"Claptrap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... save the child; the physician, that he may cure his patient. What would be the good of all these sacrifices if nothing were to be got by them? My dears, do let me beg of you not to be caught by claptrap. There's a deal of it in the world just now. And silly stuff it is, I assure you. Self-sacrifice is as beautiful as you please when it is a man's duty, and as a means of good; but self-sacrifice for its own sake, and without an object, is not ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... in the background of the mind the supporting idea that something has been changed in the whole situation or that some helpful influence has made the improvement possible. Medicines of colored and flavored water, applications of electric instruments without currents, in extreme cases even the claptrap of a sham operation with a slight cut in the skin, may touch those brain cells which words alone cannot reach with sufficient energy and may thus secure the desired psychophysical effect. The patient who by merely mental inhibition has lost his voice for weeks may get ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... how inefficient the old form of drama was to carry anything more than the formal romantic fervour. Compared with John Galsworthy's treatment in "Strife" and "Justice," it makes one glad that realism came and washed away all the obscuring claptrap of that period. Daly, Boucicault, and their generation were held firmly in its grip; they could not get away from it, and they were justified in their loyalty to it by the insistent claim "The Two Orphans" ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy • Steele Mackaye
... before, and half-way men who would have been satisfied with driving the enemy out of France and Belgium lifted up their voices against those who insisted on prosecuting the war until Prussianism was worsted. The French Socialists met in London[72] and passed resolutions in which the usual claptrap of the war of classes, the boons of pacifism and the wickedness of the Tsardom occupied a prominent place. And the Congress was honoured by the presence of two Cabinet Ministers, ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... obtaining votes, exercise a most mischievous influence upon the elections. Education has not yet so permeated the heterogeneous mass of the people as to tell effectually upon their choice of representatives. The electors are caught by claptrap, noisy declamation, and specious promises, coupled with laudatory comments upon the sovereign people. As the times for the elections approach, the candidates of the weaker party endeavour to obtain favour and notoriety by leading a popular cry. The ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... the corruption of the democracy by evil politicians; Belloc has shown how it tends to develop, and then become a slave to, a bureaucracy; Graham Wallas has portrayed the psychological peril of its hypnotization by colours and claptrap. All the dangers thus enumerated are real and formidable. They have, however, to be faced and overcome by men of goodwill: for there is now no alternative to democracy but anarchy. Fortunately they may be faced ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... the labourers now show a vast deal of common sense, and the only wonder is that whilst paying but little deference either to men of estate or men of learning, they yet allow themselves to be "bamboozled" by the promises and claptrap of ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... amply. I, on the other hand, am with the benighted minority who believe that the world, so far as it has lived to any purpose, has lived by the head,' and he flung the noun at Robert scornfully. 'But I am quite aware that in a world of claptrap the philosopher gets all the kicks, and the philanthropists, to give them their own label, all ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... superiority to prejudice were American in the truest and best sense; but Washington showed the same qualities in private life and toward individuals which he displayed in regard to communities. He was free, of course, from the cheap claptrap which abuses the name of democracy by saying that birth, breeding, and education are undemocratic, and therefore to be reckoned against a man. He valued these qualities rightly, but he looked to see what a man was and not who he was, which is true democracy. The two men who were perhaps nearest ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... aesthetically. Here, said I to myself, are two tremendously important and exciting emotions. Life would be richer, warmer, brighter, altogether more amusing, if I could feel them. I try to feel them. I read the works of the mystics. They seemed to me nothing but the most deplorable claptrap—as indeed they always must to anyone who does not feel the same emotion as the authors felt when they were writing. For it is the emotion that matters. The written work is simply an attempt to express emotion, which is in itself inexpressible, in terms of intellect ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... and I don't mind. Claptrap morality is nothing to me. Yes, you killed Kaffar—killed him with that knife you held in your hand. I meant that you should. Kaffar was getting troublesome to me, and I wanted to get him out of the ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... grave hour—God help keep the President! To him all Lincoln's tenderness be lent, The grave, sweet nature of the man that saw Most power in peace and let no claptrap awe His high-poised duty from its primal plan Of rule supreme for the whole ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... "Disintegration of the Empire," or even that most hackneyed of political phrases, "Grand Old Man" itself. Now, if any one took credit to himself for never, never having uttered the "Acre and Cow" Shibboleth, or made use of any others of these soul-sickening bits of polemical claptrap, Mr. Punch could understand, and admire, and envy. There be things that everybody—possessed of sense and sobriety—would "rather not ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... Stuff! How can I? I am only one man; and they are millions. Do you suppose they would really kill each other if they didn't want to, merely for the sake of my beautiful eyes? Do not be deceived by newspaper claptrap, madam. I was swept away by a passion not my own, which imposed itself on me. By myself I am nothing. I dare not walk down the principal street of my own capital in a coat two years old, though the sweeper of that street can wear one ten ...
— The Inca of Perusalem • George Bernard Shaw
... inexplicable; Hood, the prince of tramps, the connoisseur in all the arts—even I must have my secrets; but in time, my dear boy, in time you shall know everything! But there's work before us! The long arm of coincidence beckons us. We shall test for ourselves all the claptrap of the highest-priced novelists." ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson |
