthen to him; he was a marked man; he, whose only wish was to pass unnoticed, unheard, unseen; he, who ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... sprains and what was best for them—how some said this, and some said exactly the opposite, and how she herself, after trying all the remedies, had finally been cured by some stuff which folks called a quack medicine, but she thought none the worse of it for that. Miss Unity sat patiently and politely listening to all this, ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... him on the part of the public arose chiefly from the two causes to which I have referred—from the facts that he is neither a man of wealth nor a quack; but these are insufficient to account for the whole effect. No small portion of it is attributable to the very marked idiosyncrasy of Mr. Hawthorne himself. In one sense, and in great measure, to be peculiar ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... Chinook vocabulary, which was originally the trade language of all the tribes employed by the Hudson Bay Company in collecting furs, most of the words resemble in sound the objects they represent. For example, a wagon in Chinook is chick-chick, a clock is ding-ding, a crow is kaw-kaw, a duck, quack-quack, a laugh, tee-hee; the heart is tum-tum, and a talk or speech or sermon, wah-wah. The language was of English invention; it took its name from the Chinook tribes, and became common in the ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... property, in the shape of jewelry and dresses; that they had lived upon the sale of these things for some time; and that the husband, when the wife's means were exhausted, had turned strolling-player for a year or two. Abandoning that pursuit, he had next become a quack-doctor, first in a resident, then in a vagabond capacity—taking a medical degree of his own conferring, and holding to it as a good traveling title for the rest of his life. From the selling of quack medicines he had proceeded to the adulterating of foreign wines, ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... That wounds nine miles point-blank wou'd solder; By skilful chemist, with great cost, Extracted from a rotten post; But of a heav'nlier influence Than that which mountebanks dispense; 230 Tho' by Promethean fire made, As they do quack that drive that trade. For as when slovens do amiss At others doors, by stool or piss, The learned write, a red-hot spit 235 B'ing prudently apply'd to it, Will convey mischief from the dung Unto the part that did the wrong, So this did healing; ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... when pigs spoke rhyme And monkeys chewed tobacco, And hens took snuff to make them tough, And ducks went quack, ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... the yearly invoice sent to London always ordered such drugs as were needed,—ipecacuanha, jalap, Venice treacle, rhubarb, diacordium, etc., as well as medicines for horses and dogs. In 1755 Washington received great benefit from one quack medicine, "Dr. James's Powders;" he once bought a quantity of another, "Godfrey's Cordial;" and at a later time Mrs. Washington tried a third, "Annatipic Pills." More unenlightened still was a treatment prescribed ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... taint of the money they hope to receive clouds such mind or intuition as they may possess, and it follows that their judgments and prognostications have precisely the same value as the nostrums of the quack medicine-vendor. They are very different from the Highlander who, coming to the door of his cottage or bothie at dawn, regards steadfastly the signs and omens he notes in the appearance of the sky, the actions of animals, the flight of birds, and so forth, ...
— Tea-Cup Reading, and the Art of Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves • 'A Highland Seer'
... Coleridge (at whose Gamaliel feet he sits weekly), rather than to that of all the men living. This from him, the great dandled and petted sectarian, to a religious character so equivocal in the world's eye as that of S. T. C., so foreign to the Kirk's estimate,—can this man be a quack? The language is as affecting as the spirit of the dedication. Some friend told him, "This dedication will do you no good,"—i. e., not in the world's repute, or with your own people. "That is a reason for doing it," ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... his business, and was never heard of for months. Then he turned up in Sussex with a little girl, who had been saved from diphtheria by tracheotomy, and some unknown quack. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... fact, we were richer. The captain had the usual sailor's provision of quack medicines, with which, in the usual sailor fashion, he would daily drug himself, displaying an extreme inconstancy, and flitting from Kennedy's Red Discovery to Kennedy's White, and from Hood's Sarsaparilla to Mother Seigel's Syrup. And there were, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ammoniated tinc. of quack 1/2 oz., honey 1/2 oz., camphor water 6 oz., mix and cork. Take two tablespoonsful three or four times a day in chronic rheumatism; rub well the ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... go. It is written on the pages of the records of man's progress. Likewise must the quack doctor and ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... of water-fowl in the marsh; and there was something else which Mildred did not seem to like. While George was quack-quacking, and making himself as like a little goose as he could, Mildred softly called to Ailwin, and beckoned her to the hedge. Ailwin came, swinging the great spade in her right hand, as easily as Mildred ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... "Quack, quack, quack!" came the reply, and when I reached the entrance hall, I found them all clustered together at the foot of the staircase, their beads cocked on one side, awaiting a decision of their drake before undertaking ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... Quack advertisements injurious. Preface. Quadrupeds have no sanguiferous lochia, xxxviii. 2. —— have nothing similar to the yolk of egg, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... 'Proteus Hill:' Sir John Hill, a celebrated character of that day, of incredible industry and versatility, a botanist, apothecary, translator, actor, dramatic author, natural historian, multitudinous compiler, libeller, and, intus et in cute, a quack and coxcomb. See Boswell's account of the interview between the King and Dr Johnson, for a somewhat ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... ducklings were very, very ill, Their mother sent for Dr. Quack, who gave them each a pill, But soon as they recovered, the first thing that they did Was to peck the Ancient Gander, till he ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... was the first to perceive his mistress, and, as he approached, received a sharp rebuke from her for allowing the fellow to produce his quack medicines; and, at the same time, she desired him to request Madame Esperance to come to her immediately on business. Eustacie, who always had a certain self-willed sense of opposition when the Duchess showed herself peremptory towards her, at first began to make ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... intruders; but no one heeded his look. At a signal from the Dominican a servant had brought in a pair of candelabra, and in their commonplace light the cabalistic hangings, the magician's appliances and his fantastically-dressed attendants looked as tawdry as the paraphernalia of a village quack. Heiligenstern alone survived the test. Erect, at bay as it were, his black robe falling in hieratic folds, the white wand raised in his hands, he might have personified the Prince of Darkness drawn ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... come when the rising generation must be thoroughly instructed in this matter. That quack specific "ignorance" has been experimented with quite too long already. The true method of insuring all persons, young or old, against the abuses of any part, organ, function, or faculty of the wondrous machinery of life, is to teach them ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... pleased and satisfied the people I really know not, but certain it is that innumerable attendants crowded about their doors every day. And if but a grave fellow in a velvet jacket, a band, and a black coat, which was the habit those quack-conjurers generally went in, was but seen in the streets the people would follow them in crowds, and ask them questions as ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... his left hand a canvas banner, upon which were painted six or eight pictures, coarsely designed like those found in strolling fairs. In his right he waved a little switch, with which he would every now and then strike his banner, like a quack retailing his wares. ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... nearly all crimes, vices, cruelties, and other evil acts are due to ignorance or to mental disease. I do not hate the man who calls me an infidel, a liar, a blasphemer, or a quack. I know that he is ignorant, or foolish, or ill-bred, or vicious, and ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... defunct to animation. Failing in this, he throws on the body a piece of leather, or some other article, as a present, which in some measure appeases the resentment of his relatives, and preserves the unfortunate quack from being maltreated. During the nine days the corpse is laid out, the widow of the deceased is obliged to sleep along side it from sunset to sunrise, and from this custom there is no relaxation even during the hottest days ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... It seemed almost inhuman to kill the sweet little songster, particularly as it was the only creature I saw in the Arctic that uttered a pleasant note. All other sounds were such as the scream of the hawk and the gull, the quack of the duck, the yell of the wolf, the "Ooff! ooff!" of the walrus, or the bark of the seal—all harsh and unmelodious, save the tones of this sweet little singer. Nothing but starvation or scientific research could justify the slaughter of one of these innocents. I believe I shut my eyes when ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... you eat," and a fourth (a man of wide experience) bade him marry the worst-tempered woman he knew. Then they all gave him pills to upset his stomach; but such was its power that it assimilated them. Despairing of these, he consulted a Quack, and received the directions which brought him to Springhaven. And a lucky day for him it was, as he confessed for the rest of his life, whenever ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... defines with admirable exactitude. Much quotation has made his description of the young Lord and Counsellor Silvertongue sufficiently familiar. But he is equally good in his vignette of the younger woman in the episode at the Quack Doctor's, a creation which he rightly regards as one of Hogarth's most successful efforts. "Nothing," he says, "can be more striking than the contrast between the extreme softness of her person and the hardened indifference of her character. ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... proximity by the dropping of a false nut, or the fragments of the shucks rattling upon the leaves. Or, again, after contemplating you awhile unobserved, and making up his mind that you are not dangerous, he strikes an attitude on a branch, and commences to quack and bark, with an accompanying movement of his tail. Late in the afternoon, when the same stillness reigns, the same scenes are repeated. There is a black variety, quite rare, but mating freely with the gray, from which he seems to be ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... on the shadowy flood, Save rare sharp stridence (that means "quack"), Low amber light in Ariel track Athwart the ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various |
