"Insincere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... well aware that Pao-yue was gifted with such a peculiar temperament, that he even looked upon flattering or auspicious phrases with utter aversion, treating them as meaningless and consequently insincere, so when, after listening to those truths, she had spoken with such pathos, he, lapsed into another of his melancholy moods, she blamed herself for the want of consideration she had betrayed. Hastily therefore putting on a smile, she tried ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... early days of her life in Petersburg made friends in this circle also. Now, since her return from Moscow, she had come to feel this set insufferable. It seemed to her that both she and all of them were insincere, and she felt so bored and ill at ease in that world that she went to see the Countess Lidia Ivanovna as little ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... like to keep you a few minutes while I talk about myself a little. You remember, perhaps, that I professed to be converted last winter. Since then I am aware that I have shown a lack of interest in religious matters, which has certainly justified you in supposing that I was either hasty or insincere in my profession. I have made my arrangements to leave you soon, and should be sorry to have that impression remain on the minds of my friends. Hasty I may have been, but not insincere. Perhaps you will excuse me ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... temperament provided hardly any aid in delineating the emaciated soul whose gifts had thinned down to a morbid perfection of technique. But this vigorous human creature, with the teeming brain, and the realist eye, and the incorrigible ineptitude for the restraints of an insincere clerical or other idealism, was a being to which Browning's heart went out; and he even makes him the mouthpiece of literary ideas, which his own portrait as here drawn aptly exemplifies. There is not much "soul" in Lippo, but he has the ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... displaying my thunder, I say: "That is as mademoiselle asserts.... That is worth calling a judgment. There is genius in the expression." But one must not always approve in the same manner; one would be monotonous, and seem insincere, and become insipid. You only escape that by judgment and resource; you must know how to prepare and place your major and most peremptory tones, to seize the occasion and the moment. When, for instance, there is a difference in feeling, and the debate has risen to its last degree of violence, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... are nice-looking without being beautiful, very supple and pensive, and with expressive eyes. They lack the unsteady, insincere countenance of the men, and have reposeful, placid faces, with occasional good features. There is a good deal of character in their firmly closed lips, the upper lip being slightly heavy but well-shaped. The inside of the mouth is adorned with most regular, firm, and beautiful ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... course, the chief thing about Swinburne. The style is the man; and some will add that it does not, thus unsupported, amount to much of a man. But the style itself suffers some injustice from those who would speak thus. The views expressed are often quite foolish and often quite insincere; but the style itself is a manlier and more natural thing than is commonly made out. It is not in the least languorous or luxurious or merely musical and sensuous, as one would gather from both the eulogies ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... unreal and unhealthy; the wise man neither longs for death nor dreads it, and the fool who begs for extinction before the Omnipotent has willed that it should come is a mere silly blasphemer. But, though the men who put the thoughts of humanity into musical words are sometimes insincere, they are more often grave and consoling. I know of two supreme expressions of dread, and one of these was written by the wisest and calmest man that ever dwelt beneath the sun. Marvellous it is to think that our most sane and contented poet should ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... like the giants of a story-book. The Greeks believed in the gods and heroes whose agency and exploits constituted the machinery of tragedy, but the Romans did not, and we cannot sympathize with them, because we see that they are insincere. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... is the inference which I have drawn from a careful perusal of the correspondence between Charles and the queen in his Works, p. 142-150. Some writers have come to a different conclusion: that he was insincere, and under the pretence of seeking peace, was in reality determined to continue the war. That he prepared for the resumption of hostilities is indeed true, but the reason which he gives to the queen is satisfactory, "the ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... rendered him, more than once within her knowledge, unscrupulous as to the means he used in the securing of his ends. This it was which had planted in her mind the awful though remote possibility of his having been, in some manner, insincere in his representations of ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... one solace, one ecstasy, one joy. By what treachery had he been moved to all this, if he really loved another? That he was simply amusing himself with the sort of flirtation she herself could take up as a mere pastime was not to be believed. That the worshipper should be insincere in his worship was too dreadful to think of. And yet it was to this very man she had once turned to avenge herself on Walpole's treatment of her; she had even said, 'Could you not make a quarrel with him?' Now, no woman of foreign breeding puts such a question ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... an accomplished man of the world," declared Shirley with an insincere sparkle in ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... Captain would have done. The Union men who voted for the resolutions in which this language was embodied, would be justly liable to censure, if it were not positively certain that they were insincere; and that they were insincere is abundantly proven by their subsequent action, and the fact that many of them held commissions in the "armed forces" sent to invade the South. On the 11th of February the Legislature resolved, "That ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... cried Teacher, in a voice in which horror, pity, reproach, and wonder mingled. "And you have no mother!" And Isidore's answer was his professional whine, most heartrending and insincere. ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... "it is not of ourselves, but of this Society and its good name, we think. How can it accomplish its high mission in the world if we seem to ignore in our ranks the presence of the insincere person ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... Clarendon, we should have expected the malignity of the priest would have stamped the features of his great enemy with the impress of infamy, and not have simply made him appear a courtier, weak, insincere, and nothing more. Though rather beyond our subject, the character of Cardinal de Retz, as delineated by Mdme. Sevigne, in one of her letters, will help us to form a true conclusion on the different characters of the Duc and the Cardinal. She says:— "Paul de Gondi Cardinal de ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... is affectionate and obedient to his parents. This is one of the most important Christian duties. And if ever you see a child who professes to be a Christian child, and who yet is guilty of ingratitude and of disobedience, you may be assured that those professions are insincere. If you would have a home in heaven, you must be obedient while in your home on earth. If you would have the favor and the affection of your heavenly Father, you must merit the affection and the gratitude of your earthly parents. ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... the first series will help us to inquire whether we have any reason to distrust the sincerity of a statement. We ask whether the author was in any of those situations which normally incline a man to be insincere. We must ask what these situations are, both as affecting the general composition of a document, and as affecting each particular statement. Experience supplies the answer. Every violation of truth, small or great, is due to a wish on the ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... with us all disappoints me the more in the course he has taken," continued the Queen. "There has been a touch of something insincere. And I have heard also that the poor Schwellenberg is left entirely to herself while these visits take place. I thought this hard and so dropped a hint to Miss Burney, which I failed not to see was resented. Have you, my good Miss P., observed ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... are also Europeans. The rank and file, amounting to about eight thousand men, are natives. The aboriginal inhabitants are called Tagals. They are somewhat idle, though a good-natured, pleasure-loving race; are nominally Roman Catholics, but very superstitious and insincere. Their houses are formed of bamboo raised on piles, the interior covered by mats, on which the whole family sleep, with a mosquito curtain over them. The ornaments in their houses are generally a figure of the ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... with the ways of the mountains, if he comes imbued with the belief that the voice with the smile wins, and talkatively radiates his individual idea of fellowship and democracy, one by one his auditors silently drop away. To them, an insincere, a false note of democracy has been struck. Perhaps around the door there will linger some of the mountain boys waiting to satisfy their curiosity over the contents of ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... wondered whether in the future he would often be there, whether Lady Sellingworth would allow him to be one of the few real intimates to whom her door was open. He hoped so; he believed so; but he was not quite certain about it. For there was something elusive about her, not insincere but just that—elusive. She might not care to see very much of him although he knew that she liked him. They had touched the fringe of ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... as this ought, by its very scale of values—by the motives that inform it and the ends that determine it—to condemn thereby the insincere and artificial speaker, or that pseudo-sermon which is neither as exposition, an argument nor a meditation but a mosaic, a compilation of other men's thoughts, eked out by impossibly impressive or piously sentimental ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... fear in Rogers' eyes, too—a mere glimmer of it. Yet it was there; and when Deveny set his glass down and looked straight at Rogers, it was that fear which brought the fawning, insincere smirk ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... leaders who had attempted in vain to overcome by skill and patriotism the thousand difficulties placed in their way by successive unstable, insincere Ministers of War, General Vincente occupied an honoured place. This mild-mannered tactician enjoyed the enviable reputation of being alike unconquerable and incorruptible. His smiling presence on the battlefield was in itself worth half a dozen battalions, while at Madrid the ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... with a curtness to which his friend's particular manner of overlooking it only added significance. "They've become," she pursued, "superficial or insincere or frivolous, but at least they've become, with the way the drag's put on, quite as dull as ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... of the ancient world none is more suitable for modern use than Demosthenes. It is true that he is guilty of gross bad taste in some of his speeches—but rarely in a parliamentary oration. Cicero is too verbose and often insincere. Demosthenes is as a rule short, terse and forcible. It is the undoubted justice of his cause which gives him his lofty and noble style. He lacks the gentler touch of humour—but a man cannot jest when he sees servitude before the country he loves. With a few ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... no evidence that the King was insincere in his oath; but unfortunately his piety was that of impulse, not of principle. The compact was soon broken, and the lnd was again compelled to bear the burden of exorbitant taxes. These were extorted by violence, partly to cover Henry's own extravagance, but also ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... with a depressed spirit on that morning of sorrow, so did not Lord Dunroe. This young nobleman, false and insincere in everything, had succeeded in inducing his sister to act as brides-maid, Sir Thomas having asked her consent as a personal compliment to himself and his daughter. She was told by her brother that young Roberts ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... began to practise oral composition at the age of eighteen months, and at the age of three was able to use complex sentences with freedom and skill. In the upper classes the composition is too often as mechanical, as unreal, and as insincere as in the lower. Sometimes a given subject is worked out by the teacher with the class, the children, one by one, suggesting sentences, which are shaped and corrected by the teacher and then written up on the blackboard, until there are enough of them to fill one page of ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... listener to declare that she had no doubts left. Yet she could not give utterance to the words. She knew they would sound forced, insincere. Shame at inflicting shame caused her to bend her head. Already she had been silent ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... a great dislike for Ronald, the other a sincere dread of all love and lovers for her children. From her they heard nothing but depreciation of men. All men were alike, false, insincere, fickle, cruel; all love was nonsense and folly. Mrs. Vyvian tried her best to counteract these ideas; they had this one evil consequence—that neither Lillian nor Beatrice would ever dream of even naming such subjects to their ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... we are likely to witness an art evolution which will not be restricted to statues and pictures and insincere essays in dry-as-dust architectural styles, but one which will permeate the whole social fabric, and make it palpitate with the rhythm of a younger, a more abundant life. Beauty and mystery will again make their dwelling among men; ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... of feminine tactics, which are emphasized by insincere gestures, by looks of feigned ingenuousness, by artful intonations of the voice and even by the snare of cunning silence, are characteristic to some degree of their ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... priests, also, who at heart care nothing for the neighbor and do not fear God, yet preach about love of the neighbor and of God. Such are judges who judge by gifts and friendships while affecting zeal for justice and speaking with reason about judgment. Such are traders who at heart are insincere and fraudulent while dealing honestly for the sake of profit. Such are adulterers when, from the rationality every man possesses, they talk about the chastity of ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Tennyson has called forth a vast deal of nonsense. Much of it is even insincere. The pulpits have spouted cataracts of sentimentality. Some of them have emitted quantities of sheer drivel. A stranger would think we had lost our only poet, and well-nigh our only teacher; whereas, if the truth ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... rather overdone. He suggested that Mary should ask some people to tea, and twice he went out shooting, a sport which he had almost abandoned. Only when she wanted to invite certain guests to stay, he demurred a little, on account of the baby, but so cleverly that she never suspected him of being insincere. In short, as he could attain his unholy end in no other way, Morris entered on a career of mild deception, designed to prevent his wife from suspecting him of she knew not what. His conduct was that of a man engaged in an intrigue. In his case, however, the possible end of his ill-doing ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... sitting by Anderson's fire the other day when his telephone bell rang. He made the usual insincere exclamation of disgust—as insincere as the horror we simulate when a bundle of letters is brought into the room, to have letters and to be called up on the telephone being really adventures and therefore welcome; and he then crossed the room ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... writing to her, on reflexion, as mild as I could—having been visited in the watches of the night by the instinct of what might happen. Something told me to keep back my first letter—in which, under the first impression, I myself rashly 'raved'; and I concocted instead of it an insincere and guarded report. But guarded as I was I clearly didn't keep you 'down,' as we say, enough. The wonder of your colour—daub you over with grey as I might—must have come through and told the tale. She scents ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... you and your pianos. Compare it to the tympani? Never, never! It is false, insincere, and smirks and simpers if even a silly school girl sits before it. It takes on the color of any composer's ideas, and submits like a slave to the whims of any virtuoso. I am disgusted. Here am I, an old kettle-drummer—as ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... of the parties which have so long agitated England, it will be observed that I lean as little to the Whigs as to their adversaries. Both factions have been equally cruel to Ireland and perhaps equally insincere in their efforts for the liberties of England. There is one name indeed connected with Whiggism, of which I can never think but with veneration and tenderness. As justly, however, might the light of the sun be claimed by any particular nation ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... then was perhaps the common experience of such natures. Once upon the boat the illusion of the great world it contained for him utterly vanished. He found it noisy, formal, insincere, and—had he ever understood or used the word in his limited vocabulary—VULGAR. Rather, perhaps, it seemed to him that the prevailing sentiment and action of those who frequented it—and for whom it was built—were of a lower grade than his own. And, strangely enough, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... terms this theme and the superiority of intellectual fellowship to all merely passionate relationships. Upon this topic Capes was heavy and conscientious, but that seemed to her to be just exactly what he ought to be. He was also, had she known it, more than a little insincere. "We are only in the dawn of the Age of Friendship," he said, "when interest, I suppose, will take the place of passions. Either you have had to love people or hate them—which is a sort of love, too, in its way—to get anything out of them. Now, more and more, we're ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... and Roman time, where ugliness and baseness are never attenuated by one tittle, and alloyed nobility or amiability, as with his finer models, like the two Donis, husband and wife, and Bibbiena, is never purified of its troubling element; compared with them the Venetian portraits are mere insincere, enormously idealized pieces of colour-harmony; nay, the portraits of Velasquez are mere hints—given rapidly by a sickened painter striving to make those scrofulous Hapsburgs no longer mere men, but keynotes of harmonies of light—of ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... really alarmed at the Stuart scheme of toleration, sincere or insincere, because it seemed theoretical and therefore fanciful. It was in advance of its age or (to use a more intelligent language) too thin and ethereal for its atmosphere. And to this affection for the actual in the English moderates must be added (in what ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... sub-flavor of irony and insincerity with which an insincere woman can not help tainting even her most ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... he refused at all times to obey the commands which were issued for his direction. The junior Senator from Georgia [Mr. Hardwick] suffered the same fate. How do you hope to escape? . . . My Democratic friends are either proceeding upon the hypothesis that the President is insincere or that they may be able to secure an immunity from him that these other unfortunate aspirants for office ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... insincere. There were so many admirable qualities and traits of Mrs. Van Reypen that she really admired, it was easy enough to tell her so, and ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... and therefore she was always shamming love and friendship and benevolence and tenderness. She could tell you, with words most appropriate to the subject, how horrible were all shams, and in saying so would be not altogether insincere;—yet she knew that she herself was ever shamming, and she satisfied herself with shams. "What is he going to say to me?" she asked Augusta, with her hands clasped, when she went up to put her ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... I think it highly probable—nay, almost certain—that General Taylor had never thought of the Presidency in connection with himself. And there is reason for believing that the first intelligence of these nominations rather amused than seriously interested him. Yet I should be insincere, were I not to confess that, in my opinion, the repeated and steady manifestations in his favor did beget in his mind a laudable ambition to reach the high distinction of the ...
— The Life and Public Service of General Zachary Taylor: An Address • Abraham Lincoln
... presented with a view of the background and destiny of human life similar to that which Schopenhauer expressed: "Truly optimism cuts so sorry a figure in this theatre of sin, suffering, and death that we should have to regard it as a piece of sarcasm, if Hume had not explained its origin—insincere flattery of God in the ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... bid her adieu. Thou mightest say that the apple had taken leave of its friends by having this cheek red and that cheek yellow:—Were I not to die of grief on that day I say farewell, thou wouldst charge me with being insincere in my attachments." ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... of the extravagant terms of friendship which fell from the Tarjum's lips, I was convinced, by studying the man's face, that his words were insincere, and that it would be unsafe to trust him. He never looked us straight in the face. His eyes were fixed on the ground all the time, and he spoke in an unpleasantly affected manner. I did not like the man from the very first, and, friend or ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... without intermission, and imagined I had held out so long on virtuous motives only; but now he could plainly perceive that his want of success had been owing to my want of affection, and that all my professions were insincere. In a word, he persuaded me that his remonstrances were just and reasonable. I could not see the affliction of a man I loved, when I knew it was in my power to remove it; and, rather than forfeit his opinion of my sincerity and love, I consented to ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... power in the church? Was it because of the presence of such people in the temple as that little mean-souled professor, whom everybody knew to be insincere from the crown of his head to the soles of his sly little feet? Was it because the people were cold and careless and didn't sing even with their lips, let alone their hearts, but hired it all ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... studious, sometimes bulbous-browed and pop-eyed maidens who at class prayer-meetings requested God to "guide their feet along the paths of greatest usefulness." Neither sort tempted Carol. The former seemed insincere (a favorite word of hers at this era). The earnest virgins were, she fancied, as likely to do harm as to do good by their faith in the ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... pulse and temperature, made a show of looking out for him, and doubted that the omelet had been poisoned. Brown and McTavish also doubted; but Bertie discerned an insincere ring in their voices. His appetite had left him, and he took his own pulse stealthily under the table. There was no question but what it was increasing, but he failed to ascribe it to the gin he had taken. McTavish, rifle in hand, went out ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... we can put leading questions as we please.... When all is said, the earth goes round none the less, e pur se muove;—the laws of the world are obeyed, and the free mind beholds them. All the rest is vanity; the passions, faith, sincere or insincere, are only the painted face of that necessity which rules the world, without caring for our idols: family, race, country, religion, society, progress.... Progress indeed! The great illusion! Humanity is like water that must find its level, and when the cistern brims over ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... prayers had been answered, and a family of four sons and three daughters blessed her marriage. Her husband's infatuation respecting Diana of Poitiers embittered her life when dauphiness, and compelled her as queen to tolerate the presence of the king's mistress, and pay her an insincere respect. Excluded from all participation in the control of affairs, she fawned upon power where her ambitious nature would have sought to rule. Concealing her chagrin beneath an exterior of contentment, she exhibited, if we may believe the Venetian Soranzo, such benignity of disposition, especially ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... occasional glances at the mirror of his dressing-table. In spite of these little alleviations, his trouble was great and all too real, for, unhappily, the previous rehearsal of an emotional scene does not prove the emotion insincere. ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... political power. Was ever such a topsy-turvyism? Instead of being a bridge over the great gulf between wealth and poverty, the Church still savors to him too much of the "be content where you are" sentiment. To him she is insincere, and consequently his pew is empty. He doesn't want an insurance agency only for the next world; he wants a kingdom of righteousness, joy, and peace, first in this world, where Christ intended it to ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... unfortunate as to incur their animosity, and caused them to waste away gradually with incurable disease. They were notorious two or three centuries ago for the power of the "evil eye." The vulgar, both great and small, dreaded their displeasure, and sought, by small gifts, and fair speeches, but insincere, and the offspring of terror only, to avert the pernicious consequences of their malice. They were famed for fabricating small images of wax, to represent the object of their persecution; and, as these by gradual and often studiously protracted degrees wasted before the fire, so the ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... and decided, that with such feelings as were now shewn, it could not be fairly supposed that he had been ever voluntarily absenting himself; that he had not been acting a part, or making a parade of insincere professions; and that Mr. Knightley certainly had ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... leave no handle for scruple. "Bless me! sir, there is no room for a question." This rivets you into his heart; for you at once applaud his wisdom, and gratify his inclination. However, I had too much bowels to be insincere to a man who came yesterday to know of me, with which of two eminent men in the City he should place his son? Their names are Paulo and Avaro.[272] This gave me much debate with myself, because not only the fortune of the youth, but his virtue also depended upon ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... "I feel rather ill." I posed, "I've been up all night drinking strong coffee and writing poems," I continued, my voice rising in insincere, noisy falsetto. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... hands, could not refuse. The last obstacle was removed by the death of Gregory of Cappadocia in 345. It was not till the third invitation that Athanasius returned. He had to take leave of his Italian friends, and the Emperor's letters were only too plainly insincere. However, Constantius received him graciously at Antioch, ordered all the charges against him to be destroyed, and gave him a solemn promise of full protection for the future. Athanasius went forward on his journey, and the old confessor Maximus assembled the bishops of Palestine to ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... on the whole in favour of the Cleve expedition. Epernon was desperately opposed to it, and maltreated Villeroy in full council when he affected to say a word, insincere as the Duke knew it to be, in favour of executing agreements signed by the monarch, and sealed with the great seal of France. The Duke of Guise, finding himself abandoned by the Queen, and bitterly opposed and hated by Soissons, took ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... awaken and to govern. They were drilled to a factitious humility, prone to find utterance in expressions of self-depreciation and self-scorn, which one may often judge unwisely, when he condemns them as insincere. They were devoted believers, not only in the fundamental dogmas of Rome, but in those lesser matters of faith which heresy despises as idle and puerile superstitions. One great aim engrossed their lives. "For the greater glory of God"—ad majorem Dei ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... is a deceiver. Trust not his professions. They are certainly insincere, or he would not affect concealment; he would not induce you to a clandestine intercourse. Many have been the victims to his treachery. O Eliza, add not to the number. Banish him from your society if you wish to preserve your virtue unsullied, your character ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... aboriginal virtue. With the fanatic's trust in God his Luther will go to Worms "though it rain devils"; and when in his own person Carlyle spoke of the small, honest minority desperately resolved to maintain their ideas though opposed by a huge hostile majority of fools and the insincere, he found one of the finest expressions for courage in all our literature. The vast host shall be to us, he cried, as "stubble is to fire." It may be objected that this is the voice of religious faith rather than of courage pure and simple, ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... strongest necessity, and the most ample evidence, would ever have drawn this condemnation from Rome, whether sincere or insincere. But the urgencies of the case became more evident from day to day. In 1758, the condemnation was followed by the practical measure of appointing Cardinal Saldanha visitor and reformer of the Jesuits in Portugal, and the Portuguese settlements in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... his heart to another. This had happened just at the period of his father's death, and he had endeavoured to console himself with politics, with what fate we have already seen. A constant, upright, and by no means insincere man was our Christopher Dale,—thin and meagre in his mental attributes, by no means even understanding the fullness of a full man, with power of eye-sight very limited in seeing aught which was above him, but yet worthy of regard in that he had realised a path of duty and did ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... and his padrone. This ancient order, quietness, and beauty, which you may find everywhere in the country round about Florence, is the true Tuscany. The vulgarity of the city, for even in Italy the city life has become insincere, blatant, and for the most part a life of the middle class, seldom reaches an hundred yards beyond the barriera: and this is a charm in Florence, for you may so easily look on her from afar. And so, if one comes ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... inexperienced, her judgment was generally sound, and she had come to see how Sedgwick really regarded her. She had pleased his eye, and he was a man who would boldly grasp at what delighted him, but love would not be permitted to interfere with his ambitions. He wrote in a tone of forced and insincere sentiment, and his words brought a blush into Millicent's face as well as a rather bitter smile into her eyes. By and by she tore the sheet into pieces and dropped them over the steamer's rail. ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... I'm the only girl. That's part of the game. I can play it"—her little eyes began to dance—"quite as well as you. But it's playing with something that's quite too serious to be played with—after all, isn't it, now? It's insincere, and, as I tell you, from now on I'm going to be as true and as sincere and as ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... the 'Drama,' and all the more because of a secret obstinate persuasion that the 'Drama' will have a majority of friends in the end, and perhaps deserve to have them. Nay, why should I throw perhapses over my own impressions, and be insincere to you who have honoured me by being sincere? Why should I dissemble my own belief that the 'Drama' is worth two or three 'Seraphims'—my own belief, you know, which is worth nothing, writers knowing themselves so superficially, and ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... patrons who liked such decoration, and with the journeymen who provided it. Michelangelo himself always made his manner serve his thought. We may fail to appreciate his manner and may be incapable of comprehending his thought, but only insincere or conceited critics will venture to gauge the latter by what they feel to be displeasing in the former. What seems lawless in him follows the law of a profound and peculiar genius, with which, whether we like ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... been in lamentable advance of the practice. And least of all can scepticism stand such it test, of which you have just given a passing illustration. Of this system, or rather no-system, there has never been a consistent votary, if we except Pyrrho himself; and whether he were not an insincere sceptic, the world will always be most sincerely sceptical. But forgive me my passing gibe. In wishing you to be as inconsistent as nine tenths of Christians are, I did not mean to prejudice your arguments, such as they are. I know it is not in your power to be otherwise than ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... interest. The Proclamation against the nullifiers, which has given the President such sudden popularity at the North, has of course offended them. No person has a right to say that Proclamation is insincere. It will be extraordinary if a slave-owner does in reality depart from the uniform system of his brethren. In the President's last Message, it is maintained that the wealthy landholders, that is, the ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... one special point on which men seem to me rather insincere toward women. When they speak to women, the objection made to their voting is usually that they are too angelic. But when men talk to each other, the general assumption is, that women should not vote because they have not ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... for that, father," she said tenderly. "There is no acting in his regard and esteem for you, nothing insincere in his liking for us, even if we cannot quite understand it. For we are queer, Daddy," putting her arms about him. "Much love for our old home and much thinking how to help it, and more despair and worry, have shut us off from the normal life, until ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... Bushy Run took the heart out of the tribes confederated under Pontiac's masterly leadership, then Dunmore's War permitted us to begin life as a republic without having the Alleghanies for our western boundary. Nor can I hold in these latter days that His Lordship was insincere in waging the war; for England was against it from ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... I saw were just as futile and exasperating as the commercial English and French varieties of the problem-play, though they had a trifling advantage over the English in that their most sentimental passages were lightened by humor, and the odiously insincere felicity of their conclusions was left to the imagination instead of being acted ruthlessly out on the boards. The themes of these plays showed the usual obsession, and were manipulated in the usual attempt to demonstrate that the way of transgressors ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... apprehension and high resolve upon both sides. The colored men, conscious of their own rectitude, were either unaware of the real light in which their innocent parade was regarded by their white neighbors, or else laughed at the feeling as insincere and groundless. The whites, having been for generations firm believers in the imminency of servile insurrections; devoutly crediting the tradition that the last words of George Washington, words of wisdom and warning, were, "Never trust ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... unimpassioned and prosaic tone of the time, was the low state of religious feeling, and the degeneration of the church, both in its own organization and in public esteem. The upper classes of society, as a rule, were lukewarm and insincere in any form of belief. Statesman and nobles in the most prominent positions combined professed irreligion with open profligacy, while the lower classes were left, through the indolence and selfishness of the clergy, almost without religious teaching. Montesquieu found ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... with his confreres and smoking his pipe filled with home-grown tabac were once the shady walks and stiff parterres of the ancient garden. Here, under the summer moons, were doubtless stolen meetings as sweet, vows as insincere, and intrigues as foolish as those in the exquisite bowers of Le Petit Trianon at Versailles. On its paths have fallen the martial tread of "de Levis, de Beaujeu, and many a brave soldier and dainty courtier, official guests at the Governor's ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... artless satisfaction? Mystery of the human heart—abyss of the critical spirit! Mrs. Wimbush thinks she can answer that question, and as my want of gaiety has at last worn out her patience she has given me a glimpse of her shrewd guess. I'm made restless by the selfishness of the insincere friend—I want to monopolise Paraday in order that he may push me on. To be intimate with him is a feather in my cap; it gives me an importance that I couldn't naturally pretend to, and I seek to deprive him of social ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... far wrong in her estimate of her guest. Miss Deane was both insincere and a thoroughly selfish person, caring nothing for the comfort or happiness of others. She had perceived Zoe's antipathy from the first day of their acquaintance, and took a revengeful, malicious delight in tormenting her; ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... excursions and alarums that vivified the columns devoted by the press to the doings of the polite world; and Adrian Bond kept between the covers of his two or three thin little books—a confinement richly deserved by a writer so futile, superficial and insincere; but Leverett Whyland was less easily evaded by anybody who "banged about town" and who happened to be interested in public matters. Abner came against him at one of the sessions of the Tax Commission, a body that was hoping—almost ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... form was exceedingly graceful and willowy, her personality dainty and refined, her temperament under ordinary conditions essentially sweet and agreeable. In crises Louise developed considerable character, in strong contrast with her usual assumption of well-bred composure. That the girl was insincere in little things and cultivated a polished manner to conceal her real feelings, is undeniable; but in spite of this she might be relied upon to prove ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... chance of life! Each gallant thane, Prince, peer, and noble, follow in your train;— They praise your loveliness, and in your ear They whisper pleasing things, but insincere; Thus, as the moths enamoured of the light, Ye seek these realms of revelry each night. But as ye travel thither, did ye know What wretches walk the streets through which you go. Sisters, whose gewgaws glitter in the glare Of your great lustre, all expectant ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... visitations of conscience by self-indulgence; when, instead of saying I will lift mine eyes unto the hills, whence cometh my help?—and seeking the steep and arduous consolations of duty, we look into our nearest friends' faces and whine for a sympathy that is often insincere, or lie down in some place of comfort ...
— Four Psalms • George Adam Smith
... effervescent devotion, impetuous and entirely "pure." What happens to her in modern France it would be difficult to say. The English do not come and burn her for a witch; but English people do not like the type, do not understand it, and generally prefer the insincere Madonnas or the Madame Bovarys of France. But to understand France one must take cognizance of this feminine crusading spirit. Much that is genuine and worth while in France can be associated with the type of Joan. Even in the midst of modern politics ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... sometimes to acts grossly vicious. It is so common for Southern slaves who arc apparently pious, when exposed to temptation to fall into acts of gross immorality, that many unthinking persons in the South have come to the conclusion that there is no sincere piety among them; that they are insincere and hypocritical in their professions and pretentious. A gentleman once remarked to me, that he had never seen an African in whose piety he had entire confidence. It was a remark, I believe of Doctor Nelson, (the author of the celebrated work on infidelity,) that he had never seen but one ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... was impossible to get the public as a whole to realize what the situation was. Sincere zealots who believed that all combinations could be destroyed and the old-time conditions of unregulated competition restored, insincere politicians who knew better but made believe that they thought whatever their constituents wished them to think, crafty reactionaries who wished to see on the statute-books laws which they believed unenforceable, and the almost solid "Wall Street crowd" or representatives of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... street to talk to him of his soul. He said that the boy should be thinking of making himself one of the brothers in Christ by joining the church. Sam listened silently to the talk of the man, whom he instinctively disliked, but in his silence felt there was something insincere. With all his heart he wanted to repeat a sentence he had heard from the lips of grey-haired, big-fisted Valmore—"How can they believe and not lead a life of simple, fervent devotion to their belief?" He thought himself superior to the thin-lipped man who talked with him and had he been ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... Quick-witted and impatient, she had yet infinite toleration for the simpleton, and could on occasion suffer fools with a gladness quite unshared by her much gentler daughter or her husband. But the snob, the sycophant, and, above all, the humbug met with short shrift at her hands, and the insincere person hated her heartily. She spoke her mind with the utmost freedom on every possible occasion, and as she had plenty of brains and considerable shrewdness her remarks were ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... manhood—of ambition, of passion, of headlong desire of sensation, excitement, adventure, of just all that, in fact, which he had forsworn, had agreed with himself to cast aside and forget. And, thinking of this, suspicion assailed him that forswearing had been slightly insincere and perfunctory. He accused himself of nourishing the belief that giving, he would also receive,—and that in kind,—while that any sacrifice which he offered would be returned to him doubled in value. Casting his bread upon the waters, he accused ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... will some day," she thought, "when I get old and quiet." She was neither old nor quiet now, and her youth cried out against so poor a consolation. Then she told herself that she had the child, only to reproach herself, a moment later, with the insincere repetition of a commonplace. The child was not enough; had her nature been such as to find the child enough, she would certainly never have become Alexander Quisante's wife. Always when she was most strongly repelled by him, there was in the back of her mind the feeling that it was something ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... soon became diverted. She was not, as Gunning thought, insincere, only fickle; she wanted patience and continuity of aim. The "States-General" had produced an excellent effect in the world, and, in fact, had afforded her information afterward turned to account. Her eye is on the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... summoned to explain and justify the new doctrine. Instead of this he renounced it, and confirmed his renunciation by a solemn oath to Pope Adrian, to whom the synod sent him. The recantation was probably insincere, for on returning to his diocese he taught adoptianism as before. Another synod was held at Frankfort in 794, by which the new doctrine was again formally condemned, though neither Felix nor any of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... GUILTY OF THE MOST DAMNABLE CRUELTIES, without the denunciation of the public and the profession that their wickedness deserves."[1] And that vivisector of to-day, who suggests that if anaesthetics had been known to Magendie or Brachet, they would invariably have been used, is either ignorant or insincere. Surely he must know that the very nature of their experiments precluded the use of ether, and that in their time, as to-day, if the experiment were to be tried at all, it was necessary that the ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... consequence of (misplaced) confidence. For this reason it is necessary that we should no longer meet each other. They who cannot be reduced to subjection by the application of even force and sharp weapons, can be conquered by (insincere) conciliation like (wild) elephants ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown |
