"Canting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some the Reformation blame; 'Tis hard to say from whence such License came; From fierce Enthusiasts, or Socinians sad? C——ns the soft, or Bourignon the mad? From wayward Nature, or lewd Poet's Rhimes? From praying, canting, or king-killing times? From all the dregs which Gallia cou'd pour forth, (Those Sons of Schism) landed in the North?— From whence it came, they and the D——l best know, Yet thus much, Pope, ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... had not finished," continued Mark. "If ever you say another word to us, whether we are together or whether we are alone, about being grateful, and that sort of thing, I shall say you are a canting humbug—at least, my cousin will; I shouldn't ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... your faith—your canting trash about your love for the Saviour! I might have known that one of your kind could not rise above the grossness in you. I hope you will be as miserable and as unhappy as I am.... I ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... much as look on the faces of the people more than once a-year. The ecclesiastical historian, too, looking into parliamentary reports of that period, finds honourable members zealous for the Church, and untainted with any sympathy for the "tribe of canting Methodists," making statements scarcely less melancholy than that of Mr. Roe. And it is impossible for me to say that Mr. Irwine was altogether belied by the generic classification assigned him. He really had no very lofty aims, no theological enthusiasm: if I were closely questioned, ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... half-year's rent into arrear; there was something in that to be sure. But Sir Murtagh was as much the contrary way; for let alone making English tenants [See GLOSSARY 7] of them, every soul, he was always driving and driving, and pounding and pounding, and canting and canting [See GLOSSARY 8], and replevying and replevying, and he made a good living of trespassing cattle; there was always some tenant's pig, or horse, or cow, or calf, or goose, trespassing, which was so great a gain to Sir Murtagh, that he did ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... that time it has not produced one man of service to our country—not one. You have stifled in the germ everything in the least living and bright. It's a town of shopkeepers, publicans, counting-house clerks, canting hypocrites; it's a useless, unnecessary town, which not one soul would regret if it suddenly ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Opposite, in the same posture, sit the women, whose appearance is most cadaverous and sepulchral, dressed in the Quaker costume. After sitting for some time in this hatching position, they all rise and sing a canting sort of hymn, during which the women keep time by elevating themselves on their toes. After the singing has ceased, a discourse is delivered by one of the elders; which being ended, the men pull off their coats and waistcoats. All being ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... through the agency of two small pins carried by an arm projecting from the press-lever, PL. As the latter moves up and down the pins play upon the under side of the lower arm of the rocking-lever, thus canting it and pushing the type-wheels to the right or left, as the case may be. The operation of shifting the type-wheels will be ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... of the artist? and vice versa? Behind the mask of good manners we all of us go about judging and condemning one another root and branch. We are in no real agreement as to the worth either of men or things. It is an illusion of the 'canting moralist' (to use Stevenson's phrase) that there is any fixed and final standard of Good. Good is just what any one thinks it to be; and one man has as much right ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... an end.[18] It was pleasant to observe these gentlemen labouring with all their might for preventing the bishops from letting their revenues at a moderate half value, (whereby the whole order would in an age have been reduced to manifest beggary) at the very instant when they were everywhere canting their own lands upon short leases, and sacrificing their oldest tenants for a penny an acre advance.[19] I know not how it comes to pass, (and yet perhaps I know well enough) that slaves have a natural disposition to be tyrants; and that when my betters give me a kick, I am apt to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... by God. The old woman is keeping up her assumption of the character of a devotee by canting about Divine direction. ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... he said—"of them. The uncle was a damn rebellious, canting, planting Scotchman. Horton Pen was the centre of the Separation Movement. We could have hung him if we'd wanted to. The nephew was the writer of an odious blackmailing print. He calumniated all the decent, loyal inhabitants. He was an ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... my dear mother," he said, in a canting tone, looking at Monsieur and Madame Hochon who accompanied her, "that my uncle's way of life is not becoming; he could, however, make Mademoiselle Brazier respected by the community if he chose. Wouldn't it be far better ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... "he King of Naples! Nay, dream that the town is shaken to its very foundations, that the people rise as one man, that our church bells sound a new Sicilian vespers, before the people of Naples will endure the rule of a handful of wild Hungarian drunkards, a deformed canting monk, a prince detested by them even as you ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... each horse's allotment of oats—extracted from the bin of his most recent host. Then he searched in the bottom of the wagon until he found a monkey-wrench which he applied to the nut and twirled dextrously. Canting the wheel, he moistened his finger tip and touched the ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... this is too much," said Julian, using the only oath that ever in all his life-time crossed his lips. "You canting and mean—Pshaw! you are beneath my abuse. Sizar indeed! there, take that, and begone." He had meant to empty the tumbler in his face, but his hand shook with passion, and the glass flew out of ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... discover the passages or phrases 'that had drawn down such sudden thunder from the serene heavens of public virtue': he was comically puzzled to comprehend why the reviewers were scandalised. He trampled with sarcasm and scorn upon canting critics, and retorted that the prurient prudery of their own minds suggested the impurities which they found in works of pure art. There is nothing, he insists, lovelier, as there is nothing more famous in later Hellenic art, than the statue of Hermaphroditus, yet his translation ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... torrents which flung about violently with the ship's movement. The men were in the rigging. Yeo was rigid at the wheel, his eyes on the future. I could not see the other passenger till his wife screamed, and then I saw him. Two figures rolled in a flood that was pouring to the canting of the deck, and one of them desperately clutched at the other for aid. But the other was the dead skipper, washed from ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... view of the Boer was so strictly orthodox as to give almost religious satisfaction to the proud parent. 'A canting hypocrite, a psalm-singer and devil-dodger, he has no civilization worth the name, and his customs are filthy. Since the great trek he has acquired, from long intercourse with his Kaffir slaves, many of the native's savage traits. In short, a born liar, ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... say that this is a visible summons to us all to thankfulness, especially we that were under the terror of its increase, perhaps it may be thought by some, after the sense of the thing was over, an officious canting of religious things, preaching a sermon instead of writing a history, making myself a teacher instead of giving my observations of things; and this restrains me very much from going on here as I might otherwise do. But if ten lepers Were ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... good fool!" the canting rogue again began to whine, edging nearer. "Charity, mistress! For the sake of the prophets and the disciples! The seven sacraments, the feast of the Pentecost and the Passover! In the name of the holy Fathers! St. Sebastian! ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... Pretend that Christ, (who came, we all agree, To bless his people, and to set them free) 30 To make a convert, ever one law gave By which converters made him first a slave. Spite of the glosses of a canting priest, Who talks of charity, but means a feast; Who recommends it (whilst he seems to feel The holy glowings of a real zeal) To all his hearers as a deed of worth, To give them heaven whom they have robb'd of earth; Never shall one, one truly honest man, Who, bless'd with Liberty, reveres her ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... was in, besides which the sail was just then beginning to bulge back as the wind headed us, the boat rocking for an instant and then canting over as if she was going to capsize, I drew my knife and rushed to where he sat in the bottom of the boat, struggling ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... fro, but—what was ghastly to behold—neither his attitude nor his fixed teeth-disclosing grin was anyway disturbed by this rough usage. At every jump too, Hands appeared still more to sink into himself and settle down upon the deck, his feet sliding ever the farther out, and the whole body canting towards the stern, so that his face became, little by little, hid from me; and at last I could see nothing beyond his ear and the frayed ringlet of ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Thou canting miscreant!" cried Heselrigge, springing on him suddenly, and aiming his dagger at his breast. But the soldier arrested the weapon, and at the same instant closing upon the assassin, with a turn of his foot threw him ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... one doesn't want to use terms that have been used in a thousand different senses in any way that isn't a perfectly unambiguous sense, and at the same time one doesn't want to seem to be canting about things or pitching anything a note or two higher than it ought legitimately to go, but it seems to me that this sort of something that Mr. Britling is always asking for in his essays and writings and things, and what you are looking for just as much and which seems so important to ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... The judge gloomed on him a moment. "Art more like a snivelling, canting Jack Presbyter. I tell you, man, I can smell ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... went on, 'you won't have me there to hear you. I hate those canting meetings, don't you, Jack? Subject. Ah, he tells us his subject beforehand, does he? Very kind of him, I'm sure! Subject: Where are you going? Ah,' said Tom, 'that's soon answered: I'm going to Scarborough, old fellow, and a jolly good day I hope to ...
— Christie, the King's Servant • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... "You're a canting hypocrite!" Julian declared. "Try your delirium. That packet happens to be in the one place where neither you nor one of your tribe could ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Modern English polite society, my native sphere, seems to me as corrupt as consciousness of culture and absence of honesty can make it. A canting, lie-loving, fact-hating, scribbling, chattering, wealth-hunting, pleasure-hunting, celebrity-hunting mob, that, having lost the fear of hell, and not replaced it by the love of justice, cares for nothing but the lion's ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... money,' said Richard, at the same time giving me a violent slap across the shoulders. 'Mr. Sanders was a canting old Methodist, and you are like him. But take care, if you say a word of what has passed I will ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... withstand the thrust which the screw occasions. Another arrangement still more generally used, is that represented in figs. 55 and 56, p. 331. It is a good practice to make the thrust plummer block with a very long sole in the direction of the shaft, so as to obviate any risk of canting or springing forward when the strain is applied, as such a circumstance, if occurring even to a slight extent, would be very likely to cause the bearing ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... weel-worn clay here lies: Ye canting zealots, spare him! If honest worth in heaven rise, Ye'll mend ere ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... are attached to the King, and with reason," said Mirabeau: "I am attached to him too; but I never saw you so much moved."—"Ah!" said Quesnay, "I think of what would follow."—"Well, the Dauphin is virtuous."—"Yes; and full of good intentions; nor is he deficient in understanding; but canting hypocrites would possess an absolute empire over a Prince who regards them as oracles. The Jesuits would govern the kingdom, as they did at the end of Louis XIV.'s reign: and you would see the fanatical Bishop of Verdun Prime Minister, and ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... you keep quiet. Now listen to me, Simon Stubbles. You have lorded it over the people in this parish too long for their welfare. It is through you that the Church life is dormant here, and no clergyman can stay for any length of time. You know this to be true, notwithstanding your canting words in the hall to-night. I am not afraid of you, and I shall remain in this parish as long as I please. If you interfere with me in any way it will be at your own peril. I have given you timely warning, and you ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... we accord to real worth, to high, and noble, and strong manhood and womanhood, with the scorn we have for the canting weakling, is but part of our discrimination between a living, deep religion expressed in conduct and a mask or pretense adopted ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... with looks of tragic significance. By their own fault they were ruined; they were shut out of the garden of their gifts; their city of hope was ploughed and salted. The past cannot be retrieved, let canting optimists talk as they choose; what has been has been, and the effects will last and spread until the earth shall pass away. Our acts our angels are, or good or ill; our fatal shadows that walk by us still. The thing done lasts for eternity; the lightest act of man ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... subsequently confirmed by Boswell, she proceeds to show that Johnson was no gentler to herself or those for whom he had the greatest regard. "When I one day lamented the loss of a first cousin, killed in America, 'Prithee, my dear (said he), have done with canting: how would the world be worse for it, I may ask, if all your relations were at once spitted like larks and roasted for Presto's supper?'—Presto was the dog that lay under the table." To this Boswell opposes the version given ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... through the forked shank ab. The points or pees e, f, to the palms g were blunt. This anchor had an excellent reputation amongst nautical men of that period, and by the committee on anchors, appointed by the admiralty in 1852, it was placed second only to the anchor of Trotman. Later came the self-canting anchor, which, passing through successive improvements, became the improved Martin anchor (fig. 2) made of forged iron. A projection in the centre of the arms works in a recess at the hub of the shank: the vacancies outside the shank are filled by blocks bolted through on each side, and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... stretches wide, A sea that's running strong, A boat that dips its laving side, The forefoot's rippling song. A flaming sky, a crimson flood, Here's joy for body and mind, As in our canting crafts we scud With a ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... like, in a quiet dacent way. So I dusted him a chair, an' fettled up th' fireplace a bit; but I hadn't forgotten th' Rector's words, so says I, "I wonder, sir, you should give yourself that trouble, to come so far to see a 'canting old fool,' such ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... affectionate character prevails among these descendants of the mutineers, they will be delightful to our minds, they will be amiable and acceptable in the sight of God, and they will be useful and happy among themselves. Let it be our fervent prayer that neither canting and hypocritical emissaries from schools of artificial theology on the one hand, nor sensual and licentious crews and adventurers on the other, may ever enter the charming village of Pitcairn to give disease to the minds or the ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... negligent of his work and eager to go frequently to Braska. Presently he heard things of him that made him believe Howard was contemplating desertion, and no sooner had Lieutenant Davies arrived than he became assured of it. "I had to serve under that damned, canting Methodist preacher," said Howard, "and I won't have him nosing around where I am. I'll desert first." Now, Haney had no objection to Howard's "skipping,"—it would be good riddance to dangerous timber,—but he wanted first to find ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... not surely gone over to the side of those canting fellows (Spanish Jesuits in disguise, every one of them, they are), who pretended to turn up their noses at Franky Drake, as a pirate, and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... great moral poet of all times, of all climes, of all feelings, and of all stages of existence. The delight of my boyhood, the study of my manhood, perhaps (if allowed to me to attain it) he may be the consolation of my age. His poetry is the Book of Life. Without canting, and yet without neglecting religion, he has assembled all that a good and great man can gather together of moral wisdom clothed in consummate beauty. Sir William Temple observes, "that of all the members of mankind that live within the compass of a thousand years, for one man that is born capable ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... alive? You had my message through Mr. Cuthbert; I met you day by day after you knew that I had been your father's partner, and never once did you give yourself away! Were you tarred with the same brush as those canting snobs who doomed a poor old man to a living death? Doesn't it look like it? What am I ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... matter of law," replied the younger man, "it is a matter of safety, you fool. What might come of it, if he were to have a long canting talk with the old wretch upon ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... much as he had made by the "Traveller" and the "Vicar of Wakefield" together. The plot of the "Goodnatured Man" is, like almost all Goldsmith's plots, very ill constructed. But some passages are exquisitely ludicrous; much more ludicrous, indeed, than suited the taste of the town at that time. A canting, mawkish play, entitled "False Delicacy," had just had an immense run. Sentimentality was all the mode. During some years, more tears were shed at comedies than at tragedies; and a pleasantry which moved the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... universe, his hero; He's lost in constant admiration, quotes him On all occasions, takes his trifling acts For wonders, and his words for oracles. The fellow knows his dupe, and makes the most on't, He fools him with a hundred masks of virtue, Gets money from him all the time by canting, And takes upon himself to carp at us. Even his silly coxcomb of a lackey Makes it his business to instruct us too; He comes with rolling eyes to preach at us, And throws away our ribbons, rouge, and ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... metonymy: Your words of second-hand intention, When things by wrongful names you mention; 590 The mystick sense of all your terms, That are, indeed, but magick charms To raise the Devil, and mean one thing, And that is down-right conjuring; And in itself more warrantable, 595 Than cheat, or canting to a rabble, Or putting tricks upon the Moon, Which by confed'racy are done. Your ancient conjurers were wont To make her from her sphere dismount. 600 And to their incantations stoop: They scorn'd to ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... a calm survey of Laura's pure and angelic expression of face reassured her. This girl had no mind to entrap the king, and if Louis had not courage enough to dance with HER (De Montespan), in presence of that canting hypocrite De Maintenon, perhaps it was quite as well that he had provided himself with a partner sans coquetterie, ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... life-boat davits, he saw at once that the ship was canting far over. The life-boat, which in the drills swung close to the vessel's side, now hung far away. It was already filled ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... mending. He observes truly the statutes, and therefore had rather steal than beg. He is so strong an enemy of idleness, that in mending one hole he would rather make three than want work; and when he hath done, he throws the wallet of his faults behind him. His tongue is very voluble, which, with canting, proves him a linguist. He is entertained in every place, yet enters no farther than the door, to avoid suspicion. To conclude, if he escape Tyburn and Banbury, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... St. Paul, He is faithful in all His office. Therefore He is severe as well as gentle. He was so when on earth. With the poor, the outcast, the neglected, those on whom men trampled, who was gentler than the Lord Jesus? To the proud Pharisee, the canting Scribe, the cunning Herodian, who was sterner than the Lord Jesus? Read that awful 23rd chapter of St. Matthew, and then see how the Saviour, the lamb dumb before His shearers, He of whom it was said "He shall not strive nor cry, nor shall His voice ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... colours which gave it a false and superficial lustre, and I gaze on the melancholy reality chidden, and, let me say, instructed by the sight. I can now better appreciate and understand the self-confident tone which pronounced upon my state in the eye of heaven—the canting expressions of brotherly love—the irreverent familiarity with which Scripture was quoted, garbled, and tortured to justify dissent, and render disobedience holy—the daring assumption of inquisitorial privileges, and the scorn, the illiberality and self-righteousness, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... invaluable blessing. I thank thee, that thou brought'st me into being; The things of this our world are well worth seeing; And let me add, moreover, well worth feeling; Then what the Devil would people have? These gloomy hunters of the grave, For ever sighing, groaning, canting, kneeling. Some wish they never had been born, how odd! To see the handy works of God, In sun and moon, and starry sky; Though last, not least, to see sweet Woman's charms,— Nay, more, to clasp them in our arms, And ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... last, in a harsh, choking voice, taking a step towards his father with a gesture as though he would have struck him. "You have brought us to this with your canting and scheming and plotting. What are we to do now—eh? Answer me that!" He caught the old man by the coat and shook ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... they could only be got cheaply, and hence swallowed large cubic measures of physic prescribed by unscrupulous ignorance which had taken no degrees. Considering that statistics had not yet embraced a calculation as to the number of ignorant or canting doctors which absolutely must exist in the teeth of all changes, it seemed to Lydgate that a change in the units was the most direct mode of changing the numbers. He meant to be a unit who would make a certain amount of difference towards that spreading change ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... loved her." It was all she could think of to say, and yet the words sounded trite and canting as soon as she ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... I was following showed the faintest spread in the direction of their canting—they must have been only a few miles from blast center. As I passed each one I could see where the metal on the blast side had been eroded—vaporized by the original blast, mostly smoothly, but with welts and pustules where the metal had merely melted ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... the name of his father's place, but with the name of its present owner he was not familiar. Doubtless, he might sometimes have heard it from his father, but the latter, when he spoke of the present possessor of the Court, generally did so as "that Roundhead dog," or "that canting Puritan." ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... me, what business have I there? I who can neither lie nor falsely swear? Nor praise my patron's undeserving rhymes, Nor yet comply with him nor with his times? Unskilled in schemes by planets to foreshow, Like canting rascals, how the wars will go; I neither will nor can prognosticate To the young gaping heir his father's fate; Nor in the entrails of a toad have pried, Nor carried bawdy presents to a bride: For want of these town-virtues, thus alone I go conducted ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... to strike back at the human traits which have wronged us, and the satiric depiction of hateful characters whose seeming virtues are turned upside down to expose their impossible hearts feeds our craving for vicarious revenge. We dote upon vinegarish old maids, self- righteous men, and canting women when they are exposed by narrative art, and especially when poetic justice wrecks them. The books that contain them bid for popularity. It happens that in rapid succession we have seen three novels in which this element ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... said Grierson, "dog and traitor as he is, let him sink to the lowest pit, there to wait the arrival of his canting and Covenanting spouse, whom we shall now take the liberty of carrying to head-quarters, there to await her sentence, for decoying a king's sworn servant and a sergeant, from ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew. In its several tribes of gypsies, beggars, thieves, cheats, etc., with an addition of some proverbs, phrases, and figurative speeches, etc. London, 1690. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... unscrupulous are termed swindlers, and eventually stand in the dock," he went on. "What are your successful politicians but successful liars? What are your great South African magnates, before whom even Royalty bows, but successful adventurers? And what are your millionaire manufacturers but canting hypocrites who have got their money by paying a starvation wage and giving the public advertised shoddy, a quack medicine, or a soap which smells pleasantly but is injurious to the skin? No, my dear Ewart," he laughed, as we turned into the long tunnel, with its row of electric lights, "the public ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... think he might write a canting book," said the general with a sneer; "that would ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... doctrines introduced to them by their betters, and those who had found time to investigate the matter; but some, in the present day, support the monstrous delusion that enlightened and well-trained intellects, the most glorious of all the earthly gifts of God, should bow to canting and illiterate fanaticism. ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... well-written tale in the style of the Dairyman's Daughter; that is the kind of literature, sir, that sells at the present day! It is not the Miller of the Black Valley—no, sir, nor Herder either, that will suit the present taste; the evangelical body is becoming very strong, sir—the canting scoundrels—" ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... such Reverend Gents as he Could get the upperhand, Ah, what a hateful tyranny Would override the land! That we may never see that time, Down with the canting crew That would out of their pantomime Poor little ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... be maltreated. After this scene, his reverence forbade Bryan the rectory-house; on which I swore that his eldest son, who was bringing up for the ministry, should never have the succession of the living of Hackton, which I had thoughts of bestowing on him; and his father said, with a canting hypocritical air, which I hate, that Heaven's will must be done; that he would not have his children disobedient or corrupted for the sake of a bishopric, and wrote me a pompous and solemn letter, charged with Latin quotations, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and he having some dispute two or three days before, the purser told him, when he asked for his wine, that he was come to mutiny, and without any farther ceremony, discharged a pistol at his head, and would have shot him, had he not been prevented by the cooper's canting the pistol with his elbow, at the instant of its going off; the captain and lieutenant H——n, hearing the discharge of a pistol, the latter ran out with a firelock, then called the captain out of his tent, telling him that Cozens was come to mutiny; the captain ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... ye, leave that cozening, canting, sanctify'd Sneer of yours, and drink ye me like a sober loyal Magistrate, all those Healths you are behind, from his sacred Majesty, whom God long preserve, with the rest of the Royal Family, even down to this wicked Widow, whom Heaven soon convert from her leud designs upon my Body. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... zeal is frequently kindled from the same spark with other fires, and from inflaming brotherly love will proceed to raise that of a gallant. If we inspect into the usual process of modern courtship, we shall find it to consist in a devout turn of the eyes, called ogling; an artificial form of canting and whining, by rote, every interval, for want of other matter, made up with a shrug, or a hum; a sigh or a groan; the style compact of insignificant words, incoherences, and repetitions. These I take to be the most accomplished rules of address to a mistress; and where are these performed with ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... again coming right on top of us. We shouted and screamed till our voices broke into hoarse groans; and then there happened a strange thing. That which had caused our misfortune proved our salvation. We heard a crashing sound, followed by loud cries of alarm, and then saw the ship lying flat aback, canting heavily over to port. Presently she righted, and then made a stern-board, and came so close to us that one of the hands not only heard our cries but saw us in ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... I told him boldly, That I didn't value his Fanatical Cant, for there were Men of better Sense than he, thought it no Sin; and that I knew the Opinion of the greatest Wits in the Town, in those things; and car'd not what a parcel of Canting Coxcombs said.—To which he reply'd, My Coming hither was to do you good, and to turn you (if Possible) from your Wicked Courses; but seeing you are hardened in it, and will not be reclaimed, I will take care to have ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... who have got rich by pilfering, canting, and cheating, those you may beat and bind, and hold captive for ransom. And chiefly the Sheriff of Nottingham—look you, bear him ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... letters are little better than a homily on the sins of dancing, feasting, dressing, and the like, garnished with scriptural allusions, and conveyed in a tone of sour rebuke, that would have done credit to the most canting Roundhead in Oliver Cromwell's court. The queen, far from taking exception at it, vindicates herself from the grave imputations with a degree of earnestness and simplicity, which may provoke a smile in the reader. "I am aware," she concludes, "that custom ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... her and wrung her, The venom is working;— And if you had hung her With canting and quirking, She could not be deader than she will be soon;— 255 I have driven her close to you, under the moon, Night and day, hum! hum! ha! I have hummed her and drummed her From place to place, till at last I have dumbed her, Hum! hum! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... then deny our right to the inheritance? The Lady Fitz-Eustace had a fair copy of the deed, purporting to be sent by the holy confessor who shrived the testator in his extremity. But how hath this canting hermit gotten the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Missionary and Anti-Missionary Baptists. The latter church is strong all through the mountains. They are bigoted and ignorant, and boast that their knowledge comes direct from the throne, and they have nothing to do with man-made theories, as they call education. Their preaching is a sort of canting reiteration of the text and what few Scripture verses they chance to know and some hackneyed expressions. They are great on arguing, and it would be laughable if it was not so pitiful to hear the profound questions they discuss. Last season one of these preachers nearly broke up one of our ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various
... struggling sinks beneath his lot And seems by all but watchful France forgot—[4] Thy heart would burn—yes, even thy Pittite heart Would burn to think that such a blooming part Of the world's garden, rich in nature's charms And filled with social souls and vigorous arms, Should be the victim of that canting crew, So smooth, so godly,—yet so devilish too; Who, armed at once with prayer-books and with whips, Blood on their hands and Scripture on their lips, Tyrants by creed and tortures by text, Make this life hell ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... now to prove that the Republican party has been unclean and vicious all its life.... Some of these worthies masquerade as reformers. Their vocation and ministry is to lament the sins of other people. Their stock in trade is rancid, canting self-righteousness. They are wolves in sheep's clothing. Their real object is office and plunder. When Dr. Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel, he was unconscious of the then undeveloped capabilities and uses of the word reform.... Some of these new-found party overseers ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... but seedy-looking Southerner, who seemed to have "seen better days," wished he "might be—if he didn't lay a pe-yor of boots thar whar that blanket whar." Not to be lost in the shuffle was a tall canting specimen of Yankee-dom perched on a water cask that "reckoned ther is right smart chance of folks on this 'ere ship," and "kalkerlate that that boat swinging thar war a good place to stow my fixin's in." The next day thorough system ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... You, sir, you offer suggestions for the benefit of a country whose prosperity excites your jealousy, and whose institutions arouse mingled feelings of hatred and fear! Go home, sir—go home! no more of your canting hypocrisy about the lusty negro! go home, sir, I say! enrich your own poor, clothe your naked, and feed your own starving—the negro here is better off than most of them! Imitate the example of this free and enlightened ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... horde of common people running a government with no head but their own wills is preposterous!" cried the proud old Tory Ralph Jeffries, as he settled his wig with a shake of the head and pulled out his lace ruffles. "Are these canting Puritans going to rule ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... There was a priest with Mr. Helbeck who got it hot too—that old chap Bowles—I dare say you've seen him. Aye, he's a snake, is Helbeck!" the young man repeated. Then he reddened still more deeply, and added with vindictive emphasis—"and an interfering,—hypocritical,—canting sort of party into t' bargain. He'd like to lord it over everybody aboot here, if he was let. But he's as poor as a church ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the bright, dry light all is gay and busy. The most sthetic, and perhaps most humiliating, sight that a Westerner could see we came on there: two Arab Spahis walking down the main street in their long robe uniforms, white and red, and their white linen bonnets bound with a dark fur and canting slightly backwards. Over six feet high, they moved unhurrying, smoking their cigarettes, turning their necks slowly from side to side like camels of the desert. Their brown, thin, bearded faces wore neither ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... "Canting bigotry and carping criticism," says Magoon, "are usually the product of obtuse sensibilities and a pusillanimous will. Plutarch tells us of an idle and effeminate Etrurian, who found fault with the ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... Anglo-Saxons) for such transfusion of a foreign element, correcting our deficiencies and faults, and ripening (as the literature of Italy ripened our Elizabethans) our own intrinsic qualities. It means, apart from negative service against conceit and canting self-aggrandisement, an additional power of taking life intelligently and serenely; a power of adaptation to various climates and diets of the spirit, let alone the added wealth of such varied climates and diets themselves. ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... sacrificed everything to serve her country, and now that Nelson had smashed the combined fleets of Spain and France, and lost his life through it, this precious government had no further need for her services, so threw her helpless on a callous, canting world. They built a monument for him, and left his poor Emma, whom he regarded in the light of a good spirit, to starve, though he had begged that she should be provided for. That was the view the sailors took of ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... his creatures, who reveals his favor and bestows his kindness on a few only of those creatures, who leaves the remainder in blindness and uncertainty to follow their passions, or adopt opinions against which the favored wage war, must of necessity be eternally at odds with the rest of the world, canting about their oracles and mysteries, supernatural precepts, invented purely to torment the human mind, to enthral it, and leave man answerable for what he could not obey, and punishable for what he was ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... me a blackguard and a scoundrel, do you?" hissed Saurin, who was quite beside himself with rage; and certainly Crawley's speech was the reverse of soothing. "You stuck-up, hypocritical, canting, conceited prig, I should like to ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... they are not at leisure to observe what passes amongst others at the same table. This I have observed in more cases than my own; and this was so strongly verified by my aunt, that, though she often found us together at her return from the pump, the least canting word of his, pretending impatience at her absence, effectually smothered all suspicion. One artifice succeeded with her to admiration. This was his treating me like a little child, and never calling me by any other ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... it." And he burst into a ringing laugh: but in the middle of it, stopped dead short, and his face elongated. "Lord sake, mad'm," said he impressively," mind what y' are at, though; Barkton's just a trap for fanciful femuls: there's a n'oily ass called Osmond, and a canting cut-throat called Stephenson and a genteel, cadaveris old assassin called Short, as long as a maypole; they'd soon take the rose out of Miss Floree's cheek here. Why, they'd starve Cupid, an' veneseck Venus, an' blister ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... earnest. She dropped my arm at once, and seeing Kenneth hovering about in the hall she went up to him, 'Take me out into the balcony; I want a change of atmosphere. Your converted people are all alike. A nasty, spiteful, ill-natured set of canting hypocrites!' ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... once to me. So you soon have answers cut and dried for them. We call 'em cocks, because they're just like half-penny ballads, all ready printed, while the pitcher always has the one you want ready at his finger-ends. It is the same in all canting. I knew a man once who got his living by singing of evenings in the gaffs to the piano, and making up verses on the gentlemen and ladies as they came in; and very nice verses he made, too,—always as smooth as butter. How do you do it? I asked him one day. 'Well, you ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... pleasurable faculties of our fathers welcomed with such hearty greetings, knowing that no harm (dramatic harm even) could come, or was meant to come of them, must inspire a cold and killing aversion. Charles (the real canting person of the scene—for the hypocrisy of Joseph has its ulterior legitimate ends, but his brother's professions of a good heart centre in downright self-satisfaction) must be loved and Joseph hated. To balance one ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... a rocket flare-back, grasses burned away from the fins of a small scoutship. But even as Shann rose to one knee, his shout of welcome choked in his throat. One of those fins sank, canting the ship crookedly, preventing any new take-off. And over the crown of a low hill to the west swung the ominous black ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... itself. I tell you I cannot speak without it. What's the use of canting now? You know it can make ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... precocious for your age. You'll get the better of him. But if you'd been brought up with other children you'd have whined and cringed—'Yes, sir,' 'No, sir'—and been a beastly canting hypocrite all your life. You're wonderfully lucky if you only knew it, Stonehouse. You're nearly ten, and you can't read and you don't say your prayers and your catechism and you know nothing about God Almighty. You've a sporting chance of ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... have anything to do with me because I am a poor drunkard's boy." "You have got a wrong idea, my boy, Jesus will love you and save you and your father too," and I told him a story of a little boy in an Eastern city. The boy said his father would never allow the canting hypocrites of Christians to come into his house, and would never allow his child to go to Sunday-school. A kind-hearted man got his little boy and brought him to Christ. When Christ gets into a man's ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... cynical, and in part affectionate, and in part self-disdainful. He had gone thrilling at all this for years on end, because it came from the lips of a pretty and engaging woman, with whom it was no more than a canting shibboleth. Of course it helped to disillusionize him, and he began even to see that Gertrude was not as beautiful as he had once believed her to be. This is almost a fatal symptom in the history of love's decay, unless the perception be attended, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... to be directed with peculiar violence upon the Dissenters. "Show me," said he, "a Presbyterian, and I will show thee a lying knave. Presbyterianism has all manner of villany in it. There is not one of those lying, snivelling, canting Presbyterians, but, one way or another, has had a hand in the rebellion." He sentenced nearly all who were accused, to be hanged or burned; and the excess of his barbarities called forth pity and indignation even from devoted loyalists. He boasted that ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... a world-Power of the first magnitude? Give these people the most perfect political constitution and the soundest political program that benevolent omniscience can devise for them, and they will interpret it into mere fashionable folly or canting charity as infallibly as a savage converts the philosophical theology of a Scotch ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... this: that she had no reverence for money. She was unable to hoard—an unpardonable sin. Envied in prosperity, she was smugly pitied in her distress. Such is the fate of those who stand apart from the crowd, among a nation of canting shopkeepers. To die penniless, after being the friend of duchesses, is distinctly bad form—a slur on society. True, she might have bettered her state by accepting a lucrative proposal to write her autobiography, but she considered such literature a "degrading ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... canting heraldry?" she asked. "There is no country so rich in it as Italy. These are the arms of the Farfalla, the original owners of this property. Or, seme of twenty roses gules; the crest, on a rose gules, a butterfly or, with wings ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... canting old devil, Sam," says the little man. "But I'll oblige you. Come up, my bully, and I'll ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... happen'd on a winter night, As authors of the legend write, Two brother hermits, saints by trade, Taking their tour in masquerade, Disguis'd in tatter'd habits, went To a small village down in Kent; Where, in the strollers' canting strain, They begg'd from door to door in vain, Try'd ev'ry tone might pity win; But not a soul would let them in. Our wand'ring saints, in woful state, Treated at this ungodly rate, Having thro' all the village past, To a small cottage came at last Where dwelt a good old honest ye'man, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... into woman the canting falsehood that the women of all other religions are degraded and immoral. Through tyranny and falsehood alone is Christianity able to hold woman in subjection. To tell her the truth would rend the temple ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... of the prisoners resisted a demand so unreasonable, and insisted on their right to have this necessary of life untaxed, their keepers emptied the water on the prison floor, saying, "If they were obliged to bring water for the canting whigs, they were not bound to afford them the use of bowls ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... "Keep your seats, damn ye!" roared our preacher, as his audience rose in excitement. "If a man of ye moves down he goes! The door's locked on the outside, so ye can't get out anyhow. Your seats, ye canting, chuckle-headed fools! Down with ye, ye dogs, or ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... heard none of this lesson for fourteen years past. We have been huffed and bullied with your Act of Toleration; you have told us that you are the Church established by law, as well as others; have set up your canting synagogues at our church doors, and the Church and members have been loaded with reproaches, with oaths, associations, abjurations, and what not. Where has been the mercy, the forbearance, the charity, you have ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... plebeians; but, moreover, seemed to infer that our coat-armour had not been achieved by honourable actions in war, but bestowed by way of PARONOMASIA, or pun upon our family appellation,—a sort of bearing which the French call ARMOIRES PARLANTES; the Latins ARMA CANTANTIA; and your English authorities, canting heraldry; being indeed a species of emblazoning more befitting canters, gaberlunzies, and such-like mendicants, whose gibberish is formed upon playing upon the word, than the noble, honourable, and useful science of heraldry, which ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... cards are good. What angels would those be, who thus excel In theologies, could they sew as well! Yet why should not the fair her text pursue? Can she more decently the doctor woo? 'Tis hard, too, she who makes no use but chat Of her religion, should be barr'd in that. Isaac, a brother of the canting strain, When he has knock'd at his own skull in vain, To beauteous Marcia often will repair With a dark text, to light it at the fair. O how his pious soul exults to find Such love for holy men in woman-kind! Charm'd with her learning, with what rapture he Hangs on her bloom, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... ship with her cable hove taut towards her anchor, when the sails are usually loosed and braced for canting; sheeted home.—Hove well short, the position of the ship when she is drawn by the capstan nearly ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... opened the door and looked in, to whom Cromwell, exchanging the canting drawl, in which it seemed he might have gone on interminably, for the short brief tone of action, called ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... generation's grimy with hypocrisy. I came to the most beautiful things in life—like peeping Tom of Coventry. I was never given a light, never given a touch of natural manhood by all this dingy, furtive, canting, humbugging English world. Thank God! I'll soon be out of it! The shame of it! The very savages in Australia initiate their children better than the English do to-day. Neither of us was ever given a view of what they call morality that didn't make it show as shabby subservience, as the meanest discretion, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... the tiled floor in the vestibule, and as soon as she had come into the drawing-room, I saw three old heads in white caps, following each other one by one, who came in balancing themselves with different movements, one canting to the right, while the other canted to the left. And three worthy women showed themselves, limping, dragging their legs behind them, crippled by illness and deformed through old age, three infirm old women, past service, the only ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... read over again, still smile upon me with fresh novelty Death discharges us of all our obligations Difference betwixt memory and understanding Do thine own work, and know thyself Effect and performance are not at all in our power Fantastic gibberish of the prophetic canting Folly of gaping after future things Good to be certain and finite, and evil, infinite and uncertain He who lives everywhere, lives nowhere If they chop upon one truth, that carries a mighty report Iimpotencies ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... dear friend, renounce this canting strain; What would'st thou have a good great man obtain? Place? titles? salary? a gilded chain? Or throne of corses which his sword hath slain? Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends! Hath he not always treasures, always friends, The good great man? Three treasures, love, and ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Dutch Butter-ferkin, a Kilderkin. These terms are common abuse as applied to a corpulent person. A firkin (Mid. Dut., vierdekijn) a small cask for holding liquids or butter; originally half-a-kilderkin. Dictionary of the Canting Crew (1700) has 'Firkin of foul Stuff; a ... Coarse, Corpulent Woman'. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... one instance that might shew him to have some sense of religion as well as justice. When two monks were outvying each other in canting[16] the price of an abbey, he observed a third at some distance, who said never a word; the King demanded why he would not offer; the monk said, he was poor, and besides, would give nothing if he were ever so rich; the King replied, "Then you are the fittest person to have it," and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift |
