"Pretence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... escaped the punishments due to them by the laws and statutes of this your realm, by reason that divers of your officers and ministers of justice have unjustly refused, or forborne to proceed against such offenders according to the same laws and statutes, upon pretence that the said offenders were punishable only by martial law, and by authority of such commissions as aforesaid, which commissions, and all other of like nature, are wholly and directly contrary to the said laws and ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... undoubtedly a mere pretence, for he had worn a valuable watch in the morning, and had parted with it during the day. Though the sum he apparently had upon his person was scarcely half payment, the kind-hearted German took him at his word, and also left ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... Gentlemen, except myself, to go out of the Ship. In the Morning I waited upon the Vice Roy and obtained leave to purchase Provisions, Refreshments, etc., for the Ship, but obliged me to employ a person to buy them for me under a pretence that it was the Custom of the Place, and he likewise insisted (notwithstanding all I could say to the contrary), on putting a Soldier into the Boats that brought anything to or from the Ship, alledging that it was the Orders of his Court, and they were such as he could not Dispence with, and this ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... had summoned the ambassadors of Austria and England, immediately on hearing of the landing of Napoleon, and had assured them, that he would remain faithful to his engagements. When he had assembled his army (put in motion under pretence of reinforcing his troops in the March of Ancona), he fell unexpectedly on the Austrians; and announced to the Italians, by a proclamation dated at Rimini the 31st of March, that he had taken up arms to liberate Italy from a foreign yoke, and restore its ancient ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... The ground crumbled beneath his feet. Long since it had been, by his own hand, undermined. Authority was gone. Why keep up this miserable sham any longer? Could they not read the lie in his face, in his voice? What a folly to maintain the wretched pretence! He had failed. He was ruined. Harran was gone. His ranch would soon go; his money was gone. Lyman was worse than dead. His own honour had been prostituted. Gone, gone, everything he held dear, gone, lost, and swept away in that fierce struggle. And ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... looking serious, dear," he said presently, as Elizabeth made a pretence of sorting the silks of her embroidery. That little piece of embroidery with its gay silken flowers became one of Elizabeth's dearest relics. It was David who helped her choose the shades, who insisted on a spray of his favourite lilies of the valley being inserted. How ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... determined to prolong the intervention of Poseidon in favour of the Greeks. She persuaded Aphrodite to lend her all her spells of beauty on the pretence that she wished to reconcile Ocean to his wife Tethys. Armed with the goddess' girdle, she lulled Zeus to sleep and then sent a message to Poseidon to give the Greeks his heartiest assistance. Inspired by him the ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... dress, want of reverence at worship, profane cursing, tippling, breaking the Sabbath, idleness, overcharges by the merchants, and the "loose and sinful habit of riding from town to town, men and women together, under pretence of going to lectures, but really to drink and revel in taverns." The law forbidding the keeping of Christmas Day had to be repealed in 1681. Mrs. Randolph, when attending Mr. Willard's preaching at the ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... Futteh Shah entered into a treaty with him for a subsidiary force for the invasion of Cashmere. The price of this accommodation was fixed at 80,000L. yearly; but, before the expiration of the second year, the Lion of the Punjab, on pretence of the non-fulfilment of the treaty, invaded the valley on his own account at the head of a considerable army. He was repulsed, however, and forced to retreat to Lahore with the loss of his entire baggage. In A.D. ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... me not to kill him—no more did you guess that I was as little anxious to kill him as you were, though I did pretend I'd have to do it now an' then in self-defence. Sometimes, indeed, he riled me up to sitch an extent that there wasn't much pretence about it; but thank God! my hand ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... appear, not only were the cause to be decided in a court of morality, because it consists not with virtue and wisdom; but even before any competent judges of wit itself. For he overthrows his own pretence, and cannot reasonably claim any interest in wit, who doth thus behave himself: he prejudgeth himself to want wit, who cannot descry fit matter to divert himself or others: he discovereth a great straitness and sterility of good invention, who cannot in all the wide field of things ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... own inheritance, And forced them his title to renew To all the realm of France, which doth belong To him, and to his lawful heirs by true Descent, (the which they held from him by wrong And false pretence,) and, to confirm the same, Hath given him the honour and the name Of Regent of the land for Charles his life; And after his decease they have agreed, Thereby to end all bloody war and strife, That he, as heir, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... realm. Sometimes there was a rubber of whist, and, if wanted, Mrs. Rodney took a hand in it; Endymion sitting apart and conversing with her sister, who amused him by her lively observations, indicating even flashes of culture; but always addressed him without the slightest pretence and with the utmost naturalness. This was not the case with Mr. Rodney; pretence with him was ingrained, and he was at first somewhat embarrassed by the presence of Endymion, as he could hardly maintain before his late patron's ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... father and was struck with fear, and how like yours it was—but more like John Prather's. And the high-sounding preachments about the poverty that might go with fine gowns became real to me. They were not banal at all. They were simple truth, free of rhetoric and pretence. I knew that my cry of 'It's not in the blood' was as true in me as any impulse of yours ever ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... that this was incorrect, but the Countess, after all, was a mere instrument of higher intelligence, and she now made no pretence ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... Most of the pretence, and affected airs of importance, occasionally met with in Canada, are not the genuine produce of the soil, but importations from the mother country; and, as sure as you hear any one boasting of the rank and consequence they possessed at home, you may be certain that it was quite the ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... on the first attack of a depressing illness I cease to be a gentleman, I am rude to ladies who do their best and kindest to serve me, and I talk to the friend who comes to cheer and comfort me as if he were an idle vagrant who wanted to sell me a worthless book with the recommendation of the pretence that he wrote it himself. Now that I am in my right mind, I am ashamed of myself, ashamed that it should be possible for me to behave so, and humiliated yet besides that I have no ground of assurance that, should my illness return to-morrow, I should not behave in ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... forbid!" they felt at once that the parable had to do with them—that they were the wicked husbandmen on whom He said their master would take vengeance: but that only maddened them the more, till they ended by crucifying the Lord of Glory, upon a pretence which they knew was a false and lying one; and when Judas Iscariot said, "I have betrayed the innocent blood," they did not deny that the Lord Jesus was innocent; all they answered was, "What is that to us?" They were determined to have ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... England, for Swift's style is wholly different. To begin with, Sydney had a strong prejudice in favour of writing very short articles, and a horror of reading long ones—the latter being perhaps less peculiar to himself than the former. Then he never made the slightest pretence at systematic or dogmatic criticism of anything whatever. In literature proper he seems indeed to have had no particular principles, and I cannot say that he had very good taste. He commits the almost unpardonable sin of not merely blaspheming Madame de Sevigne, but preferring to her that second-rate ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... lovers of shirts, found a method of clothing themselves with their own cloth. It was their custom to go on shore every morning, and to return on board in the evening, generally clad in rags. This furnished a pretence to importune the lover for better clothes; and when he had no more of his own, he was to dress them in new cloth of the country, which they always left ashore; and appearing again in rags, they must again be clothed. So that the same suit might pass through twenty different hands, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... of my lord the duke; and so, to mislead and deceive me, he told me he could find no better way of effacing from his mind the beauty that so enslaved him than by absenting himself for some months, and that he wished the absence to be effected by our going, both of us, to my father's house under the pretence, which he would make to the duke, of going to see and buy some fine horses that there were in my city, which produces the best in the world. When I heard him say so, even if his resolution had not been so good a one I should have hailed it as one of the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... me most in Goyaz was the incongruity of the people. With the little literature which found its way so far in the interior, most of the men professed advanced social and religious ideas, the majority making pretence of atheism in a very acute form. "Down with faith: down with religion: down with the ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... who are seldom in command, the master was proportionally tyrannical and abusive—he swore at the men, made them do the duty twice and thrice over on the pretence that it was not smartly done, and found fault with every officer ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... woven cotton or woollen canvas, figure panels, copied from modern French masters, and suggestive of nothing but bad art. Yet these panels are sometimes used (and in fact are produced for the purpose of being used) precisely as a genuine tapestry would be, although the very fact of pretence in them, brings a feeling of untruth, quite at variance with the principles of all good art. The objection to pictures transferred to tapestries holds good, even ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... compelled her; she shivered pitifully as she remembered the warmth of his shoulder touching carelessly her own. If he had come to her honestly and asked her aid, she would have given it; but this underhand pretence at love! It was unworthy of him; and it was certainly most unworthy of her. What must he think of her? How he must be laughing at her—and hoping that his spell was working, so that he could get the coveted rifle and ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... that language is not truth, or 'philosophie une langue bien faite.' At first, Socrates has delighted himself with discovering the flux of Heracleitus in language. But he is covertly satirising the pretence of that or any other age to find philosophy in words; and he afterwards corrects any erroneous inference which might be gathered from his experiment. For he finds as many, or almost as many, words expressive of rest, as ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... Memorial" in 1669, Morton says: "But some of the Dutch, having notice of their intentions, and having thoughts about the same time of erecting a plantation there likewise, they fraudulently hired the said Jones, by delays while they were in England, and now under pretence of the shoals the dangers of the Monomoy Shoals off Cape Cod to disappoint them in going thither." He adds: "Of this plot between the Dutch and Mr. Jones, I have had late and certain intelligence." If this intelligence was more reliable ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... a fanatical priest who accompanied Ovando, and, under pretence of christianizing the natives by the sword, gave the sanction of the church to the most shocking ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... ignominiously degraded, and that the sonorous words of wise and apathetic teachers are contradictory to the dreary, barbaric, and sterile reality. So there are no true cultural institutions! And in those very places where a pretence to culture is still kept up, we find the people more hopeless, atrophied, and discontented than in the secondary schools, where the so-called 'realistic' subjects are taught! Besides this, only think how immature and uninformed one must be in the company of such teachers when ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... $1,000,000, stolen from the treasury of the city, were used by the Ring to buy up a majority of the two Houses of the Legislature. By means of these purchased votes, the various measures of the Ring were passed. The principal measure was the Charter of the City of New York. "Under the pretence of giving back to the people of the City of New York local self-government, they provided that the Mayor then in office should appoint all the heads of Departments for a period of at least four years, and in some cases extending to eight, and that ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... a moral law of gardening. No garden should ever tell a lie. No garden should ever put on any false pretence. No garden should ever break a promise. To the present reader these proclamations may seem very trite; it may seem very trite to say that if anything in or of a garden is meant for adornment, it must adorn; but ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... had no interest extending beyond their own lifetime. The only feature distinguishing the ecclesiastical residence from that of one of the minor secular princes was that the parade of state was performed by monks in the cathedral instead of by soldiers on the drill-ground, and that even the pretence of married life was wanting among the flaunting harpies who frequented a celibate Court. Yet even on the Rhine and on the Moselle the influence of the great King of Prussia had begun to make itself felt. The intense and penetrating industry of Frederick was not within the reach of ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... he is lawfully entitled to this privilege, and that if Miss Twinkleton disputed it, she would be instantly taken up and transported.) When his ring at the gate- bell is expected, or takes place, every young lady who can, under any pretence, look out of window, looks out of window; while every young lady who is 'practising,' practises out of time; and the French class becomes so demoralised that the mark goes round as briskly as the bottle at a convivial party in the ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... occurred, it was Squeers's custom to drive over to the market town, every evening, on pretence of urgent business, and stop till ten or eleven o'clock at a tavern he much affected. As the party was not in his way, therefore, but rather afforded a means of compromise with Miss Squeers, he readily yielded his full assent thereunto, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... nodded, and hurried out after them. Wrayson kept the Colonel back under the pretence of lighting a fresh cigar. When at last they strolled forward, they met the boy returning. He touched his hat ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... strangers have come all the way from France: they are determined that his title shall be acknowledged. If any tribe shall refuse to recognize the authority of the French, by bowing down to the laced chapeau of Mowanna, let them abide the consequences of their obstinacy. Under cover of a similar pretence, have the outrages and massacres at Tahiti the beautiful, the queen of ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... Books of loftier pretence, written by bankers, members of Parliament, or orthodox clergymen, are of course not wanting; and show that the progress of civilization consists in the victory of usury over ecclesiastical prejudice, or ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... a week, under pretence of going to read a Greek play with Smirke, this young reprobate set off so as to be in time for the Competitor down coach, stayed a couple of hours in Chatteris, and returned on the Rival which left for London at ten at night. Once his secret was nearly lost by Smirke's simplicity, of whom ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... neglected the usual offering only increased the feeling of envy and annoyance which filled the unsuccessful hunter's heart. The Evil Spirit at that moment entering his body, his temper fairly flew away, and he sought some pretence to provoke a ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... SIMS, arrested in Boston, April 4, 1851, at first on pretence of a charge of theft. But when he understood it was as a fugitive from slavery, he drew a knife and wounded one of the officers. He was taken before Commissioner George T. Curtis. To guard against a repetition of the Shadrach rescue, the United States Marshal, ...
— The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society
... fond of the society of literati, though without the pretence of belonging to their order. But her manners constituted her chief attraction: while they were utterly different from those of every one else, you could not, in the least minutiae, discover in what the difference consisted: this is, in my opinion, the real test of ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his hat in his hand in an airy manner taught him by Valerie, and he inserted the thumb of the other hand in the armhole of his waistcoat with a knowing air, and a simpering face and expression. This new grace of attitude was due to the satirical inventiveness of Valerie, who, under pretence of rejuvenating her mayor, had given him an added touch of ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... doctrine or scheme of religion," he said, "should be advanced or received as Scriptural and divine which is plainly and absolutely inconsistent with the perfections of God, and the possibility of things. Absurdities and contradictions, are not to be obtruded upon our faith. No pretence of revelation can be sufficient for the admission of them. The manifest absurdity of any doctrine is a stronger argument that it is not of God than any other evidence can ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... had been his first law partner; and from what he had been forced to observe concerning his partner's fireside wretchedness during his few years of married life, he had learned to fear and to hate her. With his quick temper and honest way he made no pretence of hiding his feeling—declined her invitations—cut her openly in society—and said why. When his partner died, not killed indeed but broken-spirited, he spoke his mind on the subject more publicly ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... shown half the things I have as yet," spoke Tom. "But I don't like this, just the same. Those giants may turn from us, and favor him on the slightest pretence. I guess we've got our ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... forecasting is left to the weather bureau so far as a great section of the purely literary and cultured are concerned. The term prophet has survived in literature to be applied to men like Carlyle: fiery spiritual leaders who speak with little pretence of revealing to-morrow. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... definite and coherent ideas, but unless it also conveys these ideas to some other living intelligent being, either man or brute, that can understand them. We may speak to a dog or horse, but not to a stone. If we make pretence of doing so we are in reality only talking to ourselves. The person or animal spoken to is half the battle—a half, moreover, which is essential to there being any battle at all. It takes two people to say ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... pies,—mince, pumpkin, and apple,—while golden custards and jellies—red, purple, and amber, of currant, grape, and peach—brought up the rear. A third course of fruits and nuts followed, but by that time scarcely any one was able to do more than make a pretence of eating. ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... was only one plan to be pursued; I must expiate my culpable vehemence, or I must not sleep that night. This would not do at all; I could not stand it: I made no pretence of capacity to wage war on this footing. School solitude, conventual silence and stagnation, anything seemed preferable to living embroiled with Dr. John. As to Ginevra, she might take the silver wings of a dove, or any other ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... failed to satisfy the client is apt to interfere with business, and failure is, therefore, shunned. But the law does not trouble to distinguish between the honest and the dishonest person who claims psychic gifts. From the legal point of view it is all pretence. It is imperatively necessary that genuine psychic gifts should be protected from the depredations of frivolity as well as from the interference of an obsolete law. We have some idea of protecting great and uncommon gifts in music, mathematics, and poetry, but we leave psychic gifts without help ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... beginning of the trial had pretended to act as his friend, had advised him to accept counsel, had told him that he might defend himself and ask questions. And, utilising the power which he possessed as a judge, had himself asked the witnesses questions, on the pretence that he was trying to do the ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... another reason for this great forward movement, founded on the relation of the Confederacy to the principal European powers. England still made a pretence of neutrality, but the aristocracy and ruling classes sided with the South, and a large association of their most influential men was established at Manchester to aid the slaveholding oligarchy. The rebels were ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... chill, prevailed here no less than at the dinner-table. The guests kept apart in groups, the few ladies in a circle upon low chairs, the gentlemen standing or walking about with a pretence of serious conversation, but obviously engaged in attracting His Highness's attention. It was for His Highness that Landry the musician stood pensive by the chimney-piece, gazing upward with his inspired brow ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... hypocrisy, Life left my soul, and dwelt but in my sense; No man could love me, for all men could see The hollow vain pretence. ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... his head with a roar, appearing a trifle chagrined the next instant by my faint-hearted pretence ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... that free labour, properly exercised, is cheaper than slave labour; but there is no pretence to say that it is so at this moment in our West India colonies; and we undertake to show, in an early number, in connexion with this fact, that the existence of the high protecting duties on our West India produce has done more than anything else to ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... profession, dedicated to the service of God and the care of souls, and ought not to be diverted from the great duties of their functions: therefore no minister of the gospel, or priest of any denomination whatsoever, shall at any time hereafter, under any pretence or description whatever, be eligible to, or capable of holding, any civil or military office ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... truly in that vast metropolis there are many thousands of households, composed exclusively of women and children; many other thousands there are who necessarily confide their safety, in the long evenings, to the discretion of a young servant girl; and if she suffers herself to be beguiled by the pretence of a message from her mother, sister, or sweetheart, into opening the door, there, in one second of time, goes to wreck the security of the house. However, at that time, and for many months afterwards, the practice of steadily putting the chain upon the door before it ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... from hypocrites than the wittiest profligates or infidels could ever cast upon them: nay, farther, as these two, in their purity, are rightly called the bands of civil society, and are indeed the greatest of blessings; so when poisoned and corrupted with fraud, pretence, and affectation, they have become the worst of civil curses, and have enabled men to perpetrate the most cruel mischiefs ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... standing and regarding her for a silent, frowning space; "but for me there is something unendurable in men herding like cattle, protecting their fat with warning boards and fences. I can't manage the fiddling lies that keep up the whole silly pretence of the stuffy show. If it gets much thicker," he had threatened, waving vaguely toward the west, "I'll go out to the Ohio, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... display of vanity. The gale had ministered to a heroism as spurious as its own pretence of terror. He felt angry with the brutal tumult of earth and sky for taking him unawares and checking unfairly a generous readiness for narrow escapes. Otherwise he was rather glad he had not gone into the cutter, since a lower achievement had served the turn. He had enlarged his knowledge ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... herself that she could endure no longer. She must get away to Cairo, if only for two or three days. If Baroudi was not there, she must go to Alexandria and seek him. Baffled desire, enforced patience, the perpetual presence of Meyer Isaacson, with whom she was obliged to keep up a pretence of civility and even of gratitude, and the jealousy that grows like a rank weed in the soil of ignorance, rendered her at last almost reckless. She was sure if she remained longer in the villa she would betray herself by some ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... the grand fiefs of the crown, and, in particular, the Dukes of Burgundy and Bretagne, had come to wear their feudal bonds so lightly that they had no scruple in lifting the standard against their liege and sovereign lord, the King of France, on the slightest pretence. When at peace, they reigned as absolute princes in their own provinces; and the House of Burgundy, possessed of the district so called, together with the fairest and richest part of Flanders, was itself so wealthy, and so powerful, as to yield nothing to the crown, either in splendour ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... where the air is bracing, and it is not necessary to trick the senses with a pretence at coolness, nothing is more satisfactory or gay than scarlet geraniums; but if they are used, care must be taken that they harmonise with the colour of the awnings and the ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... partook; but as they were absent directly afterwards, under pretence of smoking a noon pipe, I fancy they ate still further rations in the farm-house kitchen. The boys, however, said it was the best dinner they ever ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... the news from Paris first," replied Leopold, slightly frowning. "Let us hear from our hereditary foe, who, under pretence of coming to our rescue, pillages our property while the house is on fire. We know full well that this fair-spoken Louis is in secret league with our foes at home and abroad, and we confess that when he invited us to be sponsor to his grandson, we accepted the honor with an ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... Leon is at the waters of Ems enjoying his expiring hours of single-blessedness in the society of his painted friend, and his family are keeping Mile. de Chateaudun at the Chateau de Lorgeville till the season at Ems is over. In a few days the handsome Leon, on pretence of important business, will leave his Dulcinea, and, considering himself freed from an unlawful yoke, will come to the Chateau de Lorgeville to offer his innocent hand and pure homage to Mile. de ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... his sister's constancy, on pretence of building a tomb, caused this subterraneous habitation to be made, in hopes to find one day or other an opportunity to possess himself of that object which was the cause of his flame, and to bring her hither. He laid hold on the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... of Nature, and what is that Naturalism which is to replace the current faith in the deities outside of observable nature? The writer makes no pretence of feeling a tentative way towards an answer. From the very outset his spirit is that of dogmatic confidence. He is less a seeker than an expounder; less a philosopher than a preacher; and he boldly dismisses proof in favour ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... Jeffrys in securing Greenback Bob, who, now that his pretence of stolid apathy had failed him, was an ugly customer to deal with, and who was resisting with all his strength and filling the air with blasphemy. It was necessary to secure him hand and foot, and we had but just completed the task when Dave came ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... ridiculous!' said Kitty. She swallowed down a sob in her throat and made a pretence of laughing while her hands played with her hair-brush, and her eyes, which endeavoured to blaze defiance, only succeeded in looking large and ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... hope I need not mention vices. A man who has patiently been kicked out of company, may have as good a pretence to courage, as one rendered infamous by his vices, may to dignity of any kind; however, of such consequence are appearances, that an outward decency, and an affected dignity of manners, will even keep such a man the longer from sinking. If, therefore, you ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... domestics. "But he found his match in me," said Antonio, "for I was prepared for him; and once, when he drew his sword against me, I pulled out a pistol and pointed it in his face. He grew pale as death, and from that hour treated me with all kinds of condescension. It was only pretence, however, for the affair rankled in his mind; he had determined upon revenge, and on being appointed to the command of the army, he was particularly anxious that I should attend him to the camp. Mais je lui ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... sneeringly; "not he—it's all pretence. If anything common could have killed him, such as kills other people, he would have been dead ages ago. But he isn't like other men; he has got a charmed life. He'll be all right again ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... centre, was able to compliment her on the freedom from "the decencies and virtues, the worn-out rags of her sex." She had no fund of theoretical cynicism on such matters, nor, on the other hand, the slightest moral pretence. The revolutionary Moniteur branded her as Messalina. "Cela ne regarde que moi," she said haughtily, and the sheet circulated throughout the empire. Such is the summary of the gallons of printers' ink that have soiled paper ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... in English or perhaps in any modern language. In English nothing worth mentioning of the kind has been attempted, till in our own day the present Poet Laureate wrote his Prometheus the Fire-Giver and Achilles in Scyros. But, interesting and beautiful as these are, they make no pretence to rival Samson Agonistes. They are altogether on a smaller scale of ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... of the fleet was soon revealed. He sailed to the island of Paros, besieged the capital, and demanded a tribute of one hundred talents. He based this claim on the pretence that the Parians had furnished a ship to the Persian fleet, but it is known that his real motive was hatred of a ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands As if alive. Will 't please you rise? We'll meet The company below, then. I repeat The Count your master's known munificence Is ample warrant that no just pretence Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... oppression. He paid for every article extorted by the police, but strictly forbade the vendors to give any further credit. The Sub-Inspector was deeply incensed in finding this source of illicit profit cut off, and his vengeance was perpetrated under the pretence of law. ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... of the rebel armies. Grant, however, was deeply impressed with the sincerity of their desire for peace, and he entreated Lincoln to receive them. Lincoln therefore decided to overlook the false pretence under which they came. He gave Grant strict orders not to delay his operations on this account, but he came himself with Seward and met Davis' three commissioners on a ship at Hampton Roads on February 3. He and Stephens had in old days been Whig Congressmen together, and Lincoln ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... upon such Occasions, and should she happen to do either, he might be at a loss how to bring himself off. He thought he might easily pretend to be indisposed somewhat more than ordinary, and so make an excuse to go to his own Lodging. It came into his Head too, that under pretence of giving her an account of his Health, he might enquire of her the means how a Letter might be convey'd to her the next morning, wherein he might inform her gently of her mistake, and insinuate something of that Passion he had conceiv'd, which ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... constitutional law was set aside by a charge which proceeded personally from the King, which deprived the accused of their legal right to a trial by their peers, and summoned them before a tribunal which had no pretence to a justification over them. On the refusal of the Commons to surrender their members, Charles came in person to Westminster with 300 cavaliers to demand their arrest. But the five members, warned of the King's venture, were well out of the way, and rested safely within ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... same terms, which was accepted. Mr. Kekwick had a deal of trouble before he could get them to move off, when they were joined by another, and then went off by twos. In a short time they set fire to the grass all round us to try to burn us out. Two of them came again close to the camp under pretence of looking for game before the fire, at the same time setting fire to the grass closer to us. But Mr. Kekwick and one of the others, seeing their intention, ran up to them, who, on their approach, ran off, setting ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... should carry him safe away as soon as the parliament-house was blown up; or, if that could not be effected, that they should kill him, and declare the princess Elizabeth queen, having secured her, under pretence ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... from your side, sir, driving him farther and farther from all beside, till he and I (who had managed to keep close beside him) were far away from all the world beside, galloping as if for dear life in a different direction. Then it was that they threw off the pretence of being friends — that they set upon him and overpowered him, that they beat off even me from holding myself near at hand, and carried me bound in another direction. I was given in charge to four stalwart troopers, all wearing ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... care!" Lois exclaimed tremulously. "You know very well that you don't care. It is all pretence, this. Why do you do it? Why do ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... p. 159 presents an interesting memorial of the real relation of Bactria to Greece, as well as of the pretence of the Badakhshan princes to Grecian descent. This silver patera was sold by the family of the Mirs, when captives, to the Minister of the Uzbek chief of Kunduz, and by him to Dr. Percival Lord in 1838. It is now in ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... not his own single Opinion) and according to the just Rules of War, went on gradually to take their fortified Towns, and ruin their Defences on the Frontiers, that at last, he might have a sure and easie Conquest of the rest: This was one Pretence. The second was just the Reverse of this: For at a great Battle with the Tartarians, the Commander having resolved to attack the Enemy in their advantageous Camp, and having drawn up in Battalia his whole Army, he gives ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe
... with a kind of impatience, the experience which young people make much of when they have it, and sometimes pretend to when they have merely heard of it. But there could be no pose or pretence ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... The Sparrow, while making pretence of supporting our little affair, is in favour of Hugh's ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... know a woman doing such a thing as that, Dick?" she asked. "Did you ever know of a woman clinging to her youth, and then suddenly, in a moment, flinging all pretence of it away ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... brother, and I know his ways. Every day, before breakfast, he cuts off the heads of two or three men, just to amuse himself. One day no one else was at hand, so he cut off mine, and he will surely cut off yours on some pretence or another. However, if you are determined to go and play chaupur with him, take some of the bones from this graveyard, and make your dice out of them, and then the enchanted dice with which my brother plays will lose ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... toward the quarters. His plan was to make sure that Bob and his friend had come there to force an entrance into the cabin in which the quails were confined, and if he found that that was their object, he would make a pretence of setting Bose upon them. He did not intend to do so in reality, for he knew the dog too well. The animal always did serious work when he began to use his teeth, and Dan didn't want either of the young thieves killed or maimed. He knew that if he could excite the hound and induce him to give ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... town of pretence, if such a word can be applied to anything Spanish, where things either are or are not, and there's an end. It was as drab as the landscape, as weatherworn and austere; but it had a squat officer sitting at the receipt of custom, which Sahagun had not, and a file ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... taken counsel with her own self and reflected on Kichaka's purpose and on the anxiety of Krishna, Sudeshna addressed the Suta's son in these words, 'Do thou, on the occasion of some festival, procure viands and wines for me. I shall then send my Sairindhri to thee on the pretence of bringing wine. And when she will repair thither do thou in solitude, free from interruption, humour her as thou likest. Thus soothed, she may incline her mind ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... day for a whole month made fresh attempts on her disordered mind; but every thing proving in vain, and her fury rather increasing than diminishing, he resolved to free his family of a woman whom he looked on as a monster.—-With this intent, on pretence of taking the air, he carried her with him in a shallop, and having got a considerable distance from shore, he ordered her to be seized by some sailors, and put into a tun prepared for that purpose, and closing it up again, thrown into the sea. After this cruel ...
— The Princess of Ponthieu - (in) The New-York Weekly Magazine or Miscellaneous Repository • Unknown
... now at Paris, in the churches, is wholly incredible! Under pretence of managing an income for the singers, they suppress half the stanzas of canticles and hymns, and substitute, to vary the pleasure, the tiresome ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... natives of South-Eastern Australia that their dead are not born again but go away to the sky or some distant country, 133 sq.; beliefs and customs of the Narrinyeri concerning the dead, 134 sqq.; motives for the excessive grief which they display at the death of their relatives, 135 sq.; their pretence of avenging the death of their friends on the guilty sorcerer, 136 sq.; magical virtue ascribed to the hair of the dead, 137 sq.; belief that the dead go to the sky, 138 sq.; appearance of the dead to the living in dreams, 139; savage faith in dreams, 139 sq.; ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... 2 masses over our heads wuz 2, then the one in which we wuz a strugglin' and the one opposite to it made 4. For anybody with any pretence to learnin' knows that twice 2 is 4. And then in the middle of the broad street was a bigger mass of chariots and horsemen, and carts and carriages, and great buggies and little ones, and big loads of barrels, and big loads of ladies, and then a load ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... the bottle, tilted some of the contents into a tumbler in which there was a small portion of water, without troubling to measure it out, and gulped it down without delay. Her description of the feelings which ensued was a really clever piece of word-painting, but behind the pretence of horror at her own carelessness there rang a hardly concealed note of pride, as though, in thus risking her life, she had done something quite clever ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... all say that they wish to be Christians, although in truth they are idolaters, for in their houses they have many kinds of figures; when asked what such a figure was, they would reply it is a thing of Turey, by which they meant "of Heaven." I made a pretence of throwing them on the fire, which grieved them so that they began to weep: they believe that everything we bring comes from Heaven, and therefore call it Turey, which, as I have already said, means heaven in their language. ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... embezzlement of the provisions and stores which were intended for the use of the captives. It is also much to be feared that an undue degree of severity has oftentimes been exercised towards the convicts, under the pretence of some attempts to mutiny and effect their escape, and such methods of throwing censure upon the innocent, to excuse wantonness and cruelty, cannot be too severely reprehended, if reprehension be all that can be inflicted upon ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... temples in Rome. [The despatch-bearers hurried hither and thither with no piece of news other than "kill this man!" or that that man was dead. No private messages, only state documents, were delivered; for Nero had taken many of the foremost men to Greece under pretence of needing some assistance from them merely in order that they might perish there. [Sidenote:—12—] The whole population of Rome and Italy he surrendered like captives to a certain Helius, a Caesarian. The latter had been given absolutely complete authority, so that he ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... from what they are now. That is pure absurdity. To claim that the religious mystic is in moments of exaltation brought into contact with a "deeper reality" is to invite the retort that one might make a similar claim on behalf of the inmates of a lunatic asylum. We cannot, with any pretence to rationality, accept the verdicts of both the neurologist and the exorcist. If we agree that certain states of mind to-day have their origin in neural disorder, on what ground can we believe that similar mental ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... in length. Several varieties, distinguished by their color and place of growth, are met with. The finest is that brought from Jamaica. A great part of that found in the shops has been washed in whiting and water, under the pretence of preserving ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... that Bruce was put up by Riel as a mere figure-head. When the end of the pretence had been accomplished, this poor scare-crow was thrown down and Louis Riel assumed the presidency of the Provisional Government. Now he began to draw to himself all those men whom he knew would be faithful tools in carrying out any scheme of villainy, or even of blood that he proposed ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... did you bring me down into that room," I asked, "under a false pretence? Why did you use that murderous cane of mine for your crime? Why did you insist upon it that I should be seen dining with the girl—God knows who she ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... added, turning to her father, who had been utterly unnerved by the accident, and was now walking up and down with a vain pretence of calmness. "Papa, you can lend Mr. Flint a ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... the slave's little hut, and his anger rose when he saw old Eliab sitting up, mixing some wine and water with his own hands. So he had been summoned from his nephew's sick-bed, and robbed of his night's rest, on a false pretence, in order that a slave, in his eyes scarcely entitled to rank as a man, might have his way. Here he himself experienced a specimen of the selfish craft of which the Egyptians accused his people, and which certainly did not attract him, Hosea, to them. But the anger of the just, keen sighted-man ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... be called Crystalline Lake. It was here that the young folks used to sail in summer and skate in winter; here, too, those queer, old, rum-scented good-for-nothing, lazy, story-telling, half-vagabonds, who sawed a little wood or dug a few potatoes now and then under the pretence of working for their living, used to go and fish through the ice for pickerel every winter. And here those three young people were drowned, a few summers ago, by the upsetting of a sail-boat in a sudden flaw of wind. There is not one of these smiling ponds which ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and with flashing eyes laid the oars across the boat's thwarts, and grasping the gunwale tried to launch her. Aasta, making pretence to help him, pulled the opposite way and the boat did not move. Then seeing that he was intercepted the lad promptly whipped out his dirk and sprang towards Allan with his ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... and Children reserved promiscuously for that purpose, one obtained thirty, another forty, to this Man one hundred were disposed, to the other two hundred, and the more one was in favor with the domineering Tyrant (which they styled Governor) the more he became Master of, upon this pretence, and with this Proviso, that he should see them instructed in the Catholick Religion, when as they themselves to whom they were committed to be taught, and the care of their Souls instructed them were, for the major part Idiots, Cruel, Avaritious, infected and stained ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... Orange. Of the diplomatists in the service of the United Provinces none was, in dexterity, temper, and manners, superior to Dykvelt. In knowledge of English affairs none seems to have been his equal. A pretence was found for despatching him, early in the year 1687, to England on a special mission with credentials from the States General. But in truth his embassy was not to the government, but to the opposition; and his conduct was guided by private instructions which had been ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Prophet possess'd half an atom of sense, [iii] He ne'er would have woman from Paradise driven; Instead of his Houris, a flimsy pretence, [iv] With woman alone he ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... "the sweet queen." The indisposition of the handmaid could not, and did not, escape the notice of her royal mistress. But the established doctrine of the Court was that all sickness was to be considered as a pretence until it proved fatal. The only way in which the invalid could clear herself from the suspicion of malingering, as it is called in the army, was to go on lacing and unlacing, till she fell down dead at the royal ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... heaven, ma'am, that's not true. I made no pretence; and I thought in reason you would know why I ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... whereabouts of certain persons who under the guise of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel are even now conspiring to free the woman Marie Antoinette and her son from prison and to place the latter upon the throne of France. You are quite well aware that under the pretence of being the leader of a gang of English adventurers, who never did the Republic of France and her people any real harm, I have actually been the means of unmasking many a royalist plot before you, and of bringing many persistent conspirators to the guillotine. I am surprised ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... downright words, leaving the poor young thing nothing to say, no little pretence even to herself that she had guarded the proprieties, had comported herself circumspectly, leaving her with not even a little rag of a claim that she had conducted herself with seemly decorum, she sprang from ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... of silence, he now found his greatest pleasure in talking, and Cabot had frequently to interrupt his conversation on the pretence of taking outside exercise, to prevent him from exhausting himself in that way. He hated to do this, for Mr. Balfour's words were always instructive, and he so freely yielded the established secrets of his profession, as well as those of ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... police regulation, and the Master of the Revels, who was a censor of plays and a supervisor-in-general of theatrical matters, had to issue an imposing order setting forth that whereas "several Companies of Strolling Actors pretend to have Licenses from Noblemen,[A] and presume under that pretence to avoid the Master of the Revels, his Correcting their Plays, Drolls, Farces, and Interludes: which being against Her Majesty's Intentions and Directions to the said Master: These are to signifie That such Licenses are not of any Force or authority. There are likewise several Mountebanks Acting ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... phrase is always applied when people, with pretence of friendship, do you an ill turn, as one licking a mote out of your eye makes it blood ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... Acacius was the spiritual superior of the whole eastern empire, and appeared not to trouble himself any more about the Roman See. He made no pretence to give any satisfaction for what he had done. Before he had been the champion of orthodoxy, now he had become in league with heretics. But he lost all remaining confidence among Catholics. The zealous monks of his own city withdrew from his communion, and ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... a dignity of peasants as well as of kings,—the dignity that comes from all absence of effort, all freedom from pretence. Bebee had this, and she had more still than this: she had the absolute simplicity of ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... into such criticism and offence and false judgment, as to say and believe that another man was guided and mastered by the will of the creature and not of the Creator. My soul and my heart grieve to see you wrong the perfection to which God has called you, under pretence of love and odour of virtue. Nevertheless, these are the tares which the devil has sowed in the field of the Lord; he has done this to choke the seed of holy desire and doctrine sowed in your fields. Will then to do so no more, since God has of grace given you great lights; the first, ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... who had been entrusted with the care of the cattle, the two bulls and four cows were lost in the beginning of this month. The man had been accustomed to drive them out daily to seek the freshest grass and best pasturage, and was ordered never on any pretence to leave them. To this order, as it afterwards appeared, he very seldom attended, frequently coming in from the woods about noon to get his dinner, leaving them grazing at some little distance from the farm where they were kept; and in this manner they were lost. They had strayed from ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... inestimable tenderness of a stern nature,—"in God's name, whom you insult, and whose power I could almost question, since he hears you utter so many false words without palsying your tongue,—give over, I beseech you, this loathsome pretence of affection for your victim! You hate him! Say so, like a man! You cherish, at this moment, some black purpose against him in your heart! Speak it out, at once!—or, if you hope so to promote it better, hide it till you can triumph in its success! ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with them in detail, and the astonished members of the convention the moment they arrive were thus assailed on all hands with a universal cry of Young, Young, Young for the candidate. No scheme was left untried, no pretence neglected, no argument overlooked, no path unexplored to entrap, to drive, to persuade and to lead the convention contrary to their old established practice, to nominate Mr. Young a third time as a candidate. Still despairing of success, Thompson and his associates (I trust in God but few of them) ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... my boundlesse mind, as men ybrought Into some spacious room, who when they've had A turn or two, go out, although unbad. All these I see and know, but entertain None to my friend but who's most sober sad; Although the time my roof doth them contain Their pretence doth possesse me ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... part of the dowry stipulated to Margaret of France, had been consigned by agreement to the Knights Templars, on condition that it should be delivered into Henry's hands after the celebration of the nuptials. The king, that he might have a pretence for immediately demanding the place, ordered the marriage to be solemnized between the prince and princess, though both infants [n]; and he engaged the Grand Master of the Templars, by large presents, as was generally ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... would stay with his feet on solid earth just as long as he could, and when the hounds were thrown off and the rest had started at a gallop he waited, under the pretence of adjusting his gaiters, until they were all well away. Then he clenched his teeth, crammed his hat down over his ears, and scrambled up on to the saddle. His feet fell quite by accident into the stirrups, and the next instant he was off after the others, with an indistinct feeling ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... all sorts of men. He was infinitely related;—not an individual of note in his day but was linked with him by some common interest or some polemic grapple; not a savant or statesman with whom Leibnitz did not spin, on one pretence or another, a thread of communication. Europe was reticulated with the meshes of his correspondence. "Never," says Voltaire, "was intercourse among philosophers more universal; Leibnitz servait ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... war between them and the men—that there was a truce to bury the dead on either side—that the prudent male general contrived that the truce should be prolonged; and during the truce both armies had friendly intercourse—on some pretence or other the truce was still lengthened, till there was not one woman in a condition, or with an inclination, to take up her wrongs—not one woman was any longer a fighting man—they saw their errors—they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... him to break it, of which he gave frequent proof to his lords, who, for that as well as other qualities, considered him rather as a father or brother than as their agent or steward, honouring in him an excellence that was no pretence, but his ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... Meanwhile, the cockswain has liberty to roam about where he pleases. He searches out a place where some choice red-eye (brandy) is to be had, purchases six large bottles, and conceals them among the trees. Under the pretence of filling the boat-keg with water, which is always kept in the barge to refresh the crew, he now carries it off into the grove, knocks out the head, puts the bottles inside, reheads the keg, fills it with water, carries it down to the boat, and audaciously restores it to its conspicuous ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... sorcery;[60] and these strange notions must not be dealt with too severely, in a country like England, where (within the last 200 years, and in no uncivilised state of society) persons have been burnt for witchcraft; and in which, even in the present day, every vile imposture and godless pretence of supernatural power is sure of finding eager listeners and astonished admirers. The Boyl-yas, or native sorcerers, are objects of mysterious dread, and are thought to have the power of becoming invisible to all eyes but those of their brethren in the same evil craft. As our northern ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... assassinate him in order to obtain his wife. This idea of Egyptian morals was no doubt correct, but how deplorable! They would not commit adultery; but for the sake of gratifying a guilty passion, were ready to perpetrate the abominable sin of murder! And thus, under the strange pretence of reverence for the matrimonial law, they would have violated at once the dictates of humanity, the principles of reason, and the constitutions of heaven. So common is it for transgressors to "strain at a knat and swallow a camel;" and so uniform the course ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... all the intellectual world of the time towards science and observation and experiment, should read the books of these men. Any other mode of getting at any knowledge of the real significance of the science of this time is mere pretence. These constitute the documents behind any scientific history of the development of science ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... maintain the rights of the South. Those rights Romescos asserts, and re-asserts, can only be preserved by southern men-not by sneaking northerners, who, with their trade, pocket their souls. Northerners are great men for whitewashing their faces with pretence! Romescos is received with considerable clat. He declares, independently, that Mr. Scranton too is no less a sheer humbug of the same stripe, and whose humbugging propensities make him the humble servant of the south so long as he can make a dollar by the bemeaning ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... still Appears more decent, as more suitable; A vile conceit in pompous words express'd Is like a clown in regal purple dress'd: For diff'rent styles with diff'rent subjects sort,{7} As sev'ral garbs with country, town, and court. Some by old words to fame have made pretence, Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense; Such labor'd nothings, in so strange a style, Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile, Unlucky, as Fungoso{8} in the play, These sparks{9} with awkward vanity display What the fine gentleman ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... little matters that I thought her daughter would relish, and told her to go at once and take them to the sick girl. Her expressions of gratitude touched my feelings deeply. Never since have I omitted, under any pretence, to pay the poor their wages as soon ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur |
