"Disingenuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... primeval paradise, he was seduced by his fair partner, who had already listened to the wily suggestions of the serpent; but Abraham, so far from being tempted by his wife, appears to have been the sole contriver of this disingenuous artifice, and employed all his influence to induce her to transgress. In following him from his original residence into Canaan, and subsequently to Egypt, she obeyed the dictates of affection and of religion; but when she suffered ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... laity unless the laity muzzled them. He held that the reformers had been calumniated, that their services were in danger of being forgotten, and that the modern attempt to ignore the Reformation was not only unhistorical, but disingenuous. He wrote partly to rehabilitate them, and partly to prove that Henry VIII. had conferred great benefits upon England by his repudiation of Papal authority. He took, as he considered it his duty to take, the side of individual liberty against ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... of thinking openly in the sight of God, enabled him to see the adventure of Lady Sunderbund without illusion and without shame. He saw himself at once honest and disingenuous, divided between two aims. He had no doubt now of the path he had to pursue. A stronger man of permanently clear aims might possibly turn Lady Sunderbund into a useful opportunity, oblige her to provide the rostrum he needed; but ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... 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 them? I must confess, that when I reflect that these very men ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... more honest than his French pattern Boileau, who stigmatised 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 not half ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... excessive. So far from "creating the new world," Canning had merely recognised the existence of states which had already won their own independence, and even so he was only following the example of the United States. It was not only extremely foolish, but altogether disingenuous, to maintain that the recognition of the South American republics had been resolved on as a counterpoise to French influence in Spain. The reasons which prompted this recognition were commercial, not political, and it had been announced to the powers as our ultimate policy before any invasion ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... 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 ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... people should oppose these attempts to alter the methods of government which had been in vogue for half a century was inevitable, though some of the means they employed were certainly disingenuous. Their leaders, both lay and clerical, were unsurpassed in genius for argument and at this time outdid themselves. When Palmer was able to show that, according to English law, their land-titles were in many cases defective, ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... it back, and get the value in money. I hear that Isaacs sold it again and made another profit; but that's like those traders." The disingenuous candor of Teresa's manner was in exquisite contrast to Dunn. He rose and grasped her hand so heartily she was forced to ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... country by the newspapers, and he was ruined by his timidity. If he had admitted that he was an owner of stock in the Credit Mobilier Company, not much could have been made against him. His denials and explanations, which were either false or disingenuous, and his final admission of a fact which implied that he had been in the receipt of a quarterly payment from a post- office contractor, completed his ruin. There was a time when the country over-estimated his ability. He was a genial, kindly ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... 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 ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... as a charming girl wholly without experience of a world which, though not altogether wicked, is nevertheless callous and self-seeking. Among other drawbacks, she embarked on a fantastic project with a most disingenuous belief in the good faith of a Frenchman. Now, I admire France as a nation, but where women are concerned, I distrust Frenchmen as a race, and I suspect—mind you, I am merely guessing—but I repeat ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... sit long; and, ill at ease, and asking himself whether he was going to turn into a disingenuous cowardly cur, Vane gladly sought his chamber once more to sit down on the edge of his bed, and ponder ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... Tholomyes; "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 ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... everything; Jay, Adams, and Franklin, after years of humiliating mendicancy, their very hearts wrinkled in the service of the stupidest country known to God or man, shoved by a Congress not fit to black their boots under the thumb of the wiliest and most disingenuous diplomatist in Europe—much France cares for our interests, provided we cut loose from Britain; Newburg address and exciting prospect, in these monotonous times, of civil war, while peace commission is sitting in ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... in these days, when machinery—that "Star called Wormwood"—dominates the world, to fall into a state of hard and flippant cynicism, or into a yet more hopeless and weary irony. The unintelligent cheerfulness of the crowd so sickens one; the disingenuous sophistry of its hired preachers fills one with such blank depression that it seems sometimes as though the only mood worthy of normal intelligence were the mood of ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... leaves has been singularly 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
... attempting anything after you. At present I have 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 favourable to the Sonnet or the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... 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 ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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
... must be limited by his matter, lest he should grow whimsical, and by the parts of it 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, ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... German, a 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
... from one to 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 ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... perhaps than would serve to make a Village: Hic Labor, Hoc Opus est! O what need have we, to be concerned, that the Sins of our Israel, may not provoke the God of Heaven to leave his Davids, unto a wrong Step, in a matter of such Consequence, as is now before them! Our Disingenuous, Uncharitable, Unchristian Reproaching of such Faithful Men, after all, The Prayers and Supplications, with strong Crying and Tears, with which we are daily plying the Throne of Grace, that they may be kept, from what They Fear, is none of the ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... our brief but disingenuous explanation, threw off the bed covers in a business-like way, then straightened ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... I will confess that my sympathies are undisguisedly with the French; the English will never think nor talk clearly until the get clerical "Greek" and sham "humanities" out of their public schools and sincere study and genuine humanities in; our disingenuous Anglican compromise is like a cold in the English head, and the higher education in England is a training in evasion. This is an always lamentable state of affairs, but just now it is particularly lamentable because quite tremendous opportunities for the good of ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... 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 not because he belonged to the Harvester and Steel ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... for his daughter, thought her inclinations of as little consequence as Blifil himself conceived them to be; and Mr. Allworthy, who said "he would on no account be accessory to forcing a young lady into a marriage contrary to her own will," was satisfied by his nephew's disingenuous statement that the young lady's behaviour to him was full as forward ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... closed our bacchanalian orgies, and he (the host) ended by stating that he was happy to have 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
... argument was either confused or deliberately disingenuous, since he shifts his ground several times. On occasion he argues merely in the role of a moderate man who is shocked by the extravagances of the playwrights, and on other occasions as an ascetic to whom all worldly diversion, ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... at the Congressional election of 1874. There was a growing impression of maladministration at Washington. The Credit Mobilier scandal—the easy acceptance by Congressmen of financial favors from the managers of the Union Pacific Railway, followed by disingenuous denials—had especially discredited the party in power. There had been a great financial reverse in 1873, such as is always charged in the popular mind against the ruling powers. The South had increased its Democratic vote. So from various causes, ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... "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 ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... 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
... of so disingenuous a Nature, as not to stand corrected by Reproof, he, like the very worst of Slaves, will be hardned even ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... perfidious, unfaithful, dishonest, false, lying, traitorous, unscrupulous, disingenuous, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... at Ann 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 in Greek, which ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... attention—especially so when he stands forth on his oath. The strangeness of his position, and his consciousness of it, suffice in themselves to make him interesting. But it is disingenuousness that makes him delightful. And the greatest of all delights that a law-court can give us is a disingenuous witness who is quick-minded, resourceful, thoroughly master of himself and his story, pitted against a counsel as well endowed as himself. The most vivid and precious of my memories is of a case in which a gentleman, now dead, was sued for breach of promise, and was cross-examined ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... were 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 German Delegation set out, therefore, ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... we went slashing among the poppies with a walking-stick, and were, we said boldly and openly, Harolds and Hectors slaying our thousands. Now of course we are grown up to self-respect, and must needs be a little disingenuous about it. But as the story unfolds there is no mistaking the likeness, in spite of the transfiguration. This bold, decided man who performs such deeds of derring-do in the noisome slum, knocks down the burly wife-beater, rescues ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... 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 misrepresentations ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... good, whether such self-government shall be accompanied by independence. A present declaration even of future independence would retard progress by the dissension and disorder it would arouse. On our part it would be a disingenuous attempt, under the guise of conferring a benefit on them, to relieve ourselves from the heavy and difficult burden which thus far we have been bravely and consistently sustaining. It would be a disguised ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... informed that the Government was not inclined at present to change its policy but could make no promises for the future[798]. This appeared to Adams to be an assurance against any effort by Great Britain and has been interpreted as disingenuous on Russell's part. Certainly Adams' confidence was restored by the interview. But Russell was apparently unconvinced as yet that a suggestion of armistice would necessarily lead to the evil consequences prophesied by Lewis, or would, indeed, require any departure ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... 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: Your intuitions were correct; I did ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... really the 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 had written three such signal pieces as the Bristowe ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... I argued it out that if Neil was on that road, it was the right road to find him in, leading direct to his chief's daughter; as for the other Highlandman, if I was to be startled off by every Highlandman I saw, I would scarce reach anywhere. And having quite satisfied myself with this disingenuous debate, I made the better speed of it, and came a little after ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Campbell, as informal commissioners, and directed them, "in conformity with the letter of Mr. Lincoln," to go to Washington and informally confer "for the purpose of securing peace to the two countries." This was disingenuous, and so obviously so that it was also foolish; for no conference about "two countries" was "in conformity" with the letter of Mr. Lincoln. By reason of the difficulty created by this silly trick the commissioners were delayed at General Grant's headquarters until they succeeded in ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... 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 ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... "in ordering Gen. Sedgwick forward at the time named, was to relieve me from the position in which I found myself at Chancellorsville on the night of the 2d of May." This statement is not only characteristic of Hooker's illogical method, but disingenuous to the degree of mockery. For this position, it will be remembered, was a strongly intrenched line, held by eighty thousand men, well armed and equipped, having in their front less than half their number of Confederates. ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... 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 ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... if, in forming friendships, virtue could concur with pleasure; but the greatest part of human gratifications approach so nearly to vice, that few who make the delight of others their rule of conduct, can avoid disingenuous compliances; yet certainly he that suffers himself to be driven or allured from virtue, mistakes his own interest, since he gains succour by means, for which his friend, if ever he becomes wise, must scorn him, and for which at last he ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... 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 not regularly read the labor and agricultural ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... 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 you ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... imagination? The old loyalists and royalists who had become the Federalists under Hamilton, who were now the Whigs with the same banking scheme, the same old tariff, the same old hatred of democratic government, the same hypocrisy, the same disingenuous and devious policies. There was but one American party, one pure-blooded party, good for the East and the West, friendly to every just thing that the East desired, understanding the West; that was the Democratic party! It stood for America. It envisioned the needs of the greatness of ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... Near and Yet So Far,' has worried me to an extent I am ashamed of. To my 'judgment' that article is disingenuous. It is not so much that you jumped on that poor soul with hob-nailed shoes, but that you formulated the 'jump' quite as the husband might have done. That is, if she would repent and change her course, she would soon find that he was all right, ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... better advantage; he was, as always, moderate and reasonable; but 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 ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... dare not openly 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 which of those "doctrinal statements" ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... 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 ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... 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 beneficence ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Compton, though by no means a badhearted man, was much provoked. Perhaps his vexation was increased by the reflection that he had, for the sake of those by whom he was thus slighted, done some things which had strained his conscience and sullied his reputation, that he had at one time practised the disingenuous arts of a diplomatist, and at another time given scandal to his brethren by wearing the buff coat and jackboots of a trooper. He could not accuse Tillotson of inordinate ambition. But, though Tillotson was most unwilling to accept the Archbishopric himself, he did not use his ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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
... was really conscious. "How false and treacherous," exclaimed she, "are your reasonings! Among the virtuous inhabitants of the plain, every one seeks to influence another by motives which are of weight with himself, and utters the sentiments of his own heart. Where have you learned the disingenuous and faithless arts you employ? To what purpose have you cultivated them, and whose good opinion do you flatter yourself they will obtain for you? False, perfidious Roderic! the more I see of you, the more I fear and ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... This was disingenuous, and she felt humiliated by her subterfuge. Anything but a sudden decision was asked of her. Before leaving Chelsea she had 'foreseen this moment, and had made preparations for the possibility of never returning to Miss Barfoot's house—knowing the nature of the proposal that would be offered ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... have 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 amplest proof ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... circumstances, which are sufficient to raise a question, but I think none of them are conclusive, and upon the whole I have little doubt of its authenticity. I shall be much mortified if it proves a fiction, not on account of the importance of the letter, but the stain that a practice so disingenuous will bring upon America. When I first left America, such a fiction, with all its ingenuity, would have ruined the reputation of the author of it, if discovered, and I think that both he and the printer would have been punished. With all the freedom of our presses, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... 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 inglorious speech that came hard, though ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... poisoned 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 hearted, double dealing; Janus faced; smooth- faced, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... us, as it was with them, a hope; and it is disingenuous to label as Christian what was pre-Christian, and to claim as ours what has been common to the reasoning minds of suffering men and women ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... 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 ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan
... the young man, meekly, "I see;" which was disingenuous. He silently debated whether this meant a species of letter of recommendation, ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... compelled to recant. Some anabaptists were apprehended about the same time, who acknowledged their error at Paul's Cross, bearing faggots,—the tremendous symbol of the fate from which their recantation had rescued them. Two of these unhappy men, however, repented of the disingenuous act into which human frailty had betrayed them; and returning to the open profession of their opinions were burned in Smithfield, to the eternal opprobrium of protestant principles and the deep disgrace of the governess and institutress of the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... shore who is not only practically illiterate but is entirely 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 ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... 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 ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... subject. Perhaps she was a little disingenuous with her conscience, for she wanted to carry off the impression that Miss Vincent had pronounced concealment from her aunts to be justifiable; and she knew at the bottom of her heart that her governess would condemn a habit of secret intimacy with any one being ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I say that?" says she at last, stammering a little, and feeling somewhat disingenuous. She had known, yet now she is trying to pretend ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... the insults of hostile laws daily accumulated on one another, the American leaders seem to have had the greatest difficulty in bringing up their people to a declaration of total independence. But the Court Gazette accomplished what the abettors of independence had attempted in vain. When that disingenuous compilation and strange medley of railing and flattery was adduced as a proof of the united sentiments of the people of Great Britain, there was a great change throughout all America. The tide of popular affection, which had still set towards the parent country, began immediately to turn, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... greatest part of these fictitious writings undoubtedly flowed from the fertile invention of the Gnostic sects, though it cannot be affirmed that even true Christians were entirely innocent and irreproachable in this matter" (Ibid, p. 55). "This disingenuous and vicious method of surprising their adversaries by artifice, and striking them down, as it were, by lies and fiction, produced, among other disagreeable effects, a great number of books, which were falsely attributed to certain great men, in order to give these ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... It is futile and disingenuous to attempt, as some have done, to fasten upon one or the other of the political parties of the State the responsibility of this bedlam legislation. The Governor and a majority of the Legislature were elected ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... many women are disingenuous in regard to these irregularities of conduct was forced upon me some years ago in a conversation with Kendall Brown, who, for all his eccentricities, is a keen ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... which alone can bring about a peace. They keep on with the tricks and feints of a departed age. Both on the side of the Allies and on the side of the Germans the declarations of public policy remain childishly vague and disingenuous, childishly "diplomatic." They chaffer like happy imbeciles while civilization bleeds to death. It was perhaps to be expected. Few, if any, men of over five-and-forty completely readjust themselves to changed conditions, however novel and challenging ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... 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 to connive at undervaluations of imports. [Footnote: ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... that is a disingenuous answer, that you know well. It is not the aspect of the old Hall that has charms for you. But I feel, only from your conduct, more than ever convinced, that some plot is going on, having the accomplishment of some great object as its climax, ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... occasion, but told her he would by no means consent to her altering her conduct; she was upon the point of telling him, it was reported that the Duke de Nemours was in love with her, but she had not the power to name him; besides she thought it disingenuous to disguise the truth, and make use of pretences to a man who had so ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... particularly as to my arrival. I told her by what series of accidents I had come to witness their disembarkation, and how I had determined to remain, partly from the interest which had been wakened in me by Northmour's guests, and partly because of his own murderous attack. As to the former, I fear I was disingenuous, and led her to regard herself as having been an attraction to me from the first moment that I saw her on the links. It relieves my heart to make this confession even now, when my wife is with God, and already knows all things, and the ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... vitally important developments, and so on, and so on. Of course the naive intelligence of a boy does not grasp the subtler developments of human inadequacy. He begins life with a disposition to believe in the wisdom of grown-up people, he does not realise how casual and disingenuous has been the development of law and custom, and he thinks that somewhere in the state there is a power as irresistible as a head master's to check mischievous and foolish enterprises of every sort. I will confess that when my uncle talked of cornering quinine, I had a clear impression ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... 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 not conceited men, fancied that, if we had dared to ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... does not permit us to 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 and movements" in the free or slave States. I continue ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... 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 visible members of Christ's ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... ache, as if it had been revealed to him that this fellow held precedence of himself, and had spun fresh threads of resistance to his way out. 'Does that mean that you're against me?' he had got nothing out of that disingenuous question. Feminist! Phrasey fellow! 'I mustn't rush things,' he thought. 'I have some breathing space; he's not going back to Paris, unless he was lying. I'll let the spring come!' Though how the spring could serve him, save by adding to his ache, he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of the Hindus as the inventors, is supported by better evidence both inferential and positive than that of any other people, and unless we are to assume the Sanskrit accounts of it to be unreliable or spurious, or the translations of Dr. Hyde, Sir William Jones and Professor Duncan Forbes to be disingenuous and untrustworthy concoctions (as Linde the German writer seems to insinuate) we are justified in dismissing from our minds all reasonable doubts as to the validity of the claims of the Hindu Chaturanga as the foundation of the Persian, Arabian, Medieval and Modern Chess, which ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... 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 naturally, ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... holding a new command, and gaining further wealth. But Theophanes's want of honesty does not go so far to make this story credible as does Pompey's own nature, which was averse, with all its ambition, to such base and disingenuous acts, to ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... indicates a tussle between a natural tendency to frank honesty and an unnatural and unworthy method of deception. Obviously, the recipient of this precious document would have her curiosity excited over the disingenuous tale of romance. She would ask herself first of all, "Why should my kinsman be so desirous to tell me that the orphan in whom he has so fond an interest is not without a fortune? and why should the responsibility of rearing ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... sudden, I would 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 and best duties ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... and to their husbands also for that matter; and the fact that he could at last let himself go deepened his sense of the sympathy and the understanding that had always existed between him and Lois. He hated fuss; and his other sisters were tiresomely fussy and maddeningly disingenuous. In half an hour Lois had learned all she cared to know of the family history. She merely dipped into the bin, brought up a handful of wheat, blew away the chaff, eyed the remaining kernels with a sophisticated eye, and ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... never to return. So, on all these considerations, Horace decided that silence was his only possible policy, and, though some moralists may condemn his conduct as disingenuous and wanting in true moral courage, I venture to doubt whether any reader, however independent, straightforward, and indifferent to notoriety and ridicule, would have behaved otherwise in Ventimore's extremely delicate ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... "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
... 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, ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... 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 David thought it ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... somewhat disingenuous with me on the subject. I think he tried to prevent the matter coming to my ears; and when I asked him about it, he certainly implied—in fact, I grieve to say he left me under the impression that he had ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... Dionysius Halicarnasseus, and Diodorus Siculus. The specious gilding of Tacitus I have endeavoured to shun. Mariana, Davila, and Fra. Paulo, are those amongst the moderns whom I thought most worthy of imitation; but I cannot be so disingenuous, as not to own the infinite obligations I have to the "Pilgrim's Progress" of John Bunyan, and the "Tenter Belly" of the Reverend ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... distrust of dissent—there goes on a tyranny that it would be difficult to match in modern history. Save in a few large cities, every American community lies under a sacerdotal despotism whose devices are disingenuous and dishonourable, and whose power was magnificently displayed in the campaign for Prohibition—a despotism exercised by a body of ignorant, superstitious, self-seeking and thoroughly dishonest men. One ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... at him quickly. Her gaze was altogether disingenuous, but her eyes—those wonderful ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... now declared, for the sake of having them "fire the first gun," would have been as unwise as it would be to hesitate to strike down the arm of the assailant, who levels a deadly weapon at one's breast, until he has actually fired. The disingenuous rant of demagogues about "firing on the flag" might serve to rouse the passions of insensate mobs in times of general excitement, but will be impotent in impartial history to relieve the Federal Government ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... 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
... Ellison!" 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 ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... O'erspreads and blackens whate'er most delights, And renders us haters of loveliness, The lowest of the fiends: ambition led The higher on, furious to dispossess, From admiration sprung and frenzied love. This disingenuous soul-debasing passion, Rising from abject and most sordid fear, Stings her own breast with bitter self-reproof, Consumes the vitals, pines, and never dies. Love, Honour, Justice, numberless the forms, Glorious and high the stature, she assumes; But watch ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... figure and face we can produce as any rank of life whatever; rustic, native grace; unaffected modesty and unsullied purity; nature's mother-wit and the rudiments of taste, a simplicity of soul, unsuspicious of, because unacquainted with, the crooked ways of a selfish, interested, disingenuous world; and the dearest charm of all the rest, a yielding sweetness of disposition, and a generous warmth of heart, grateful for love on our part, and ardently glowing with a more than equal return; these, with ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns |
