"Disingenuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it. To discern its fallaciousness, requires not acuteness of understanding, so much as a little common honesty. "There is indeed no surer mark of a false and hollow heart, than a disposition thus to quibble away the clear injunctions of duty and conscience[81]:" It is the wretched resource of a disingenuous mind, endeavouring to escape from convictions before which it cannot stand, and to evade obligations which it ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... findings of the Commission on the ground that its report was based on a fallacy, since Ireland has no more right to be considered as a separate entity than an English county, is remarkably disingenuous in view of the acknowledgment of this in the separate treatment which she received in the matter of grants made in relief of local taxation and for the establishment of free education in the years 1888 ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... prove it to you," answered Mrs. Meredith. "I went to see the people, and you could prove anything straightforward by merely showing them to the Houses in session. They could not conceal a disingenuous thought among them—the delightful giant, the boy with the eyelashes, the radiant girl, and the ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "Does the Pond look the same as when I was there? It is almost as pleasant at Nahant as at Raymond. I thought there was no place that I should say so much of." The furnisher of the notes, if he was disingenuous, might indeed have remembered that Hawthorne was in Maine about 1816; he may also have relied on a statement in the "Transcript's" editorial, to the effect that Hawthorne was taken to Raymond in 1814. In that editorial, it is also observed: "Hawthorne ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... were put to a popular vote in Massachusetts was unfair and misleading; the epithets applied to the "Moderate" or loyal party were offensive and unjust; and the statements of Palfrey, respecting the acts of the King immediately following the vacation of the Charter, are very disingenuous, not ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... elevation from the subdivision of the empire into several partial confederacies than from its union under one government. It is not, however, my design to dwell upon observations of this nature. I am well aware that it would be disingenuous to resolve indiscriminately the opposition of any set of men (merely because their situations might subject them to suspicion) into interested or ambitious views. Candor will oblige us to admit that even such men may be actuated by upright intentions; and it cannot be doubted that much ...
— The Federalist Papers
... the other with a somewhat disingenuous eye. "I don't say I altogether accept it myself; that's why I kept it to the end," he explained. "But we must balance the possibilities against the improbabilities, never losing sight of the one incontestable fact that the boy has undoubtedly disappeared. And here's a man, a well-known man, ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... situation, and therefore I excuse the little aberrations from truth which your letter contains. At the same time it is possible that you may have been misinformed. For I will not suppose that your letter was intended to delude the people of these States. Such unmanly, disingenuous artifices have of late been exerted with so little effect, that prudence, if not probity, would prevent a repetition. To undeceive you, therefore, I take the liberty of assuring your Excellencies, from the very best intelligence, that what ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... broadened the accusation to cover a general indifference on the part of the Secretary of the Interior to the whole conservation movement. President Taft, however, completely exonerated Secretary Ballinger from blame and removed Glavis for "filing a disingenuous statement unjustly impeaching the official integrity of his superior officer." Later Pinchot was also dismissed from the service. The charges against Secretary Ballinger were investigated by a joint committee of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... typical prosecution, arbitrary, unintelligent and disingenuous, is to be found in Sumner and Indecency, by Frank Harris, in Pearson's Magazine ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... not leisure to make verses, nor anything approaching to a fondness for the exercise. In the ignorant present time, who can answer for the future man? "At lovers' perjuries Jove laughs,"—and poets have sometimes a disingenuous way of forswearing their occupation. This, though, is not my case. The tender cast of soul, sombred with melancholy and subsiding recollections, is favorable to the Sonnet ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... representation. The Boris Godounoff before them was a remorse-stricken regicide, whose good works, if he did any, had to be summed up for their imagination in the fact that he loved his son. In all this, and also in some of its music, the new opera was of the opera operatic. But to the unhappily disingenuous (or perhaps it would be better to say, to the instructed) there was much more in the new opera; and it was this more which so often gave judgment pause, even while it stimulated interest and irritated curiosity. It was a pity that a recent ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... disingenuous creature. He was saving me for the dry hour. He could point out Mulehaus in any passing chair, and I would give some coin to ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... profess to deny the reality of the distinction of Right and Wrong, as disingenuous disputants, useless to reason with,—he states the great problem of Morals to be, whether the foundation is REASON or SENTIMENT; whether our knowledge of moral distinctions is attained by a chain of argument and induction, or by an immediate ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... he meant, and there was some truth in it. For Vicky was a mystery, and I was not by any means sure, that she didn't hoodwink us when she chose to. Much as I liked and admired the girl, I was forced to believe she was not altogether disingenuous. And she was clever enough to hoodwink anybody. But if Stone's deductions were to be depended on, they were ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... to you, gentlemen, not to bore you with metaphysical speculations, but simply to enable you, as educated men who understand the meaning of plain and straightforward English on any subject, to follow the twistings and turnings of an extraordinarily sinuous and disingenuous intellect, and intelligently to decide a question which needs here to be settled clearly in your own minds: could any competent professor of philosophy, undertaking to give, as a fair critic, a truthful account to ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... young man, meekly, "I see;" which was disingenuous. He silently debated whether this meant a species of letter of recommendation, but was ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... Arbor, a change of policy. Under the light that broke in upon their minds, the professors found there was really no law against the admission of women to that very liberal seat of learning. "To be sure, they never had admitted women, but none had formally applied." This, though somewhat disingenuous, was received in good faith, and soon tested by Miss Madeline Stockwell, who had completed half her course at Kalamazoo, and was persuaded by Mrs. Stone to make application at Ann Arbor. Mrs. Stone knew her to be a thorough scholar, as far as she had gone, especially ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... all about our national waste of inventive talent, our mean standard of intellectual attainment, our disingenuous criticism, and the consequent failure to distinguish men of the quality needed to carry on the modern type of war. Almost universally we have the wrong men in our places of responsibility and the right men in no place at all, almost universally we have poorly qualified, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... unfortunate in its title-pages. It was first published in 1599 as The Passionate Pilgrims. By W. Shakespeare. At London. Printed for W. Jaggard, and are to be sold by W. Leake, at the Greyhound in Paules Churchyard. This, of course, was disingenuous. Some of the numbers were by Shakespeare: but the authorship of some remains doubtful to this day, and others the enterprising Jaggard had boldly conveyed from Marlowe, Richard Barnefield, and Bartholomew ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... I, that human nature can rejoice in its disgrace, and take pleasure in seeing its own figure turned into ridicule, and distorted into forms that raise horror and aversion? There is something disingenuous and immoral in the being able to bear such a sight. Men of elegant and noble minds are shocked at the seeing characters of persons who deserve esteem for their virtue, knowledge, or services to their country, placed in wrong lights, and by ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... was the opinion of Languet that the Emperor affected ignorance of the plot at its commencement, that he afterwards affected an original connivance, and that he was equally disingenuous in both pretences.] ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Frank Lavender confessed to himself that Sheila was either a miracle of ingenuousness or a thorough mistress of the art of assuming it. On the one hand, he considered it almost impossible for a woman to be so disingenuous; on the other hand, how could this girl have taught herself, in the solitude of a savage island, a species of histrionicism which women in London circles strove for years to acquire, and rarely acquired in any perfection? At all events, he said ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... months had been full of whispers of scandalous doings in the business department, and the chorus of dissatisfaction with the artistic results of his directorate, which had begun in the first season, had been swelling steadily. Two seasons before he had put forth a disingenuous apology for his administration, comparing the cost and difficulties of producing opera in the preceding season with the cost and difficulties under Mr. Grau. The matter was one which affected the stockholders of his company only so far as the finances were concerned; ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... believed that this book's miraculous stupidities were studied and disingenuous; but no one can read the volume carefully through and keep that opinion. It was written in serious good faith and deep earnestness, by an honest and upright idiot who believed he knew something of the English language, and could impart his knowledge to others. The ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... than ten months past been constantly soliciting to have the accounts of the commissioners settled, on the issue of which I freely put my reputation, and every thing dear in life. My solicitations have been unsuccessful, whilst my enemies, taking the base and disingenuous advantage of the circumstances before mentioned of my leaving France, raise a cry against me and say—where are his accounts? why did he not bring them out? if they were not settled, why did he not stay and settle ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... pretended descriptions, to known oppression, asserting that the reputation of the Company was saved by removing this apparent participation, when the new as well as the old arrangements were truly and substantially acts of the British government, was disingenuous, deceitful, and used to cover unjustifiable designs: since the said Warren Hastings well knew that all oppressions exercised by the Nabob of Oude were solely, and in this instance particularly, upheld by British force, and were imputed to this nation; and because he himself, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... that just a little disingenuous? Don't you know why not? Here am I,' he went on, 'as I do most solemnly believe, as madly in love as ever man was in the history of the world; petted, encouraged, and caressed, and ignored, and repulsed, until in the insane weakness of ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... speech Mr. Harvey formulated with equal clarity what the voters of 1920 had in their minds. That is a rash thing to do, and, if you simply assume that all who voted your ticket voted as you did, then it is a disingenuous thing to do. The count shows that sixteen millions voted Republican, and nine millions Democratic. They voted, says Mr. Harvey, for and against the League of Nations, and in support of this claim, he can point to Mr. Wilson's request for a referendum, ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... not!" she laughed. "It will depend on the both of us—and the business in hand. Diplomats, you are well aware, are given to very disingenuous ways ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... have them there; and that, in the words of one of your fellow Senators, and in the very similar words of another—both uttered on the floor of the Senate—"if the abolitionists come to the South, the South will hang them." Pardon the remark, that it seems very disingenuous in you to draw conclusions unfavorable to the sincerity of the abolitionists from premises so notoriously false, as are those which imply, that it is entirely at their own option, whether the abolitionists shall have their "societies ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... cries Amelia; "why do we ever blame those who are disingenuous in confessing their faults, when we are so often ashamed to own ourselves in the right? Some women now, in my situation, would be angry that you had not made confidantes of them; but I never desire to know more of the secrets of others than they are pleased to intrust me with. You must ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... epidemics of fevers and of numberless deaths; they impressed, by force of corruption, worn-out, disintegrating hulks into service as army and naval transports. Not a single possibility of profit was there in which the most glaring frauds were not committed. By a series of disingenuous measures the banks plundered the Treasury and people and caused their banknotes to be exempt from taxation. The merchants defrauded the Government out of millions of dollars by bribing Custom House officers ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... Executive had to cope. How well he met, and how entirely he for the time overcame these enemies of the peace of the republic, we leave the historian to relate; but our retrospect would be incomplete and disingenuous, did we not accord the meed of praise justly due to high moral excellence and intellectual and administrative honesty and talent, as developed in ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... the most disingenuous thing in the world not to care how chargeable we are to that friend that bestows all upon us gratis. When Mephibosheth had an opportunity to be yet more chargeable to David, he would not, because he had his life and his all from the mere grace of the king (II Sam 19:24-28). Also ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... which he understands best, lest he should grow obscure. But these parts he must develop fully, and he has no right to omit anything that may serve the purpose of truth, whether it please or not. As it would be disingenuous to sacrifice truth to popularity, so it is trifling to appeal to the reason and experience of mankind, as every philosophical writer does, or must be understood to do, and then to talk, like Plato and his ancient and modern disciples, to the imagination only. There is no need, however, ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... that would be interesting about the proceedings and the evidence given against and for the Companies; how reckless were many of the charges brought against them, how easily they were disproved; how subtle and disingenuous other charges were and what skill was required to refute them; how some of the witnesses were up in the clouds and had to be brought down to common earth; how conclusively the Companies proved that the railways had done ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... the following Monday he simply gave a half sigh, half grunt of disgust, and let the longed-for vacation go; for one of his pet theories was that the jury system was the chief bulwark of the Constitution, the cornerstone of liberty. Had he only been disingenuous enough he need never have served on any jury, for no lawyer for the defense hearing him enlarge on what he considered the duties of a juryman to be, would ever have allowed him in the box. But when other chaps on the panel presented their excuses to the judge and managed to persuade ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... cannot understand any really intelligent opposition to them. I can, however, understand a partial and silly application of them. It is most important that our good-class families should be endowed, but the whole tendency of the timid and disingenuous progressivism of our time, which is all mixed up with ideas of charity and aggressive benevolence to the poor, would be to apply this—as that Fabian tract I mention does—only to the poor mother. To endow poor and bad-class motherhood ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... breath, his look fell on those limpid blue eyes of my mother, and that honest open brow of hers, which had certainly nothing in common with Sphinxes, Fates, Furies, or Valkyrs; and whether his heart smote him, or his reason made him own that he had fallen into a very disingenuous and unsound train of assertion, I know not, but his front relaxed, and with a smile he resumed: "Ellinor was the last person in the world to deceive any one willingly. Did she deceive me and Roland, that we both, though ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... skulking dupe, at once slavish and insolent, offensive and cowardly—who carries, as a necessary consequence, the principles of political dishonesty into the practices of private life, and is consequently disingenuous ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... intentions, all that's very fine, I admit, very exalted, but we are simple people, we do not gild our gingerbread, we are not capable of following the flight of great minds like yours.... What you think sincere, we regard as impertinent and disingenuous and indiscreet.... What is clear and simple to you, is involved and obscure to us.... You boast of what we conceal.... How are we to understand you! Excuse me, I can neither regard you as a friend, nor will I ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... "Some gentlemen have been disingenuous and unjust to me, by wresting and forcing my meaning in the preface to another book, as if I condemned and exposed all learning, though they knew I declared that I greatly honoured and esteemed all men of superiour literature and erudition; and that I only undervalued false ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... to any of the suffrage or other woman's organizations in New York, may I say in your columns that for the honor of my sex, if for no other reason, I hope the Mayor will consent to the obliteration of those disingenuous posters addressing "American citizens," and so cunningly worded and signed as to produce an impression of representing the women of the United States? If the people that are spending their thousands so freely had come ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... change of my opinion; which I think I have discovered ground for. In what I first writ, I with an unbiassed indifferency followed truth, whither I thought she led me. But neither being so vain as to fancy infallibility, nor so disingenuous as to dissemble my mistakes for fear of blemishing my reputation, I have, with the same sincere design for truth only, not been ashamed to publish what a severer inquiry has suggested. It is not impossible but that some may think my former notions right; and some (as I have already found) ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... feature of the case—the prolongation of the imprisonment of Flinders until the French could complete their own charts for publication. The talk about not knowing what Flinders' names were, the affected ignorance of his prior claims, were crudely disingenuous. Freycinet knew perfectly where Flinders was, and why his charts were not issued. The Moniteur contained several references to his case. Sir Joseph Banks repeatedly pressed leading members of the Institute to lend ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... promised a favourable reception to any further matrimonial project on Mirliflor's behalf—at all events from her. So she merely informed him that Mirliflor had left Clairdelune to seek a bride for himself, and that he might be absent for some time. She did not mention his transformation, and was disingenuous enough to agree with the King that the Prince had behaved most unfilially in departing without permission. But King Tournesol was too glad that his son's thoughts had again turned to marriage to be very seriously ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... announcement of a fact that she had rather unconsciously hoped than believed, came so unexpectedly, felt her mind momentarily bewildered; and she scarcely knew whether to weep or to rejoice. Still she was the first to speak; since Eau-douce could utter naught that would be disingenuous, or that would pain ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... give you a term of ten years) from the practice of the law, unless you should plunge into that practice with the most unqualified disregard to all that rectitude demands, would be to act the cowardly disingenuous hypocrite; and entirely to forget the first ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... used to depreciate Dryden, whom Pope and Congreve defended against them[194]. There is no reason to doubt, that he suffered too much pain from the prevalence of Pope's poetical reputation; nor is it without strong reason suspected, that by some disingenuous acts he endeavoured to obstruct it; Pope was not the only man whom he insidiously injured, though the only man of whom ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... disingenuous propaganda in favour of legalized abortion would cease, and if only those who carried it on refrained from dinning into the ears of an uninformed gallery of women the alleged safety and harmlessness of abortion carried out under the best hospital ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan
... translation of Turgot's Epic—Turgot was a Saxon monk of the tenth century—by Rowley the secular priest of the fifteenth. This was the second Battle of Hastings as printed in this book. Again this strange explanation, so laboured and so patently disingenuous, was accepted without comment though probably not believed. And if it appears matter for surprise that there should ever have been any controversy about the authorship of the Rowley writings, in view of the lad's admission that he ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... carelessness in thoughtful postures. Though it is plain she thinks little of our taste in general, her disapproval is usually silent. It is therefore with almost choking pride that we receive her praise, though it is often, we fear, of a disingenuous nature. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... this direct question. He had not seen anything which would lead him to suppose that Miss Adela Chatfield was a disingenuous and designing young woman, but she was certainly Peeping Peter's daughter, and the old man, having failed to get anything out of Copplestone himself, might possibly have sent her to see what she could ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... compliment was well paid to General Parsons, and it may have been some consolation for a sore heart: that keen spirit had to be content to be left behind. Major-General W.B. Hickie, C.B., who had greatly distinguished himself in France, now took over command. It would be disingenuous to say that John Redmond was not content with this change; but his brother was deeply impressed by the hardship inflicted on ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... possible that, though Lockwood could not have told when and how the acquaintance between him and Felice began and progressed, the young woman herself could. But this is guesswork. Felice being a woman, and part Spanish at that, was vastly more self-conscious, more disingenuous, than the man, the Anglo-Saxon. Also she had that fearlessness that very pretty women have. In her more refined and city-bred sisters this fearlessness would be called poise, or, at the ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... might not suit well with the King's plans respecting the Duke of Richmond. He accordingly prevailed on the lady to consent to a private marriage. All came out. Charles thought the conduct of Wycherley both disrespectful and disingenuous. Other causes probably assisted to alienate the sovereign from the subject who had lately been so highly favored. Buckingham was now in opposition, and had been committed to the Tower; not, as Mr. Leigh Hunt supposes, on ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... danger that there is here of a person's disingenuous attitude towards the truth, danger to the moral fibre, danger to the progress of man? Take as a hint of it the way the Bible has been treated. People have said that the Bible was absolutely infallible: they have taken that as a foregone conclusion; and then, when they found out beyond ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... above all the wonderful element was the quick wit and ready skill with which he turned to his own service every query which was designed to embarrass him; and this he did not in the vulgar way of flippant retort or disingenuous twistings of words or facts, but with the same straightforward and tranquil simplicity of language with which he delivered evidence for the friendly examiners. Burke likened the proceeding to an examination of a master by ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... Metcalfe had determined, as far as possible, to free from party dictation; and so he and his ministers naturally fell out on the most obvious issue which their mutual differences could have raised. There was nothing disingenuous in the popular party claiming that the patronage question stood in this case for the broader issue. Indeed Metcalfe's own statement that "he objected to the {174} exclusive distribution of patronage with party views and maintained the principle that office ought, ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... Tract-writers avowed the principle of keeping back part of the counsel of God. It meant, further, that the real spirit of the party was disclosed; its love of secret and crooked methods, its indifference to knowledge, its disingenuous professions, its deliberate concealments, its holding doctrines and its pursuit of aims which it dared not avow, its disciplina arcani, its conspiracies, its Jesuitical spirit. All this kind of abuse was flung plentifully on the party as the controversy became warm; and it mainly justified itself ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... both spoke of the Chancellor's speech in attack upon Eldon, as in bad taste and offensive. I shall endeavour to ascertain whether this is the general opinion. Not having heard Eldon, they cannot know how very mischievous and disingenuous ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... a good cry about "taxing the food of the people," the big and the little loaf, and so forth, and they went racing after it, regardless of everything but its electioneering value. From first to last there has been the same desire to make the worst of things, sometimes by very disingenuous means. First of all it was said that there was "no Colonial offer." But when the representatives of the Colonies came here, and all in the plainest terms offered us preference for preference, this device evidently had to be abandoned. So then it was ...
— Constructive Imperialism • Viscount Milner
... crowded) a Gentleman leaning upon me, and very heavily, I very civilly requested him to remove his Hand; for which he pulled me by the Nose. I would not resent it in so publick a Place, because I was unwilling to create a Disturbance; but have since reflected upon it as a thing that is unmanly and disingenuous, renders the Nose-puller odious, and makes the Person pulled by the Nose look little and contemptible. This Grievance I humbly request ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... It would be disingenuous in me if I failed to notice the fact that a charge somewhat similar to that which begins this article was made by a correspondent in the Scientific American for September 6th, 1862, volume ...
— A Refutation of the Charges Made against the Confederate States of America of Having Authorized the Use of Explosive and Poisoned Musket and Rifle Balls during the Late Civil War of 1861-65 • Horace Edwin Hayden
... Ululation, I am prepared most freely to subscribe. When was there ever since the early Forties A more grotesque and shameless mockery Of the austere and holy principles Which Liberalism like an altar-flame Has guarded through the loose irreverent years Than this inept, this disingenuous, This frankly disingenuous attempt; To smuggle past the barrier of this House An article so plainly contraband As this unlicens'd and contagious Bill— A Bill which, it is not too much to say, Insults the conscience ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... remarked that he had understood Clifford to say that he was going to see his cousin. Privately, he reflected that if Lizzie Acton had had no news of his son, Clifford must have gone to Boston for the evening: an unnatural course of a summer night, especially when accompanied with disingenuous representations. ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... attention proportioned not so much to its own intrinsic force as to the general talent with which that journal is conducted, belongs to a class of sophisms by which the most hateful persecutions may easily be justified. To charge men with practical consequences which they themselves deny is disingenuous in controversy; it is atrocious in government. The doctrine of predestination, in the opinion of many people, tends to make those who hold it utterly immoral. And certainly it would seem that a man who believes his eternal destiny to be already irrevocably ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... not be fenced with,' cried his father. 'There must be an end of disingenuous answers. What did you want ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were carved out into a few colossal private estates. The example of the British nobility was emulated; but the chartered companies did not have to resort to the adroit, disingenuous, subterranean methods which the English land magnates used in perpetuating their seizure, as so graphically described by S. W. Thackery in his work, "The Land and the Community". The land in New ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... presentation void, unless accepted. Nor is there in being any, but the law of sin and death within them, the law of itch after worldly gain, that obliges candidates to accept. How unmanly, how disingenuous, to blame the civil law with the present course of intrusions!—Since the resurrection of Christ, we think we may almost defy any to produce an instance of bloody squabbling, or like outrageous contention, in the choice of a pastor, where none but the ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... Patterson of New Hampshire were found by the Committee, and believed by the people to have been disingenuous in their account of the transaction. The Senate Committee of investigation reported a resolution for the expulsion of Senator Patterson. The case was a very hard one indeed for him. The Senate adjourned, and his term expired without any action on the resolution, ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Dominion, and in their deadliest form in the case of the Transvaal, where "Home Rule" was given in 1881, as it would be given to Ireland to-day, if the Government succeeded, not from conviction and whole-heartedly, but as a mean-spirited concession, made to save trouble, and under the most disingenuous and least workable provisions. Lastly, it has been made clear that Home Rule cannot possibly assist, but can only obscure and confuse, the movement for the establishment of a true Imperial Union. Unionists and Imperialists can choose no better ground for their ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... "distrust her. Woe to him who yields himself to the unstable heart of woman! Woman is perfidious and disingenuous. She detests the serpent from professional jealousy. The serpent is the shop over ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Ewer, who lectured at Finchley for the Union of Democratic Control, has explained that the report which we published of his speech is unfair, and that he is really in substantial agreement with Mr. Asquith. This is disingenuous, and Mr. Ewer knows it is. He has not repudiated the correctness of the report, which stated that he dilated on the danger of British navalism, and declared that we must give up singing 'Rule Britannia!' nor has ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... ignorant of his patron's prowess, the opinions of the illiterate concerning the personal characteristics of the genius obtain a very remarkable value as being honest criticism by man of man, uninfluenced by the spirit either of disingenuous adulation or of equally disingenuous depreciation. That these opinions are in the eyes of a disciple of the great man quaint, almost insolently crude is a matter of course. But when they tend to show the master not only ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... Perkins was from the beginning in the Harvester Trust but, when Mr. Wilson points out this fact, why does he not add that he was the only man in that trust who supported me, and that the President of the trust ardently supported Mr. Wilson himself? It is disingenuous to endeavor to conceal these facts, and to mislead ordinary citizens about them. Under the administrations of both Mr. Taft and Mr. Wilson, Mr. Perkins has been singled out for special attack, obviously ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Which testimony has a double value; first, as corroborating the probability of Pope's statement viewed in the light of a fact; and, secondly, as corroborating that same statement viewed in the light of a current story, true or false, and not as a disingenuous fiction put forward by ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... another work to keep from smiling: he was so ingenuously disingenuous. There was less to smile at in his really nervous anxiety to get me away. I lay there reading him like a book: it was not my health that concerned him, of course: was it my safety? I told him he little knew how ill I was—an ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... despising his exhibits, would see in him only the family traitor, and he would go about the streets of his town the subject of their implacable denunciation, the community's obloquy, and Aurora's cold evasion. So much, should he sell. On the other hand, to decline to sell was to enter upon that disingenuous scheme of delays which would enable him to avail himself and his people of that favorable wind and tide of fortune which the Cession had brought. Thus the estates would be lost, if lost at all, only when the family could afford to lose them, and Honore Grandissime would ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... After this, a concluding address was delivered by the Rev. Wm. Ryerson, in which he gave particular directions to the Methodists as subjects under the civil constitution, as members of the Church of Christ, as parents, as children, as individuals. He animadverted on the groundless and disingenuous aspersions that had been thrown out through the press against Methodism, on account of the suspected loyalty of its constitutional principles. He warmly insisted on a vigorous observance, support, and respect for the Civil Government, both from the ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... educed no response. The grey eyes, meeting eyes dark, kindly, and penetrating, flickered and fell; so much emotion they betrayed, no more, and that as disingenuous as you could wish. ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... else," said Vittoria, whose torture at the sight of the beauty was appeased by her disingenuous pleading on ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of "Piozziana," "that I thought, as I still do, that Johnson's anger on the event of her second marriage was excited by some feeling of disappointment; and that I suspected he had formed some hope of attaching her to himself. It would be disingenuous on my part to attempt to repeat her answer. I forget it; but the impression on my mind is that she did not contradict me." Sir James Fellowes' marginal note on this passage is: "This was an absurd notion, and I can undertake to say it was the last idea that ever entered her head; for when I once ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... all these decisions."[221] The nearest precedent was Gitlow v. New York.[222] Here "we put our respect for the legislative judgment in terms which, if they were accepted here, would make decision easy. * * * But it would be disingenuous to deny that the dissent in Gitlow has been treated with the respect usually accorded a decision."[223] But the case at bar was a horse of a different color. "In contrast, there is ample justification for a legislative ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... for people who carry about Sir Thomas Browne in their pocket," retorted the disingenuous lady. "If I turned him out of my house, doctor, and anything happened to him, I should have to reckon with his people. He stays here. You'll kindly arrange for nurses. The red room, Wilkins,—no, the green—the one with the small oak bed. You can't nurse people ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... appear before the Council and required to take an oath to answer all the questions put to him. He refused and protested, and was tortured in the boot, but, spite of the awful agony, remained "obstinate and disingenuous," whereupon the Privy Council "resolved to use all methods necessary to bring the said Mr William Spence to a true and ingenuous confession, and for expiscating the truth in so important a matter, do recommend to General Dalziel forthwith to call for the said Mr William Spence from the Magistrates ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... distinctness of outline and coloring. Some of them disappoint us; like the ghost of Hamlet's father, they come in a "questionable shape." Thus, for instance, in his sketch of William Penn, the historian takes issue with the world on his character, and labors through many pages of disingenuous innuendoes and distortion of facts to transform the saint of history ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... at the expense of the Great Monarch. After his stay in England we have his Brutus (1730), an attack on kingcraft, and his Zaire (1732), a Parisian Othello, both based on Shakespeare. From this time onward he plunges into a supple and dexterous, if sometimes rather disingenuous, strife with a superior power. Throughout, the poet and man of taste struggles against the philosophic freethinker: he loves the surface impressions, perhaps the reflective illusions; "his sentiments are worth more than his ideas." The English Letters of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... that they are not content to feel and express but must needs invent an intellectual concept to stand target for their emotion. From the nature of their emotions they infer an object the existence of which they find themselves obliged to prove by an elaborately disingenuous metaphysic. The consequence is inevitable; religion comes to mean, not the feeling of an emotion, but adherence to a creed. Instead of being a matter of emotional conviction it becomes a matter of intellectual propositions. And here, very properly, ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... the clear line of reasoning that a universe implies the existence of a universe maker, and that we may deduce from it some of His attributes, His power, His wisdom, His forethought for small wants, His providing of luxuries for His creatures. On the other hand, do not let us be disingenuous enough to shirk the mystery which lies in pain, in cruelty, in all which seems to be a slur upon His work. The best that we can say for them is to hope that they are not as bad as they seem, and possibly lead to some higher end. The voices of the ill-used child and of the tortured animal ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... disingenuous. According to our investigation, Ciganowic, by order of the police prefect in Belgrade, left three days after the outrage for Ribari, after it had become known that Ciganowic had participated in the outrage. In the first place, it is therefore incorrect that Ciganowic left the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... perfectly legitimate sphere of action in which the methods proper to that sphere were imperative and final. The scientist accepted the fact that Religion had a right to speak in matters that lay beyond scientific data; the theologian no longer denounced as fraudulent or disingenuous the claims of the scientist to exercise powers that were at last found to be natural. Neither needed to establish his own position by attacking that of his partner, and the two accordingly, without prejudice or passion, worked together to define yet further that ever-narrowing range of ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... profession the clergy are backward to perceive. The consequences of this backwardness are very hurtful to their interests. Because of this, we have an indefinite amount of puerile and undignified complaint from disappointed men, of disingenuous misrepresentation from incompetent men, who have entered upon labors they were never fitted to accomplish. Such men undertake their labors in ways that want and must want the Divine sanction; and they are tempted to ward off a just verdict of unsuitableness and of incompetency ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... made my acquaintance." Note the lame and colourless close of that sentence: he ended by stating. One always ends that way after bacchanalian orgies, though one does not always gloss over the escapade with such disingenuous language. ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... the disingenuous, hypocritical passion of love. It's always the most amusing thing in the world; but to see it trying to pass itself off in poor old Kenby as duty and humanity, and disinterested affection for Rose, was more than I could stand. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... she, "Colonel Dujardin has let fall the glass." While Jacintha was gone, she scolded Camille gently. "How could you be so unkind to the poor doctor who loves you so? Only think: to throw away his medicines! Look at the ashes; they are wet. Camille, are you, too, becoming disingenuous?" ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... our age have exposed to view, a similar tone of sentiment, imagery, and expression. A certain similarity all the best writers of any particular age inevitably are marked with, from the spirit of that age acting on all. This I had explained in my Preface, which the writer was too disingenuous to advert to. As to the other trash, and particularly that lame attack on my personal character, which was meant so ill, and which I am not the man to feel, 'tis all nothing. I am glad, with respect to that part of it which ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... with much compunction. He owed her some atonement for having listened to the disingenuous reports of this scheming clergyman. How could he have so far forgotten the firm, uncompromising rectitude of the girl's character, her sensitive notions of honor, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... now is that this kind of thing makes for strength in literature. Short words are strong words. They have a snap and a grip to them that long words have not. Very few men would grow angry over having a statement called a "prevarication" or "a disingenuous entanglement of ideas," but there is something about the word "lie" that snaps in a man's face. "Unjustifiable hypothecation" may be the same as stealing, but it would never excite one to be called "an unjustifiable hypothecator" as it does to be ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... 'strong-minded' you mean a wholesome dislike to the involving of a straightforward situation in a tangle of disingenuous sophistry, I ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... folly of the Allies themselves in ignoring the principle impressed upon them since 1917, that it was legitimate to assist Russians against the Germans but not against one another, were harassing enough. The half-hearted, disingenuous, and misguided military efforts made by the Allies in Russia introduced alien irritants into the domestic situation and prolonged that painful process of internal evolution which could alone produce a satisfactory solution in a stable Russian government. If the responsible ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... The question still returns: Why do they seek amusement in sufferings which are unnecessary and avoidable? and till they honestly and thoroughly answer this question, they must be content to be looked upon as disingenuous reasoners, who are determined to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... plainly in explaining the situation to their superiors at home. To be sure, Gage was a trifle disingenuous in reviewing the past. While admitting that the recent trials at arms proved the rebels "not the despicable rabble too many have supposed them to be," he ignored his original boast concerning lions and lambs. In stating that ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... will it be to be turned off at last, as one that abused the love of Christ; as one that presumed upon his lusts, this world, and all manner of naughtiness, because the love of Christ to pardon sins was so great! What an unthinking, what a disingenuous one wilt thou be counted at that day; yea, thou wilt be found to be the man that made a prey of love, that made a stalk ing-horse of love, that made of love a slave to sin, the devil, and the world; and will not that ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... measure were to bring forward one of limited extent, it would be considered that they had no ulterior object, and that the limited measure, if conceded, should be taken in full of every thing to be expected from the Legislature. This would be disingenuous. It is the most fair and honest mode of dealing, on the part of those who are of opinion that the exigency of the case calls for a comprehensive measure, to declare at once what is the utmost extent ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... several men of acknowledged genius; such as Quinault, Perrault, and the celebrated Lulli; for which reason every man of a liberal turn must, in spite of all his poetical merit, despise him as a rancorous knave. If this disingenuous conduct cannot be forgiven in a writer of his superior genius, who will pardon it in you whose name is ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... man in his prime a good worker and not a bad representative of the mountaineer of his state. One must not, then, fasten on old Timothy as a character distinctively Irish, at least in this phase of his character. He surely is universal, a representative of one type of disingenuous countryman. ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... them off to give ingress to the family on the day of recapture. He glanced around the room; nothing seemed to have been disturbed. Nevertheless he was uneasy. The suspicions of a frank, trustful nature when once aroused are apt to be more general and far-reaching than the specific distrusts of the disingenuous, for they imply the overthrow of a whole principle and not a mere detail. Clarence's conviction that Susy had seen Pedro recently since his dismissal led him into the wildest surmises of her motives. It was possible that without her having reason to suspect Pedro's greater crime, he ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... conveying. Baubie's slim figure had caught the flat-backed, square-shoulder form of her little neighbor, and her face, between the smooth-laid bands of her hair, seemed to have assumed the same gravely-respectable air. The disingenuous roving eye was there all the time, could they but have noted it, and gave the lie to her compressed lips ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... after speaking, knowing that she had been slightly disingenuous. Fan understood from her face more than from her ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... "Englishmen in the West Indies," sufficiently proves the utter hypocrisy of his recommendation, that the freest opportunities should be offered to Blacks of the said exceptional order. The very wording of Mr. Froude's recommendation is disingenuous. It is one stone sped at two birds, and which, most ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... conducting himself before a jury that deceived them into believing that his inexperience required their help and his disinterestedness their loyal support. Both of them were apparently fair-minded, honest public servants; both in reality were subtly disingenuous to a degree beyond ordinary comprehension, for years of practise had made them sensitive to every whimsy of emotion and taught them how to play upon the psychology of the jury as the careless zephyr softly draws its melody from the aeolian harp. In a word they were a precious pair of crooks, ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... at the very time when he was suffering awful privations. Marx himself has noted more than one instance of individual idealism triumphing over material interests and class environment, and, by a perversity that is astonishing, and not wholly disingenuous, some of his critics, notably Ludwig Slonimski,[81] have used these instances as arguments against his theory, claiming that they disprove it! We are to understand the materialistic theory, then, as teaching, not that history is determined by economic ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... I must say, are pointed ones," she answered, as, seating herself, she broke into a seemingly disingenuous smile, and shook her head protestingly; "and it seems to me that they are utterly uncalled for, too. Our life for the past two years should have demonstrated that fact. However, to answer your questions: ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... scathing language as shuffling, arrogant and offensive, or as insulting and dishonest. One paper deemed its terms to be a series of studied insults added to a long inventory of injuries. Said another, Germany's mood is still that of a madman. A third comment on the note described it as "a disingenuous effort to have international petty larceny put on the same plane as international murder and visited with the same punishment." A fourth paper remarked: "If an American can read the note without his temples getting hot then his blood is poor or his understanding ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... his companion's question something closely akin to what in reality lay behind it. His discovery might have been expected to hasten rather than retard the truth, and a first impulse in any man had made the facts instantly clear; but Clement rarely acted on impulse. His character was subtle, disingenuous, secretive. Safe in absolute possession, the discovery of Martin's attachment did not flutter him. He laughed in his mind; then he pictured Chris the wife of this man, reviewed the worldly improvement in her position such a union must effect, and laughed no more. Finally he decided ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... "pinch and plan" to make their share "of the $200 go around," of which the distinguished conservative economist spoke. If the masses of our people were unable to read or write, if they had been accustomed to centuries of oppression, a policy so glaringly unjust and disingenuous might succeed for a time. But with conditions as they are, the persistent crying of peace when there is no peace, and attempting to juggle with facts is more than foolish, it is criminal. One who does ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... avow? The great master of this cloudy shuffling art is Mr. Jowett. Even where he and his associates in "free handling," are express and definite in their statements, yet, as their rule is prudently to abstain from adducing a single example of their meaning, it is only by their disingenuous reticence that they escape punishment or exposure. Thus, Dr. Temple speaks of "many of the doctrinal statements of the early Church" being "plainly unfitted for permanent use;" (p. 41;) but he prudently abstains from explaining ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... Before the multitude of locked souls with labels of smiling faces the sensitive nature feels itself mocked, and is soon distraught. It cannot suffer convention gladly for an ultimate good, but is chilled by this everlasting urbanity, which must, it fancies, be compact of irony and conceal a disingenuous soul. ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... somewhat obscure, and also rather disingenuous. It will be remembered that those clauses of the Reparation Chapter which dealt with the issue of bonds by Germany produced on the public mind the impression that the Indemnity had been fixed at $25,000,000,000, or at any rate at this figure as a minimum. ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... to Abelard is the only exception I can think of, to the general spirit of the foregoing remarks; and I should be disingenuous not to acknowledge that it is an exception. The foundation is in the letters themselves of Abelard and Eloise, which are quite as impressive, but still in a different way. It is fine as a poem: it ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... chalice to the lips" [Macbeth]; ambiguas in vulgum spargere voces [Lat]; deceive &c 545. Adj. false, deceitful, mendacious, unveracious, fraudulent, dishonest, faithless, truthless, trothless; unfair, uncandid; hollow-hearted; evasive; uningenuous, disingenuous; hollow, sincere, Parthis mendacior; forsworn. artificial, contrived; canting; hypocritical, jesuitical, pharisaical; tartuffish; Machiavelian; double, double tongued, double faced, double handed, double minded, double ...
— Roget's Thesaurus |
