"Barefaced" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "gents' furnishing-goods" shop in Montreal, introduced into high finance in New York, organizing with the assistance of the great Rockefeller-Stillman-Rogers bank a copper corporation with shares at a par value of five dollars. There never was such barefaced exploitation as was used on behalf of this proposition. It was advertised as a bonanza; investors were guaranteed against loss by an assurance that their stock would double and treble in price, and that the company would stand ready at all times to buy back shares at cost. The ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... gift enterprises, and other schemes for swindling the public, and to instruct postmasters to return to the writers, with the word "fraudulent" written or stamped on the outside, all registered letters directed to such persons or firms. Prior to the enactment of this law, the most wholesale and barefaced operations were conducted by professional cheats, mainly through the facilities afforded by the mails, with almost absolute impunity. Letters addressed to bogus firms were indeed forwarded from the offices of delivery to ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... satisfaction in buying tickets in the national lottery there was, that like the Louisiana Lottery it was honestly conducted. Our incredulity upon the subject was laughed to scorn, but since then the Havana Lottery has been detected in a series of the most barefaced swindlings that can be imagined. As to that of Louisiana, we never for a moment have believed in there being anything "honest" about it. A concern which can afford to offer the State government ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... is," said Matthew Maitland, "it's a downricht barefaced murder, an' I would smash this damn'd cantrip o' Black Jock's. I ken that he'll get a' that is said at this meetin', an' maybe I'll get the same dose; but I think it's aboot time somethin' was done to put an end to his capers," and so ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... recommendation. We hear on all sides complaints—and I hold them to be just complaints—of the abominable high prices of English books. Thirty shillings, thirty-six shillings, are common prices. The thing is too barefaced. His Majesty's Stationery Office set an excellent example. They sell an octavo volume of 460 closely but well-printed pages, provided with an excellent index, for one shilling and elevenpence. There is not much editing, but the quality of ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... the Greek Kostolo so much gaudy impudence and barefaced roguery that, in spite of the fact that the main concern of these pages is with women, I am constrained to add his portrait to the sketches I have made in illustration. He is of the gallery in which are Jingle and ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... To take our extant specimens of Satyr-plays, for instance: in the Cyclops we have Odysseus, the heroic trickster; in the fragmentary Ichneutae of Sophocles we have the Nymph Cyllene, hiding the baby Hermes from the chorus by the most barefaced and pleasant lying; later no doubt there was an entrance of the infant thief himself. Autolycus, Sisyphus, Thersites are all Satyr-play heroes and congenial to the Satyr atmosphere; but the most congenial of all, the one hero who existed always in an atmosphere of Satyrs and the Komos until ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... The Directory is obliged to act cautiously with this large group, so well supported by public opinion, and, accordingly, not to govern a la Turk. So they respect, if not the spirit, at least the letter of the law, and not to exercise a too barefaced influence on local elections. Hence most of the local elections remain free, so ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... than ask advice—that is, direct, barefaced advice—of a foremast hand, or any other than a quarter-deck officer, I would go round to the whole thousand, and examine them one by one until we got the right haven. But there is such a thing as coming at an opinion without manifesting ignorance, and I will manage to rouse all there ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... Even barefaced slander attacks her sex at a great advantage; but here was slander with a face of truth. "The strong-minded woman" had not yet been invented; and Margaret, though by nature and by having been early made mistress of a family, she was resolute in some respects, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... sorts of barefaced capers about the room, "astonishing the natives," as she was pleased to say; and Growling was looking on in amused wonder at this specimen of vulgar effrontery, whom he had christened "The Brazen Baggage" the first time he ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... has been carried on in so barefaced and extensive a manner, that the chief adventurer, usually a merchant or trader, who supplies the axe and canoemen with pay in his shop goods, cent. per cent. above their value, ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... of the Shylock in my composition; only give me a few kind words and I shall be satisfied. Now, once for all, Dr. Asbury, if you treat me to any more barefaced flattery of this sort, I nurse ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... we don't mind him,' Saddlebank reassured us; but we heard ominous voices, and perceived people standing over a prostrate figure. Then we heard a voice too well known to us. It said, 'The explanation of a pupil in your charge, Mr. Catman, being sent barefaced into the town—a scholar of mine-for sage and onions ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Hazmereir (laughing-stock) Metomentodo (busybody) Paternoster (Lord's Prayer) Quitaipon (ornament for headstall of draught beasts) Sabelotodo (presumptious man) Sinvergueenza (barefaced man) ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... unintelligible to the stranger. Into this book, which is examined by the judge of the district every month, one may enter complaints against the peasant or publican; but they do not seem to fear it, for the guide who accompanied me to the fall of Rykanfoss endeavoured to cheat me twice in the most barefaced manner, by charging me six-fold for the use of the saddles and the fetching of the horse. When I threatened to inscribe my complaint in the book, he seemed not to care, and insisted on his demand, till I was obliged to pay him. On my return to Mael, I kept my word, asked for the book, and ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... dare deny your past in so barefaced a manner?" cried Napoleon, still holding his fist so close to Talleyrand's cheek that he almost ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... It was barefaced robbery, of course, but he had not the inclination to stick at trifles. That the note had some bearing on the case he was investigating he felt certain. There was only one way to get it at once, and that was to steal. Anywhere else but in Grave Street he would have waited to ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... It is too barefaced to take Dr. Percy's charming song, and by means of transposing a few English words into Scots, to offer to pass it for a Scots song.—I was not acquainted with the editor until the first volume was nearly finished, else, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... very Beginning of my Preface. Laws and Government are to the political Bodies of civil Societies, what the vital Spirits and Life it self are to the natural Bodies of animated Creatures. From the same Preface he would have shew'd those barefaced Advocates for all Manner of Wickedness, the small Encouragement they were like to get from my Book; and as soon as it appear'd, that by Liberty they meant Licentiousness, and a Privilege to commit the ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... the sinking-fund, when purchased for the city, was something to which he never gave any personal attention whatsoever. His bookkeeper, Mr. Stapley, attended to all that. He did not know, as a matter of fact, that they had not been deposited. (This was a barefaced lie. He did know.) As for the check being turned over to the Girard National Bank, that was fortuitous. It might just as well have been turned over to some other bank if the ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... Emma, "That wouldn't surprise me. People are forever promising to arrive on a certain train and then strolling in several days later with the barefaced announcement that the time table ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... that "of all the defective and shabby legislation which has been presented to me, this is the worst and most inexcusable." He once sent a scolding message to the State Senate, in which he said that "the money of the State is apparently expended with no regard to economy," and that "barefaced jobbery has been permitted." The Senate having refused to confirm a certain appointee, he declared that the opposition had "its rise in an overwhelming greed for the patronage which may attach to the place," and that the practical effect of such opposition was to perpetuate "the practice of unblushing ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... along, come along, wake up." A hundred, a thousand times this monotonous order was repeated, and then the grey curtain faded and she was lying on the bed, her head throbbing, her eyes hot and prickly, and two men were looking down at her, one of them a big barefaced man with a coarse ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... world, and the absolute fulfilment of the purpose of God. Now obviously this belief was not based on experience. The poor world, to do it justice amid all its misdoings, has never lent itself to any such barefaced deception as that. No doubt it shrieked against the doctrine then, as loud as it has always shrieked, so that even a Posidonian or a Pythagorean, his ears straining for the music of the spheres, was sometimes forced to listen. And what was his answer? ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... should be a little depressed at the thought of her first fall from virtue, even when her husband's atrocities have set her free? Do you suppose that I have no soul, no beliefs, no religion? Your glee this evening has been really too barefaced; you have paraded me odiously. Really, a schoolboy would have been less of a coxcomb. And the ladies have dissected me with their side-glances and their satirical remarks. Every woman has some care for her reputation, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... cheaper article, and at a more uniform and regular price. But it was the frauds, the violations of law, of which I did complain; not smuggling, in the common sense of that practice, which has something bold, daring, and enterprising in it, but mean, barefaced cheating, by ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... against the king. The colonial orators and newspaper writers affirmed then, as they have affirmed since, that, up to the day of Lexington, no one had a thought of firing a shot against the Government. A more barefaced misstatement was never made. Men do not carry off cannon by scores, and accumulate everywhere great stores of warlike ammunition, without a thought of fighting. The colonists commenced the war by assembling ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... stock-in-trade of the respectable shopkeeper next door, or robbing warehouse porters as they pass under his window, or, to shorten the catalogue, in his swindling everybody he possibly can, it only remaining to be observed that, the more extensive the swindling is, and the more barefaced the impudence of the swindler, the greater the rapture and ecstasy of the audience. Now it is a most remarkable fact that precisely this sort of thing occurs in real life day after day, and nobody sees the humour of it. Let us illustrate our position by detailing ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Romish priests claimed powers quite as extraordinary, and palmed off upon a credulous, superstitious people stories quite as silly and ridiculous as anything recorded in these pages. Indeed, so barefaced and shameless were their pretensions in some instances, that even their better-informed brethren were ashamed of their folly, and their own archbishop publicly rebuked their dishonesty, cupidity and chicanery. In proof of this we place before our ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... do you? You tell that grub yonder to send away old friends! Of course, you are become quite genteel, you fool! Did one ever meet with such barefaced ingratitude? Because the fellow has swindled himself into two fine rooms, his former associates are no longer good enough for him! But you have reckoned without your host, my boy, as far as I am concerned; I am not to be got rid of ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... Fred, now losing all control of himself. "It wasn't a trade at all! It's piracy! It's highway robbery! It was a barefaced ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... I had no qualms about him. For a man of his age to do a thing like that seems to me really deplorable. And the barefaced evasiveness of his evidence! He simply could not account for his movements during the evening at all. When I asked him what he had been doing at 9.21, and where, he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... was so angry at such a barefaced lie that she caught Topsy and shook her. 'Don't tell ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin, Young Folks' Edition • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... advertisement the show could possibly have had, and the enterprising owner saw his opportunity to get out fresh bills, telling about the havoc of the storm, and announcing that these beasts of prey that had been at liberty were now all safely secured again—which Toby and his chums knew was a barefaced lie, for the men were still hunting along all the roads and the woods within ten miles of town—and "could be seen in the wonderful menagerie that formed a part of the grand aggregation," and so the announcement ran on, after the customary flamboyant manner ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... incident of the kind would now no longer surprise me. From a long series of observations I have come to the conclusion that the great majority of the Russian peasants, when dealing with the authorities, consider the most patent and barefaced falsehoods as a fair means of self-defence. Thus, for example, when a muzhik is implicated in a criminal affair, and a preliminary investigation is being made, he probably begins by constructing an elaborate story ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... from Macedonia. A serious episode occurred at Pola, where on November 5 an Italian squadron arrived and demanded the surrender of the ships. The Yugoslav commander succeeded in sending by wireless a strong protest to Paris against this barefaced violation of the agreement. The Italian commander, Admiral Cagni, likewise sent a protest, but Clemenceau upheld the Yugoslavs. They were absolutely masters of the ex-Austro-Hungarian fleet; it rested solely with them either ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... confident that he did not long for an ally. And when Split stepped out from behind the portieres, with a barefaced pretense of having just come through the long French window from the porch, he straightway invited her to go to the circus that evening ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... happiness of seeing me; and the old chief was told, in my hearing, how many good things I had said since I came into his territories, all tending to his honour and my credit. This is a species of barefaced flattery to which we are all doomed to submit in our intercourse with these native chiefs; but still, to a man of sense, it never ceases to be distressing and offensive; for he can hardly ever help feeling that they must think him a mere child before they could venture ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... so!" replied the scholar, shaking his head somewhat doubtfully; "but the Greeks are most barefaced liars, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... frankly declared that there were not sufficient provisions and water on board to allow of our proceeding to Alexandria, but that he must make for the harbour of Limasol in Cyprus. I was exceedingly angry at this barefaced fraud, and at the loss of time it would occasion me, and offered all the opposition I could. But nothing would avail me; I had no written contract, and the rest of the company offered no active resistance—so to ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... the Kaiser's dominions by the route from the town of Luxemburg to Treves, one came of a sudden upon a colossal detraining station that was not quite completed, fulfilling no conceivable peaceful object and dumped down on the very frontier—anything more barefaced it would be difficult to conceive. Treves itself, three or four miles on, constituted a vast railway centre, and three miles or so yet farther along there was its counterpart in another great railway centre where there was no ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... the road that they both feared something was amiss, and the bird flew out a little way in the air to meet it. Not far off, however, it met a dog on the road who had fallen on the poor sausage as lawful booty, and had seized and swallowed it. The bird charged the dog with an act of barefaced robbery, but it was in vain to speak, for the dog said he had found forged letters on the sausage, on which account its life ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... emancipation of the country quite as much at heart as any Liberal. It was the Conservative Nacional that in a leading article of March 29th in 1901, under the head of "Vicious Customs," called attention to the crowds of place-hunters who invade the public offices after a change of ministry, and to the barefaced impudence of some of their claims for preferment. "The remedy is in the hands of the advisers of the Crown," it continued. "Let them shut the doors of their offices against influence and intrigue, keep Empleados of acknowledged competence ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... the time glowing accounts of its "inaugural dedication"; but universities are so common in this country that it has become a little wearisome to read of ceremonies of this sort. Mr. Henderson made a modest reply to the barefaced eulogy on himself, which the president pronounced in the presence of six hundred young men and women of various colors and invited guests—a eulogy which no one more thoroughly enjoyed than Carmen. I am sorry to say that she refused to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Madame de Bergenheim," thought Lambernier, with the barefaced impudence of his kind; "if I were to tell him what I know, my vengeance would be in good hands, without my taking the trouble ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... could only set your letter down as a subterfuge," resumed the earl—"a false, barefaced plea, put forth to conceal your real motives, and I told Carlyle so. I inquired how it was he had never detected any secret understanding between you and that—that beast, located, as the fellow was, in the house. He replied that no such suspicion had ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... still very often revolting to honest men. But there is some excuse for them; they act on behalf of nations, who have to look to themselves for protection and can rarely afford to be generous and aboveboard. But so barefaced a violation of faith to an individual before the eyes of the world would no longer be tolerated, not even in the name ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... was never an implacable, enemy. Ney was sincere, honest, blunt even: so far from flattering, he often contradicted him on whose nod his fortunes depended. He was, with rare exceptions, merciful to the vanquished; and while so many of his brother marshals dishonoured themselves by the most barefaced rapine and extortion, he lived and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various
... return, only he carried the matter a little farther—telling me plainly that he would not only withdraw his own custom from me, but do his endeavour to deprive me of the custom of those of his friends who dealt with me, who were of the same political opinions with himself. This I thought barefaced enough; and I daresay you will agree with me, my friends (said the melancholy ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... so enraged at this barefaced scheme to bar his just claim, Johnny's bail sureties being found equally unsubstantial, that he resolved to arrest Johnny's person. The officers arrived at Johnny's house to serve the writ, and found him sitting at his luncheon ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... gentlemen in the whole of the United States, have been imposed upon by an individual who (I have been told) faintly resembles me as far as personal appearance is involved. Yet how this person, who is, I regret to say, but a common, vulgar ignoramus, could have the barefaced effrontery to address an intelligent audience either in his own or an assumed character, I can not comprehend. Needless to say I shall at once take steps to learn the truth, and the impostor shall be made to suffer the extreme penalties of the law providing for the punishment of such ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... classify briefly, that each of us may know where he belongs. First, there is the deliberate lie. This species needs no particular definition. All are acquainted with it, all have met it, some have uttered it. You all know it when you see it; it is barefaced and shameless; it reeks with the mire of falsity and is foul with the slime of the pit infernal. This lie contains not an atom of truth, is tinctured not with a grain of fact, but is a full-blooded, thoroughbred, out and ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... waiting for the spring. At Ta-chiao (7,500 feet), where I stayed for my first alfresco meal at midday, the man—a tall, gaunt, ugly fellow, pockmarked and vile of face—told us he was a traveler, and that he had been to Shanghai. This I knew to be a barefaced lie. He voluntarily explained to the visitors, gathered to see the barbarian feed, what condensed milk was for, but he went wide of the mark when he announced that my pony,[Z] hog-maned and dock-tailed (but Chinese still), was an American, as he said I was. A young mother near ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... (and I may tell you an over-nice sense of honour has been a drawback I've had to struggle against all my life), the question with me is this: Is it not my plain duty to step in and put a stop to this topsy-turvy state of things, to show you up as the barefaced young impostor you are, and restore my unhappy brother-in-law ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... "But the barefaced fashion in which she hunts down that wretched young Ronayne," says Mrs. Fitzgerald, "is dreadful! You can't defend that, Gertrude. I quite pity the poor lad,—drawn thus, against his will, into the toils of an enchantress." Mrs. Fitzgerald pauses after this ornate and strictly original ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... about his probings with skill, questioning her in a roundabout way, trying to learn by means of inference. But after this, he let himself go, and put a barefaced question. The subject once broached, there was no further need of concealment, and he flung tact and prudence to the winds. He could not forget—he was goaded on by—the look she had given him, as ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... rascal in his passage through Ludgate, during the Lord Mayor's procession. On the other hand, the doctor with great warmth alleged, that those officers ought to suffer death, or banishment at least, for having plundered the people in this manner, which was so impudent and barefaced, as plainly to prove they were certain of escaping with impunity, and that they were old offenders in the same degree of delinquency. He said, that the greatest man in Athens would have been condemned to perpetual exile, and seen his estate confiscated for public use, had he dared ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... I'm imposing on Miss Lovell's good-nature in the most barefaced fashion," she said apologetically. "But I honestly couldn't resist the suggestion ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... trees, unless pushed to extremities by finding no branches within reach of shears fastened to long poles. In the interests of robbery, they did as little harm as they could; although, during the last years of Madame's life, the habit of cutting wood became more and more barefaced. On certain clear nights not less than two hundred bundles were taken. As to the gleaning of fields and vineyards, Les Aigues lost, as Sibilet had pointed out, not less than one ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... and at this figure the world-renowned tragedian, McKean Buchanan, bought a commanding interest and prepared to quit the stage once more—he was always doing that. And then it transpired that the mine had been "salted"—and not in any hackneyed way, either, but in a singularly bold, barefaced and peculiarly original and outrageous fashion. On one of the lumps of "native" silver was discovered the minted legend, "TED STATES OF," and then it was plainly apparent that the mine had been "salted" with melted half-dollars! ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... lady. "No, thanky'! You can buy a great deal prettier things than that in any of the fancy stores for less money than the things cost to make it with, let alone the lost time! No, ma'am! If I must waste all the days of my life, let it be in honest, barefaced idleness, like I'm a-doing of now, and not in pretending to work—playing at work, like you ladies here! I beg all your pardons! I never meant no offense, but I'm bound ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... a stab in the back. It means that those skunks are trying to do by lying what they couldn't do by bribery. It means that while we're thousands of miles away they are trying to gull the public and get other ball players to jump their contracts by a barefaced lie like this. I wish I had hold of the fellow who's doing this—I'd make ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... light in the shifty eyes of Boltonwood's most prominent citizen was part fear, part appeal, that he, Denny Bolton, whose name in the estimation of that same village stood for all that was at the other extreme, would confirm and support his barefaced lying statement. It was more than merely fantastic; and yet, at that, sitting there in the dark, Young Denny still found something in the recollection that was amusing—far more amusing than he had imagined anything so simple ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... mast-head—as long as a man might take to go from London to Bath in a stagecoach; I had lost all my meals; and these poor fellows, to save me from further punishment, had voluntarily exposed themselves to a flogging at the gangway by telling a barefaced falsehood in my defence. Had I not supported them, they would certainly have been flogged, and I should have lost myself with every person aboard; I therefore came to that paradoxical conclusion on the spot, namely, that, as a man of honour and a ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... live without rambling through the same continental roads, which they libel for their roughness every year; the same hotels, which they libel for their discomforts; and the same table-d'hotes, which they libel as the perfection of bad cookery, and barefaced chicane—pronounced that the love of travel was the imperial impulse. The politicians of the clubs—who, having nothing to do for themselves, manage the affairs of all nations, and can discover high treason in the manipulation of a toothpick, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... the slightest allusion to the "increase and multiply;" and constantly lamented the extreme fragility of her constitution; to which her athletic bony frame gave so determined a lie, that her hearers were struck dumb with the barefaced assertion. Miss Tavistock had kept up a correspondence with an old schoolmate, who had been taken away early to join her friends in India, and had there married. As her hopes of matrimony dwindled away, so did her affection for her ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... unless he was short of sermon material. One unfortunate, indeed, ruined his chances at once by a long petition for those in danger on the sea—availing himself with some eloquence of the sympathetic imagery of the 107th Psalm—for this effort was regarded as not only the most barefaced padding, but also as evidence of an almost incredible blindness to circumstances. "Did he think Kilbogie wes a fishing village?" Mains inquired of the elders afterwards, with pointed sarcasm. Kilbogie was not indifferent to a well-ordered prayer—although its palate ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... were you," said he, returning it, "I would frame this letter as a good specimen of a barefaced fraud." ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... irritating him against himself. It was an acknowledgment which would have satisfied most women, but it did not satisfy her. She declared her intention of keeping the letter for fear he would cease his exertions; and heedless of the effect produced upon him by the barefaced threat, proceeded to inveigh against his brother for the very love which made her union with him possible; and as if this was not bad enough, showed at the same time such a disposition to profit by whatever worldly good the match promised, that Franklin ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... he began to say things, to pay her the barefaced, far from subtle, compliments that had served him once or twice before on similar occasions (if any occasion could be called similar). Addressed to her, they seemed somehow inadequate. He said that, of course, ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... "I'm not a bit afraid—though I don't know whatever you'll think of me, Mr. Brent, asking advice from a stranger in this barefaced fashion!" ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... well worthy of republication in its entirety. It remained for the Edinburgh Review, in one of those ignorant and scurrilous articles with which it periodically outrages truth and good taste (No. 535, July, 1886), to state, "Cazotte published his Suite des Mille et une Nuits, a barefaced forgery, in 1785." A barefaced forgery! when the original of twenty eight tales out of thirty four are perfectly well known, and when sundry of these appear in MSS. of "The Thousand ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... it is my wedding-day. Oh, pray send the lady to me; she can't be all stone, and my misery might melt a stone." He listened for an answer, he prayed for an answer. There was none. Once in a mad-house, the sanest man is mad, however interested and barefaced the motive of the relative who has brought two of the most venal class upon the earth to sign away his wits behind his back. And once hobbled and strapped, he is a dangerous maniac, for just so many days, weeks, or years, as the hobbles, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... water. If he tries to pipe my water—" The pause was not a threat; it implied the Mormon's doubt of himself. "Then Dene is on the march this way. He's driven some of Marshall's cattle from the range next to mine. Dene got away with about a hundred head. The barefaced robber sold them in Lund to a buying company from ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... respective literary shades, went forth preaching peace and good will between the Saxons on the one side of the Atlantic and their so-called American cousins on the other. With an audacity the most barefaced and unaccountable, upon every possible occasion, opportune or otherwise, they wore the olive branch at their button-hole, and described in periods the most eloquent, the identity of blood and interests which characterized ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... of the Fleet should cut a hole through the replication, and put the plaintiff's head through the hole and let it hang about his shoulders with the written side outwards, and lead the plaintiff bareheaded and barefaced round about Westminster Hall, and show him at the bar of all the courts, and so back to the Fleet.—Abridged from Spence's Equitable Jurisdiction, vol. i. ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... blood betrayed by narrow eyes and high cheek-bones—flooded our table-d'hote with the gossip of pensioni at Capri, Castellamare, Pompeii, Sorrento, and Salerno,—the giddiness of all the widows, the cunning of the young girls, the wickedness of the wives, and the barefaced or clever intriguing of husband-hunting mammas. All that year, as we quietly slipped from one Mediterranean pensione to another, we met and recognized the heroes and heroines of our Brazilian's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... is the whole story, foolish as it is, of this child and this virgin; and it is upon the barefaced perversion of this story that the book of Matthew, and the impudence and sordid interest of priests in later times, have founded a theory, which they call the gospel; and have applied this story to signify the person they call Jesus ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... doing anything but sitting down and crying in it seemed to me quite preposterous; but the committee took a different view of the matter, and praised the Lecture Theater as a perfect ballroom. The Secretary's apartments were two garrets, asserting themselves in the most barefaced manner, without an attempt at disguise. If I had intended to do more than earn my first quarter's salary, I should have complained. But as I had not the slightest intention of remaining at Duskydale, I could afford to establish a reputation for ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... The barefaced and extensive pension frauds exposed under the direction of the courageous and generous veteran soldier now at the head of the Bureau leave no room for the claim that no purgation of our pension rolls was ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... which have given us most satisfaction, we should, although with some hesitation, name the admirable chapters which Mr. Parton has devoted to Franklin's diplomatic labors in England and France. In none of his good works has that great man been more exposed to calumny, or treated with more barefaced ingratitude by those who profited most by them, than in bringing to light the dangerous letters of Hutchinson and Oliver. Even within the last few years, the apologetic biographer of John Adams repeats the accusation of moral obliquity in a tone that would hardly have been misplaced ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... absurd and barefaced illogicalness of one finding herself in danger of death. It was necessary to re-read her first declarations, which she was now denying, of presenting afresh the material proofs whose existence she did not wish to admit, of making her entire past file by supported ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Was the accusation improbable, either on account of the subject-matter or the actor in it? Does such an appointment as that of Munny Begum, in the most barefaced evasion of his orders, appear to your Lordships a matter that contains no just presumptions of guilt, so that, when a charge of bribery comes upon it, you are prepared to reject it, as if the action were so clear and proper that no man could ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... about all day on Mondays and on Tuesday mornings, gathering his rents, and on Tuesday afternoons he usually experienced the assuaged content of an alligator after the weekly meal. Otherwise there was no knowing what might not have been the disastrous consequences of Helen's barefaced robbery and of her unscrupulous, unrepentant defence of that robbery. For days and days he had imagined himself in heaven with a seraph who was also a good cook. He had forty times congratulated himself on ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... not of a parliament; I mean the expunging of the recognisance entered at Guildhall. We have heard of such violence committed by the French King; and it seems much better calculated for the latitude of Paris than of London. The people of this kingdom will never submit to such barefaced tyranny. They must see that it is time to rouse, when their own creatures dare to assume a power of stopping prosecutions by their vote, and consequently of resolving the law of the land into their will and pleasure. The imprudence, and indeed the absolute ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... gentleman, when they were all going away; and I was quite surprised, and very uncomfortable, when Mr Donne said he had given it to Leonard, and that he was to keep it for his own. I could see Mr Bradshaw was annoyed, and he and the other gentleman spoke to Mr Donne, and I heard them say, 'too barefaced;' and I shall never forget Mr Donne's proud, stubborn look back at them, nor his way of saying, 'I allow no one to interfere with what I choose to do with my own.' And he looked so haughty and displeased, I durst say nothing at the time. But when I told Thurstan, he was very grieved and angry; ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... immediately adds: "Of the success of the perhaps unwise attempt to show this in so small a compass, the educated public must be the judge." Most certainly, there is no "pretension" in this modest and carefully guarded avowal of the simple aim of my book. But Dr. Royce twists this modest avowal into a barefaced boast, and injuriously misquotes me to his own readers thus: "At the conclusion of the book, we learn that we have been shown 'the way out of agnosticism into the sunlight of the predestined philosophy of science.'" Gentlemen, I request you to compare thoughtfully ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... call him Provincial Conrad Freger. He brought with him skill in talking, but of true eloquence and science I could not discover a trace. When proof from the Scripture was demanded, he traveled off. I found nothing in him but a barefaced monk, although others looked for a prodigy. Still more boisterously did a certain Dominicaster beat about him with passages of Scripture for several days, but in the end showed that he understood ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... purpose of longevity to abstain from immorality so long as you are craving for it in your heart; and so on with all other unsatisfied inward cravings. To get rid of the inward desire is the essential thing, and to mimic the real thing without it is barefaced hypocrisy and ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... equal the barefaced Falshood of the Quakers & Tories in this City, unless perhaps their Folly, in giving out that M. Gerard does not come in the Character of a publick Minister, but only to obtain Pay for the Stores we have receivd from that Country. These Quakers are in general a sly artful People, not altogether ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... man who had sold the land to Ole Bull had no claim to it whatever, and had perpetrated a barefaced swindle, and now, having the money, he dared his victim to do his worst. The actual owner of the land, who had come forward to assert his rights, became interested in the scheme, and was willing to sell the land at a low price, but Ole now had no ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... alarm, or was only an echo of the minds of a number of men hostile to religion, I cannot say, but if I recollect dates aright the orders of the Court of Directors came as soon as possible after that pamphlet was published; and as it would have been too barefaced to have given a specific order to send home missionaries, they founded their orders on an unjust and wicked clause in the charter, and so enforced it that it ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... persons who receive them as genuine; and though (as I know and saw in the case of my friend at Rome) the believer's life may be passed in the purest exercise of faith and charity, it is difficult even to give him credit for honesty, so barefaced seem the impostures which he professes to believe and reverence. It costs one no small effort even to admit the possibility of a Catholic's credulity: to share in his rapture and devotion is still further out of your power; and I could get from this church no other ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... them, which in their turn see fit to break loose from the Federal pact, shall not do so, under the alternative of war and the pains of treason,—this contrast is assuredly a glaring one; many people considered that it amounted to a positive anomaly,—not a few to a barefaced act of tyrannic apostasy. The personal feeling of the English people, their national amour propre, conspired to lead towards this harshest construction of the facts: it was so tempting to convict our old adversaries out of their own mouths, and make them, by the logic of events, read ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... only by many of the public utterances made in her name, then, indeed might we despair of a people who having suffered so much and so valiantly resisted for so many centuries were now to be won to their oppressor's side, by, perhaps, the most barefaced act of bribery ever attempted by a Government ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... Jackson wrote to Major Lewis: "So, you see, the Judas of the West has closed the contract and will receive the thirty pieces of silver. His end will be the same. Was there ever witnessed such a barefaced ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... the way that kings and emperors treated the bankers: Edward the Second refusing to repay his Florentine loans and bringing the whole city to ruin; Charles the First sallying out to the Mint and boldly appropriating every penny stored there—plain, barefaced robbery. Then, later, the armies of Revolutionary France pillaging banks everywhere—grenadiers, musketeers and cuirassiers in full activity. Among others, the Bank of Amsterdam—the one that loaned all those millions of florins to the East India Company. And that brings ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... spiritual head of Europe, and had become but a hypocritical principality, greedy for temporal power, and openly trafficking in ecclesiastical offices which were once supposed to belong by right to men of saintly lives; it is probable that this barefaced profligacy of the papal court was responsible for the widespread moral inertia which was characteristic of the time. The pontiff's chair at the dawn of this century was filled by Roderigo Borgia, known as Alexander ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... to Sir **** Imprisonment and Disgrace in the Year —— Nay, so barefaced is the D—n in his Allegory, that he tells us, in his 12th Page, Norfolk was his Asylum. This is as plain as the Nose on a Man's Face! The subsequent Pages are an exact Description of the Ingratitude of Courtiers; and his Fable of the Court Pudding, Page 13. is the best Part ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... with all the reverence due to it, and yet finds it in the hands of the Turkish government—which does not know the meaning of truth nor of honesty; which by its example prostitutes every decent feeling in the minds of the people to its own base ends, and permits the barefaced robbery and oppression, not only of the visitor but of its own citizens—then I say the modern writer has a delicate task to perform in describing it, for in relating the facts he might seem to be railing and scoffing at religion and biblical history, whereas ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... theatre has not been erected five years. Our opposition rages with great violence. Much ink has already been shed. One third of the public papers are crammed with what is called Theatrical Critique; but is in fact either the barefaced puff direct in favour of one theatre, or a string of abusive epithets against the other, equally ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... Radicals first called Grain Growers, next Agrarians, and by some the very devil. With official Liberalism as expressed by Scott, Sifton, Cross, Norris and Martin he had only superficial sympathy. These men were more or less on masquerade. The Agrarians were barefaced, one-faced Radicals who would open the borders, and abolish the customs houses, and set up a sort of Western political autonomy whose root idea was that trade should be as free as grasshoppers. These people were not ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino |
