"Imposture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his inner nature he had chosen the odds that he must now uphold against the combined wisdom of these intellectuals. He was alone, with no one to guide him save Geos, who undoubtedly was his friend, but who as undoubtedly would desert him upon the slightest inkling of imposture. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... bankrupt, on his setting up a second time, from having been convinced that he had dealt in his bankruptcy with a fair and honest heart, and that he had broke through misfortune only, and not from neglect or imposture. He was withal so silly a fellow that he never took the least advantage of the ignorance of his customers, and contented himself with very moderate gains on his goods; which he was the better enabled to do, notwithstanding his generosity, because his life was extremely temperate, ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... complexion, the same cast of features, the same cut of hair. Nevertheless, the look of the eye was different, keener in this case and brighter; and gradually the duke discovered minor details which had passed unperceived till then and which proved the fellow's imposture. ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... is our taste, that if the most torpid dunce this fruitful age can boast of, could by some artful imposture prepossess the public, that the most insipid of all his own bread-sauce compositions, to be published next winter, was a piece MILTON's, or any other celebrated author, recovered from dust and obscurity, it would be received with universal ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... recovered from the effects of the bridal feast, he discovered, to his intense horror and dismay, that the bride he had taken was not the woman of his choice—in short, he was the victim of a cheat. Indignant at this cruel imposture, he ascertained that the plot emanated from the woman who, till then, had been the ideal of his soul, and that she had substituted her veiled sister Anne for herself at the altar. The remainder of this strange affair is briefly told:—George Evans had one, and only one, interview with his wife, and ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... letter yesterday you had from home. Esquire indeed! It's sickening!—I am ready to have it out with him whenever he likes, and take the nigger after him when he's had his gruel. Go and tell him if you like. It's been dull enough in the place ever since that miserable imposture about the lost belt. You want something to rouse you up, and I'll give it you if you can bring those two fellows up to the scratch; but that you can't do. Look at them sneaking off like a street cur and an Indian jackal. Contemptible ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... went so far as to condemn his wives to a complete seclusion. He did not venture to hope, nor did those in his confidence, that the truth would not one day be known, but he hoped to gain, without loss of time, sufficient popularity to prevent the revelation of the imposture from damaging his prospects. The seven great houses which he had dispossessed would, in such a case, refuse to rally round him, and it was doubtless to lessen their prestige that he extinguished their pyres; but the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... arts, And likes particularly to produce Some new experiment to show his parts; This is the age of oddities let loose, Where different talents find their different marts; You'd best begin with truth, and when you've lost your Labour, there's a sure market for imposture. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... said, "that to avenge a father of the imposture of which he was the victim during his life, is to render homage to his memory. Yes, madame, I read the whole of that correspondence, and with an interest which you will readily understand. I had already, and without result, examined the contents of several boxes, when in the package ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... story were not true. It thus follows that his mother knew the sixty-five stanzas of the ballad by heart. Does any one believe that, as a woman of seventy-two, she learned the poem to back Hogg's hoax? That he wrote the poem, and caused her to learn it by rote, so as to corroborate his imposture? ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... and kindly in address, he was often approached by citizens and strangers with a view to obtaining something of the unrecorded mysteries of his life; but citizen, stranger and persistent reporter all alike failed in eliciting any information as to his knowledge of the Mormon imposture, the motives of his early life, or the religious faith, fears and hopes of his declining years. Once or twice he spoke excitedly, in terms of scorn, of those who attributed to him the manufacture of the Mormon Bible; but beyond this, nothing. His library was small: he left no manuscripts, and ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... music in Rochester, began to lose her pupils, and whilst the blanching of the poor mother's hair in a single week bore testimony to the mental tortures which supra-mundane terrors and mundane cruelties had heaped upon them, the world was taunting them with imposture and with originating the very manifestations which were destroying their health, peace of mind, and good name. They had solicited the advice of their much-respected friend, Isaac Post, a highly esteemed Quaker citizen of Rochester, and at his ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... end of the sacristy: it whispered so low that I could not catch the words. I remained motionless, and gave it my whole attention. At last I heard, distinctly, the following sentence:—'Spirit of Truth, raise up these victims of ignorance and imposture.' 'Father Hegesippus,' said I, in a weak voice, 'is that you who are returning to me?' But no one answered. I lifted myself on my hands and knees, I listened again, but I heard nothing. I got up completely, and looked about me: I had fallen so near to the only door in this little room, that ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... stories. At least I have only met with it in one, and it certainly is not common. The confession of age which the ceremony draws forth is really much more. It is a confession that the apparently human babe is an imposture, that it belongs in fact to a different race, and has no claim on the mother's care and tenderness. Therefore it is not always enough for the fraud to be discovered: active means must sometimes be taken to rid the ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... who are as likely as not to give a false description of their complaint, and in many instances to do all in their power to frustrate the efforts made to relieve it. They have to discover not only what the disease is in real patients, but also frequently to detect well planned and well sustained imposture in those who are not diseased at all. The latter is a much more difficult task in many cases than the former, as I will subsequently show, and it has a tendency to sour the temper and harden the heart, which the former does not. I do not ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... afflicted in the same manner with those in Boston. The physicians, unable to account for the disorder, attributed it to witchcraft, and an old Indian woman in the neighbourhood was selected as the witch. The attention bestowed on these girls gave them great importance; and not only confirmed them in the imposture, but produced other competitors who were ambitious of the same distinction. Several other persons were now bewitched; and not only the old Indian, but two other old women, the one bedridden, and the other subject to melancholy ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... work one must have shelter. At twenty-three one does not want to die; not when one has lived always in the future, when one has striven and toiled for recognition that may yet come. Not mere recognition of genius or talent, of knack or gift, but recognition of Truth as opposed to Imposture, of my right to life, of my right to give free and full expression of the individuality that ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... said briefly, and with a voice still trembling with anger: "I accuse the man here present with having falsely and wickedly taken the names and titles of his grace the Duke of Monmouth, and with having thus, by his odious imposture, ruined the designs of the king, my master, and under such circumstances the crime of this man should be considered as an attack upon the safety of the state. In consequence, I demand that the accused here present be declared guilty of high treason, ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... the title[14], as we must suppose, by the fraudulence of the printers, who, while there were yet no gazettes, nor advertisements, nor any means of circulating literary intelligence, could usurp at pleasure any celebrated name. Nor had Shakespeare any interest in detecting the imposture, as none of his fame or profit ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... inclined now to take the whole thing as an amusing imposture; but presently, watching his face and the curious "seeing" expression of his eyes, and noting the exactitude of one or two of his pictures, I began to feel that, however much he might be inventing or elaborating, there was some substratum of truth in what he was telling me. I had ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... discover why they experienced these feelings. An illusion is no more than a false interpretation of a real subjective experience; although many are inclined to treat the rejection of the interpretation as equivalent to a charge of imposture or deliberate lying. ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... a valueless title to natural gifts, except so far as it may have been furbished up by a succession of wise intermarriages.... I cannot think of any claim to respect, put forward in modern days, that is so entirely an imposture as that made by a peer on the ground of descent, who has neither been nobly educated, nor has any ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... in administration, it is necessary to overturn the British Constitution, and to build on its ruins four semi-independent Legislatures and one supreme Parliament, is merely to exemplify the cynical imposture of partisan misrepresentation: what Mr. Balfour described as "the dream of ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... with great appearance of cordiality and friendship. He delivered to him his letters, and Parmenio read them. He seemed much pleased with their contents, especially with the one which had been written in the name of his son. He had no means of detecting the imposture, for it was very customary in those days for letters to be written by secretaries, and to be authenticated solely by ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... conduct by the hope of reward or fear of punishment. If the consciousness of freedom be a delusion, it follows that moral obligation, duty, reward, guilt, punishment, are delusions, and that religion, however salutary in its effects, is nothing better than a magnificent imposture. ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... Squir Hinson was dying. It was from a party caling himself Janson K. The border as I aught to enform you has told my children inclooding Francis Ferdinand who bares this letter a cockanbull story about bein related to your honered self by witch we know he was an imposture. I write insted of calling at the house as I am laim from cuttin my foot with an ax yesterday and it dont apear quite cuncistunt to ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... fear Laing's late edition has completely overthrown every hope that Macpherson's 'Ossian' might prove the translation of a series of poems complete in themselves; but, while the imposture is discovered, the merit of the work remains undisputed, though not without faults—particularly, in some parts, turgid and bombastic diction.—The present humble imitation will be pardoned by the admirers of the original as an attempt, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... "I have heard a good many people called impostors. Did it ever occur to you that the blame of the imposture might possibly lie with the person imposed on? I have heard of people falling into the delusion that a certain modest and simple-minded man was a great politician or a great wit, although he had never ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... would have made a thousand difficulties. He addressed himself to the goddess Egeria, who gave him some pandects from Jupiter; he was obeyed without contradiction, and he reigned happily. His instructions were good, his charlatanry did good; but if some secret enemy had discovered the imposture, if he had said: "Exterminate an impostor who prostitutes the name of the gods in order to deceive men," Numa ran the risk of being sent to ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... colonization of America is to be found in the ponderous tomes of Lord Kingsborough, Mexican Antiquities, London, 1831-48, 9 vols. elephant-folio. Such a theory was entertained by the author of that curious piece of literary imposture, The Book of Mormon. In this book we are told that, when the tongues were confounded at Babel, the Lord selected a certain Jared, with his family and friends, and instructed them to build eight ships, in which, after a voyage of 344 days, they were brought to America, where they "did ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... better than they do. The fear of his sarcasms prevented Dr Johnson from hearing one literal version during his whole sojourn in the Highlands. Sir Walter Scott wished that somebody might have the manliness to recover Highland poetry from the mystification of paraphrase or imposture, and to present it genuine to the English reader. In that spirit we promise to execute our task; and we shall rejoice if even a very moderate degree of success should attend our endeavours to obtain for the sister muse some share of that popularity to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... in peace. I die with unnumbered sins on my conscience, without one good act performed, with every advantage neglected, with a thousand opportunities of reformation thrown away. I have lived a life of imposture, outraging all laws, human and divine, and I die miserably without hope—without hope—without hope! Oh, save me! save me! save me!" The last words the miserable man gasped out with difficulty. Scarcely had he spoken them, when his head fell down over his breast, ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... bagpipes, and by innumerable spectators attracted by curiosity, to which were added anxious parents and relations, who came to look after those among the misguided multitude who belonged to their respective families. Imposture and profligacy played their part in this city also, but the morbid delusion itself seems to have predominated. On this account religion could only bring provisional aid, and therefore the town council benevolently took an interest ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... knew me as I WAS,—this is the hardest burden. And he, too, in time will know me to be an impostor. He too—a reformed man; but he has honorably retraced his steps, and won the position I hold by a trick, an imposture. And what is all my labor beside his honest sincerity? I have fought against the chances that might discover my deception, against the enemies who would overthrow me, against the fate that put me here; and I have been successful—yes, a successful impostor! ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... Chasselion's fete champetre— would jar upon our Anglican prejudices. As for Winkle (Porthos), the translation nicely hits off his love of manly exercises, while resting his pretensions on a more solid basis of fact than appears in the original. In the incident of the baldric, however, the imposture underlying Mr. W.'s green shooting-coat is conveyed ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... good hunters as was he, their instinct was as sure, their scouts and trackers were many, and he was but one. They found the Faith Healer by a little stream, eating bread and honey, and, like an ancient woodlander drinking from a horn—relics of his rank imposture. He made no resistance. They tried him formally, if perfunctorily; he admitted his imposture, and begged for his life. Then they stripped him naked, tied a bit of canvas round his waist, fastened him to a tree, and were about to complete his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... our armies obtain possession of it, the confederacy will experience another severing stroke, almost as severe as that which cleft it in twain by the capture of Vicksburg and the reopening of the Mississippi. By such strokes the pretentious imposture of a Southern nation must be broken into fragments, even should the armies supporting it remain for a time organized and defiant; for, under the appliances of modern civilization and commerce, the possession of a railroad or internal ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... difficult as it sounded. I had found that out in Shainsa. Charin is a long, long way from the major Trade City near the Kharsa. I hadn't a single intimate friend there, or within hundreds of miles, to see through the imposture. At most, there were half a dozen of the staff that I'd once met, or had a drink with, eight or ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... Pestonji's case to the back of the head, where on each side was an elongated mass, very hard and firm, like a rope and about the size of the fist. There was no reason to believe that it was ascribable to imposture; the Hindoo woman cut the lumps off herself and threw them away. Le Page found the most contracted hairs flattened. Stellwagon reports a case of plica in a woman. It occupied a dollar-sized area above the nape of the neck, and ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... manners and institutions which astonish the civilised reader by their uncouthness, strangeness, or indecency. The inference constantly suggested is, that laws are the creatures of climate, local situation, accident, or imposture—the fruit of any causes except those which appear to operate with tolerable constancy. Montesquieu seems, in fact, to have looked on the nature of man as entirely plastic, as passively reproducing the impressions, and submitting implicitly to the impulses, which it receives from without. ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... fortunes, was his hypocrisy; so much so, that South—a most acute observer of mankind, and who had been educated under the Commonwealth and Protectorate—in his sermon on "Worldly Wisdom," adduces Cromwell as an instance of "habitual dissimulation and imposture." Oliver, Mr. Macaulay tells us, modelled his army on the principle of composing it of men fearing God, and zealous for public liberty, and in the very next page he is forced ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... distinctly opposed; namely, the acknowledgments of debts which will be paid, and of debts which will not. Documents, whether in whole or part, of bad debt, being to those of good debt as bad money to bullion, we put for the present these forms of imposture aside (as in analysing a metal we should wash it clear of dross), and then range, in their exact quantities, the true currency of the country on one side, and the store or property of the country on the other. We place gold, and all such substances, on the side of documents, as far as they operate ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... hope that they would be able to deceive the rightful possessors and the legal tribunals. When such cases have occurred they have created more or less excitement in proportion to the magnitude of the claim, the audacity of the imposture, or the romance which has surrounded them. But the interest which they have aroused has been evanescent, and the only records which remain of the vast majority are buried in ponderous legal tomes, which are rarely seen, and are still more rarely read, by non-professional ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... which were rising to his lips. Again he saw himself in a pitiful light, and this self-contempt reflected upon Sidwell. He could not doubt that she was yielding to him; her attitude and her voice declared it; but what was the value of love won by imposture? Why had she not intelligence enough to see through his hypocrisy, which at times was so thin a veil? How defective must ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... the absence of genuine inspiration is supplied by the strong illusions of enthusiasm, and the mimic arts of imposture. If, in the time of Julian, these arts had been practised only by the pagan priests, for the support of an expiring cause, some indulgence might perhaps be allowed to the interest and habits of the sacerdotal character. But it may appear a subject of surprise and scandal, that the philosophers ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... and, above all, the currently-believed story of the ghost, might afford facilities for frightening away those who were disposed to be curious; and any noises unavoidable in the course of their operations might be attributed to this fruitful source of imposture. By a little dexterity, possession of the haunted chamber was obtained, the feigned beggar being a periodical visitant; thence a ready entrance was contrived, and all materials were introduced that were needful for their fraudulent proceedings. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... and attaching the blame to the man who had the more immediate guidance of the affairs on which ruin had come, appeared abundantly disposed to overlook the ministry in their condemnation of Lally. The popular indignation was carefully cultivated; and by one of those acts of imposture and villany, of which the history of ministers in all the countries of Europe affords no lack of examples, it was resolved to raise a screen between the ministry and popular hatred by the cruel and disgraceful destruction of Lally. On his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... theory were correct, was the second mate wholly answerable for beginning his life again with the imposture he had practised? The contributor had either so fallen in love with the literary advantages of his forlorn deceiver that he would see no moral obliquity in him, or he had touched a subtler verity at last in pondering the affair. It seemed now no longer a farce, but ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... a few words, is the Christian priesthood, if Christianity possesses any reality and is not an imposture. Among all nations, therefore, where sound faith exists, the greatest respect is shown to the ministers of God; but the Irish have at all times been most persistent in their veneration and trust. And if we would ascertain the cause of their ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Clavering uniformly opposed the conduct of Mr. Hastings to the end of his life. But Mr. Hastings showed more temper under much greater provocations. In disclaiming his agent, and in effect accusing him of an imposture the most deeply injurious to his character and fortune, and of the grossest forgery to support it, he was so very mild and indulgent as not to show any active resentment against his unfaithful agent, nor to complain to the Court of Directors. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... "of two congenial spirits, united not by legal bondage and superstitious imposture, but by mutual confidence and reciprocal virtues, is the only counterbalancing consolation in this scene of mischief and misery. But how rarely is this the case according to the present system of marriage! So far from being a central point of expansion to the great circle of universal benevolence, ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... however, to carry on the honest imposture the better, just now, in presence of Mrs. Harris, and Mrs. Andrews, and me, asked the former, if it was not necessary to have in the house the good woman? This frighted Mrs. B. who turned pale, and said she could not bear the thoughts of it. Mrs. Harris said it was highly necessary ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... sleights; and they, winning the minds of the simple, began to claim the rank of gods. For, in particular, they ensnared Norway, Sweden and Denmark in the vainest credulity, and by prompting these lands to worship them, infected them with their imposture. The effects of their deceit spread so far, that all other men adored a sort of divine power in them, and, thinking them either gods or in league with gods, offered up solemn prayers to these inventors of sorceries, and gave to blasphemous ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... et l'imposture, Ces Juifs, dont vous voulez dlivrer la nature, 1045 Que vous croyez, Seigneur, le rebut des humains, D'une riche contre autrefois souverains, Pendant qu'ils n'adoraient que le Dieu de leurs pres, Ont vu bnir le cours de leurs ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... impression upon her—she could not at first realize that the temple had fallen before the assault of men of the outer world. When she did, there must have come, too, a terrible realization of what it meant to her—the loss of power—humiliation—the exposure of the fraud and imposture which she had for so long played upon ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... suspicious and cruel tyrant, who, having alienated the good-will of the nation, was unable to oppose the pretensions of an impostor, and swallowed poison to escape the tortures of an upbraiding conscience—the successful imposture of the monk who personated the Prince Dimitri, one of the victims of Boris' ambition, and who was slaughtered on the day of his nuptials at the foot of the throne he had so strangely usurped, by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... cruel laugh broke from him. "He has not shrunk from lies—from imposture—from blasphemy. Is it likely he will shrink from his reward? Oh no! We will run no risks. The trap has closed. No one will gain access to him to-night until the hour of the Gathering has arrived. It will be my special—my sacred—duty to watch ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... about his kingdom, and each of the guests would bespeak his patronage and clemency. His answers as to his future conduct were given without reserve. He promised a policy of mercy, and the quaint earnestness of the imposture would dissolve the company in laughter. Portions of food were handed him from the board, and the donors would ask that he should remember their kindness when he came into his kingdom. These were requests which Eunus did ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... some time at Lyons, we went to Avignon. Le Guast, not daring to hazard any fresh imposture, and finding that my conduct afforded no ground for jealousy on the part of my husband, plainly perceived that he could not, by that means, bring about a misunderstanding betwixt my brother and the King my husband. ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... to the healing gods (usually Asclepius, but sometimes Apollo, Aphrodite, and Hera). Here the patient is expected to sleep over night in the temple, and the god visits him in a dream, and reveals a course of treatment which will lead to recovery. Probably there is a good deal of sham and imposture about the process. The canny priests know more than they care to tell about how the patient is worked into an excitable, imaginative state; and of the very human means employed to produce a satisfactory and informing dream.[] Nevertheless it is ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... disposed of once for all. Now this is not easy. Most men are so made that they have a high opinion of their own perspicuity, but a very unfavourable one generally of that of other men. They always believe that if they had been there they could have quickly discovered the imposture. Consequently, no precaution must be omitted; all safeguards must be employed, and it will be seen that the observers of Mrs Piper's phenomena have ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... extraordinary pliancy of its principle of disguise, the Jesuit was suffered to assume the tenets of Protestantism, and even to act as a Protestant pastor, for the purpose of more complete deception. The good of the church was the plea which purified all imposture; the power of Rome was the principle on which this tremendous system of artifice was constructed; and the reduction of all modes of human opinion to the one sullen superstition of the Vatican, was the triumph for which those armies of subtle enthusiasm and fraudulent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... imposture, though it might seem so if we consider it as its defenders present it to us rather than as its discoverers and original spokesmen uttered it in the presence of nature and face to face with unsophisticated ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... doctors and theologians cautiously examined Joan's mission, and pronounced it undoubted and supernatural. She was sent to the parliament, then residing at Poictiers; and was interrogated before that assembly: the presidents, the counsellors, who came persuaded of her imposture, went away convinced of her inspiration. A ray of hope began to break through that despair in which the minds of all men were before enveloped. Heaven had now declared itself in favor of France, and had laid bare its ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... authority and grandeur, but which is founded on more noble and immoveable principles, those of esteem and respect, arising from a sentiment of true greatness and of generosity. Be assured that when contemptible discord, with its odious attendants, artifice and imposture, could effectuate nothing, absolutely nothing, at the moment when the present war broke out, to prejudice in the least the fidelity of the Citizens of the Amstel, or to shake them in the observance of their duties; the inconveniencies and the evils that a war naturally and necessarily ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... emphasize a platitude. Economic theory must be based upon actual fact: indeed, it must be essentially an attempt, like all theory, to describe the actual facts in proper sequence, and in true perspective; and if it does not do this it is an imposture. Moreover, the facts which economic theory seeks to describe are primarily economic facts, facts, that is to say, which emerge in, and are concerned with, the ordinary business world; and it is, therefore, mainly ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... designed, as the vindicator of Milton supposes, to impose a trick on the publick, and procure credit to my assertions by an imposture, I would never have drawn lines from Hog's translation of Milton, a book common at every sale, I had almost said, at every stall, nor ascribed them to authors so easily attained: I would have gone another way ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... and daisies, and in the autumn burned, like the borders of nearly all the streets in Charlesbridge, with the pallid azure flame of the succory. The neighborhood was in all things a frontier between city and country. The horse-cars, the type of such civilization—full of imposture, discomfort, and sublime possibility—as we yet possess, went by the head of our street, and might, perhaps, be available to one skilled in calculating the movements of comets; while two minutes' walk would take us into a wood so wild and thick that no roof was visible through the trees. We learned, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... woman, between joy and grief, were half hysterical. They talked to the toad-like mountebank in the most endearing tones, evidently believing it was their dead baby toddling before them. Two or three times the same horrible imposture was repeated. Bott never made his appearance without somebody recognizing him as a dear departed friend. The glimmering light, the unwholesome excitement, the servile credulity fixed by long habit, seemed to produce a sort of passing dementia ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... sometimes entertained, but oftener wearied. She was struck by the apparent talents and knowledge displayed in the various conversations she listened to, and it was long before she discovered, that the talents were for the most part those of imposture, and the knowledge nothing more than was necessary to assist them. But what deceived her most, was the air of constant gaiety and good spirits, displayed by every visitor, and which she supposed to arise from content as constant, and from benevolence as ready. At length, from ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... Polydore and I have had little acquaintance together; my designs will all be overthrown; this secret is, no doubt, that of which I dread the discovery. They have bribed somebody to betray me; so there is a stain upon my honour which can never be wiped off. My imposture is found out. Oh! how difficult it is to keep the truth concealed for any length of time! How much better would it have been for me and my reputation had I followed the dictates of a well-founded apprehension! Many times and oft have I been ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere
... most worthy of belief, it appears certain that the wonders related of the Chaberons cannot be attributed to juggling or delusion. A purely human philosophy would, doubtless, reject such facts, or unhesitatingly lay them to the charge of Lamaist imposture. We—catholic missionaries—think that the great liar who deceived our first parents in Paradise, prosecutes on earth his system of falsehood. He who was potent enough to sustain Simon Magus in the air, may well speak in the present day by the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... Muzem set out on his return journey, thankful for the good fortune that had enabled him so early to detect the imposture that was ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... the chance of some disturbance before we left; for Mrs Porter became more and more indignant with the "gross imposture," which culminated when at length she was called up and told that "a young man wished to speak with her." She asserted that it was "the most horrible, grinning, painted creature who hissed into ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... world, Julian could see its needs without using the eyes of the Asiatic camarilla. First of all, Christian domination must be put down. Not that he wanted to raise a savage persecution. Cruelty had been well tried before, and it would be a poor success to stamp out the 'Galilean' imposture without putting something better in its place. As the Christians 'had filled the world with their tombs' (Julian's word for churches), so must it be filled with the knowledge of the living gods. Sacrifices were encouraged and a pagan hierarchy ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... monument is said to have been discovered on a peak of the mountain in A.D. 1212, and a transcription was made, which may be seen reproduced as a curiosity in Legge's Classics, vol. iii. For several reasons, however, the whole affair must be regarded as a gross imposture. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... Coningsby a native vein of sauciness which it required all the solemnity of the senate to repress. Indeed, even there, upon the benches, with a grave face, he often indulged in quips and cranks that convulsed his neighbouring audience, who often, amid the long dreary nights of statistical imposture, sought refuge in his gay sarcasms, his airy personalities, ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... Start for Erythrae, a town of Ionia, which faces that island, and he prevailed upon the seamen to allow him to accompany them. Having embarked, he invoked a favourable wind, and prayed that he might be able to expose the imposture of Thestorides, who, by his breach of hospitality, had drawn down the wrath ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... hers was much fuller. It was soft as floss silk. After a while the capillary attraction ceased to draw, and Mr. Barnum thought of an admirable plan to revive it. He got somebody to prosecute him for false pretences and imposture, on the ground that Madame was a man. Then Mr. Barnum had, with the greatest unwillingness and many moral apologies, a medical examination; they might as sensibly have examined Vashishta's cow to find out if it was an Irish bull. Then came the ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... finding that she was unable to bear the voyage, he resolved to confide in the honor of the French, and present his passport at the Mauritius. There he was detained a prisoner six years; first charged with imposture, then treated as a spy; and when these imputations were refuted, he was accused of violating his passport. The French had found in his journal a wish dotted down to examine the state of that settlement, written when a stranger to the renewal of war. Some doubt seems to have been really ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... further her ends, made him eager to delve deeper into her real purpose. At least these two, apparently ignorant of their guest's true character, should be warned, or, if that was impossible, protected from imposture. Their open friendliness and social endorsement were the woman's stock in trade at Dodge, and whatever the final denouement might be, McDonald and his daughter would inevitably share in the ensuing disgrace of discovery. Even if they ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... situation rushed upon his spirit. He shrank from the rude scenes that opened before him,—from the mocker's sneer and the ruler's scourge; from the glare of impatient revenge, and the weeping eyes of helpless friendship; from the insignia of imposture and of shame; and from the protracted, thirsty, torturing death. He shrank from these,—he shrank from the rupture of tender ties,—he shrank from the parting with deeply-loved friends,—his soul was overburdened, his spirit was swollen to agony, and he rushed to his knees, and prayed, ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... no less than the remaining portion of the journal printed in the proceedings of the investigating committee, is itself strong circumstantial proof of the imposture underlying the whole transaction. Many sections of the completed constitution are not even mentioned in the journal; it does not contain the submission clause of the schedule, and the authenticity of the document rests upon ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... Valentine Thomas, apprehended in London for a theft, accused the king of Scots of some evil designs against herself. Explanations however being demanded, James solemnly disavowed the letter to the pope, which he treated as a forgery and imposture; though circumstances which came out several years afterwards render the king's veracity ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... flattery and homage; she suspects that pique alone can force an entrance into the citadel of his heart, and her demonstrations of aversion are only a ruse de guerre. My poor aunt! I pity the disappointment and mortification to which you are destined, when you discover how complete is the imposture ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... experience. Sometimes, however, the biter is pretty well bitten. There was a poor Chilian once who was deceived in this way, and paid four hundred dollars for a claim that was scarcely worth working. He looked rather put out on discovering the imposture, but was only laughed at by most of those who saw the transaction for his softness. Some there were who frowned on the sharper, and even spoke of lynching him, but they were a small minority, and had to hold their peace. However, the Chilian plucked up heart, ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... Democratic State convention our hearty thanks for their contemptuous treatment of Jim Brooks & Co.'s one-horse concern, consisting of fifteen or twenty officers and three or four privates. That concern is thoroughly bogus—a barefaced imposture which should be squelched and its annual nuisance abated."—New ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... power to take their eyes off this woman. This transcendental folly simply paralyzed them. They knew that she was not the princess; and here, calmly and negligently, she was jeoparding their liberty as well as her own. Mad, mad! For imposture of this caliber was a crime, punishable by long imprisonment; and Italy always contrived to rake in a dozen or so accomplices. They were all lost indeed, unless they could escape and leave La Signorina alone to bear the ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... profess to feel it, do not boast of it as a privilege, nor are considered by others as advantageously distinguished. They have no temptation to feign; and their hearers have no motive to encourage the imposture. ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... a mind prepared for the thing that is to be done. Why do the physicians possess, before hand, their patients' credulity with so many false promises of cure, if not to the end, that the effect of imagination may supply the imposture of their decoctions? They know very well, that a great master of their trade has given it under his hand, that he has known some with whom the very sight of physic would work. All which conceits come now into my head, by the remembrance of a story was ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... psychology. Unfortunately it has remained to a great extent unknown to the public and the majority of medical men and jurists. Even at the present day, this subject is regarded either in the light of magic and occult phenomena, or as being connected with imposture and charlatanism. This results from the incapacity of most men to think in a psychological and philosophical manner, to observe for themselves and to take into account the connection which exists between the mind ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... stopped only by wax to keep it in, a seeming miracle extinguished the flames, as soon as approached by Canopus; whose triumph was of course proclaimed, and he respected accordingly. The figure was a monkey, whose sitting attitude favoured the imposture: our antiquaries tell us ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... of good sense, of a strong, muscular frame, and a countenance which bespoke authority. When Dorrel came to the declaration of his extraordinary powers, he had no sooner uttered the words, "No arm can hurt my flesh," than Foster rose, indignant at the imposture he was practising on his deluded followers, and knocked down Dorrel with his fist. Dorrel, in great trepidation, and almost senseless, attempted to rise, when he received a second blow, at which he cried for mercy. Foster engaged to forbear, on condition that he would renounce his doctrines, ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... would show us the imposture so that we might be warned against it, and not be taken in by it; and he fetched Uncle's pack of cards from the tea-caddy, and, selecting three cards from the pack, two plain cards and one picture card, sat down on the hearthrug, and explained to us what he was going ...
— Told After Supper • Jerome K. Jerome
... informed that Mr. STANHOPE is expected shortly to go abroad, "in order to recruit." Can even the blindest military optimist any longer deny that the British Army is a nefarious imposture, when the Minister for War is forced into an ignominious attempt to raise a body of foreign mercenaries by his own ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... the information which satisfied him of the imposture, he proceeded to New Orleans. Knowing the name of the steamer in which De Guy had taken passage from Vicksburg, he hastened to the levee, to gain what tidings he might from the officers of the Montezuma. ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... bounds! She must be mad. Tell her if she wishes any improvement in her lot to cease the comedy she is playing." Prince Galitzin, Grand Chancellor, exerts all his skill in vain to force a confession of imposture from her. To his wiles and threats alike she opposes a dignified and calm front. She persists in the story of her birth; refuses to admit ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... language as Sanscrit altogether, and wrote his famous essay to prove that Sanscrit had been put together, after the model of Greek and Latin, by those arch forgers and liars, the Brahmins, and that the whole of Sanscrit literature was an imposture.' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... imposture can endure, A constant harping on one tune, Serious endeavours to assure What everybody long has known; Ever to hear the same replies And overcome antipathies Which never have existed, e'en In little maidens ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... saunter'd about for a Minute or two, and then found an Opportunity to slip away, leaving the Reck'ning to be paid by his Companions above stairs. The Master of the House had the more reason to be shock'd when he heard of the Imposture, because he had not only paid the three Guineas for the Steeple-Musick, but had lent him ten Guineas more out of his Pocket for pretended Exigencies. The Gentlemen could not afterwards pass through the Hall without being insulted; one unlucky Rogue bawling out, What was ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... his consciousness which he dared not voice to himself. Since his visit to the English Atherlys, he had put resolutely aside everything that related to that episode, which he now considered was an unhappy imposture. But there were times when a vision of Lady Elfrida, gazing at him with wondering, fascinated eyes, passed across his fancy; even the contact with his own race and his thoughts of their wrongs recalled to him the tomb of the soldier Atherly and the carven captive savage supporter. He could ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... actual sight and touch of hands to which no bodies seem to belong—still there must be found the "medium," or living being, with constitutional peculiarities capable of obtaining these signs. In fine, in all such marvels, supposing even that there is no imposture, there must be a human being like ourselves, by whom, or through whom, the effects presented to human beings ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... upon his employers, by making a candid confession of the whole plot; but the lieutenant giving him to understand, that in so doing, he would bring upon himself a prosecution for fraud, forgery, and imposture, he was fain to put up with his loss; and sneaked out of the garrison, attended with a volley of curses discharged upon him by the commodore, who was exceedingly irritated by the disturbance and disappointment ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... procured for Mr. Todd his original, as idle at least as he is curious, houses the forlorn fiction—and it enters into literary history! A French Chatterton picks up the obscure tale, and behold, astonishes the literary inquirers of the very country whence the imposture sprung! But the FOUR Italian verses, and the Sleeping Youth! Oh! Monsieur Vanderbourg! for that gentleman is the ostensible editor of Clotilde's poesies of the fifteenth century, some ingenious persons are unlucky in this ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... true, spoke for them the strongest of all natural instincts—the pleading of the maternal heart, combated by no self-interest whatever. Surely if Lady Macclesfield had not been supported by indignation against an imposture, merely for her own ease and comfort, she would have pensioned Savage, or have procured him some place under Government—not difficult in those days for a person with her connections (however sunk as respected female society) to have obtained for an only ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... for he had some such with him, who might command the soldiers, in the name of the consuls, to escape every one as fast as he could to the neighbouring mountains, since the camp was lost; but that the imposture was soon discovered, and frustrated with a great slaughter of the enemy; that the elephants were driven out of the camp by fire. However commenced, and however terminated, this was the last battle which was ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... with a motion like some one changing his posture. What I at first conceived to be a groan appeared now to be nothing more than the expiration of a sleeping man. What should I infer from this incident? My companion did not apprize me that the apartment was inhabited. Was his imposture a jestful or ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... sovereigns. Capac had not only removed every temptation that could induce a wise prince to wish for a change in the constitution, but had connected the ruin of his authority with the change; for he who disregards any part of institutions deemed sacred teaches his people to consider the whole as an imposture. Had he made a law ordaining that the Peruvians should be absolved from their allegiance to a prince who should violate the laws, it would have implied possible error and imperfection in those persons whom the people were ordered to regard as divinities; the reverence due ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... wife swears she waits on her like a slave, and backs her husband's lie or delusion fully. I have not seen the man, but I should not wonder if it were a delusion—real bona fide visions and revelations are so common, and I think there is but little downright imposture. Meanwhile familiarity breeds contempt. Jinns, Afreets and Shaitans inspire far less respect than the stupidest ghost at home, and the devil (Iblees) is reduced to deplorable insignificance. He is never mentioned in the ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... partition-wall between Jew and Gentile of the medical world is pretty thoroughly breached, if not thrown down, and quackery and imposture are tolerated as necessary evils, it is agreeable to meet with a real work of science, emanating from the labors of a regular physician, concerning the influences exerted by electricity on the human body, both in health ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... collect the materials of this history, which the reader will perceive, as it advances, is altogether different in its nature, its agencies, and its aims from those tales of external terror, whether derived from ingenious imposture or supernatural mystery, that have given life to French ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Church in public; but as a reality, not as an imposture. Those whose consciences were tough and their faith weak, had little scruple in applying to a witch, and asking help from the powers below, when the saints above were slack to hear them. Churchmen, even, were bold ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... is a worse imposture than the other. I tell you, Monsieur Adjutant, it is impossible for such folk to ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... the instructions thus issued to the supervisors, the supervision was wholly inadequate to the requirements of the case. The double Government, as I have shown, did not work well. It was altogether a sham and an imposture. It was soon to be demolished at a blow.... The double Government had, by this time, fulfilled its mission. It had introduced an incredible amount of disorder and corruption into the State, and of poverty and wretchedness among the people; it had embarrassed ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... from the beginning, and sheds floods of tears; nay, has actually turned his daughter out of doors, as she banished from Argyll-house too: and Lady Charlotte,(738) to her honour, speaks of her with the utmost Indignation. In fact, there never was a more extraordinary tissue of effrontery, folly, and imposture. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... both, as evidently, were men of courage, not to be blinded by superstitious panic. Is it a probable thing that they would destroy an old and valued family mansion, without having exhausted every conceivable expedient to detect imposture? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... at Fording was a pretender, enjoying goods that belonged to others, a shameless evil-doer, who had not stuck at marrying innocent Anastasia Joliffe, if by so stooping he might cover up the traces of his imposture. There was no Lord Blandamer, there was no title; with a breath he could sweep it all away like a house of cards. And was that all? ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... bones, recently discovered in northern India, is to be brought next week with great pomp and ceremony to the temple in Kandy, which already ranks in sacredness next to the great Shwe Dagon pagoda in Rangoon. A temple in Java is founded upon a single hair of Buddha's head. All this superstition and imposture dates back to a couple of centuries before Christ, and there is great reason to believe that the Roman Catholic worship of relics is only an appropriation of ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... was small. One letter was perfumed. He opened it and sat transfixed with surprise, and a-tremble between vanity and doubt, desire and trepidation. He bent his beaded eyes close over the sweet thing and read its first page again and again. It might—it might be an imposture; but it had come in a Rosemont envelope, and it ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... who perhaps in our innermost heart of hearts ardently desire to believe in a supreme Divinity and the grandly progressive Sublime Intention of the Universe, but who, discovering naught but ignoble Cant and Imposture everywhere, are incontinently thrown back on our own resources, . . hence it comes, I say, that we are satisfied to accept ourselves, each man in his own personality, as the Beginning and End of Existence, and to minister to that Absolute Self ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... attempts and the fate of the other pretenders.[220] This time it was a slave from Pontus, or, according to other traditions, a freedman from Italy. His skill as a singer and harpist, combined with his facial resemblance to Nero, gave him some credentials for imposture. He bribed some penniless and vagabond deserters by dazzling promises to join him, and they all set out to sea. A storm drove them on to the island of Cythnus,[221] where he found some troops homeward bound on leave from the East. Some of these ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to reconsider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of imposture. So I thought my nature had a kind of familiarity ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... sir," said the doctor, who had changed as in a moment from the sturdy naturalist into the urbane medical man. "I quite see your necessity for guarding against imposture. ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... without the evidence of your own senses. Let me only say this, it was not so much what we saw or heard (in which you might fairly suppose that we were the dupes of our own excited fancy, or the victims of imposture in others) that drove us away, as it was an indefinable terror which seized both of us whenever we passed by the door of a certain unfurnished room, in which we neither saw nor heard anything. And the strangest marvel of all was, that for once in my life I agreed ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... expressed, and if expressed, would not be believed Feeling, however, the want of consolation in their misfortunes Future effects dreaded from its past enormities God is only the invention of fear Gold, changes black to white, guilt to innocence Hail their sophistry and imposture as inspiration Invention of new tortures and improved racks Labour as much as possible in the dark Misfortunes and proscription would not only inspire courage My means were the boundaries of my wants Not suspected of any vices, but all his virtues are negative Nothing was decided, though nothing ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Court Memoirs of France • David Widger
... its hold on the consciences of the multitude. The high places of idolatrous worship often exercised a most demoralising influence, as their rites were not unfrequently a wretched mixture of brutality, levity, imposture, and prostitution. Philosophy had completely failed to ameliorate the condition of man. The vices of some of its most distinguished professors were notorious; its votaries were pretty generally regarded as a class of scheming speculators; and they enjoyed neither ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... "Rot and imposture," said Smithers loudly, and with an oblique glance to see if his challenge reached its mark. Its mark was a grizzled little old man with a very small face and very big grey eyes, who had been standing listlessly ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... possessed; and, under treatment by a celebrated exorcist, (an inferior hand having failed,) she, or the demon in possession, among other things accused Gaufridi. Her revelations may be resolved into an imposture instigated by revenge, or a pious fraud caused by remorse, or hysterical fits, with utterance shaped by memory; but what can be said of Gaufridi's, made with a full ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... lives and stories your kind presence here shows that you have curiosity and sympathy, appeal to a great number of our other faculties, besides our mere sense of ridicule. The humourous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness—your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture—your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy. To the best of his means and ability he comments on all the ordinary actions and passions of life almost. He takes upon himself to be the week-day preacher, so to speak. ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... was almost bewildering. For a moment he wondered vaguely how far a man might dare to go, with what fate had thrust upon him, and then with a little shiver saw once more the barrier of deceit and imposture. ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... return to the story.]—'I saw in my younger days, a report of a process, that Corras, a counsellor of Thoulouse, put in print, of a strange accident of two men, who presented themselves the one for the other. I remember, and I hardly remember anything else, that he seemed to have rendered the imposture of him whom he judged to be guilty, so wonderful, and so far exceeding both our knowledge and his who was the judge, that I thought it a very bold sentence that condemned him to be hanged. [That is the point.] Let us ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... ill-considered pamphlet called 'What then does Dr. Newman mean?' In this effusion he vents all his scorn and hatred for Catholicism—for its tortuous tactics, its monstrous credulity and appetite for miracles, which must proceed, according to him, either from infantile folly or from deliberate imposture. Forgetting altogether that he has to defend himself against a specific charge of slander, he offers his great opponent the choice between writing himself down a knave or a fool—a knave if he pretends to believe in the Holy Coat and the blood of St. Januarius, a ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... seen in the Austrian uniform on the Transylvanian frontier, during the campaigns of the Prince of Coburg and Laudohn against the Turks. It was singular enough, that on this very evening, in arguing against some of my whims touching destinies and omens, he illustrated the facility of imposture on such points by an incident ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... were four periods. This is the Indian tradition. But the whole was conceived as one history, doubtless with a prehistoric ideal beginning, like our Manus and Tuiskon. Therefore, no cosmic periods (Brahmanical imposture), but four generations of Aryan history ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... dispassionately considered, I think, one may safely conclude, that it was judged not fit to expose, so soon, to light this piece of evidence against the queen; which a cloud of witnesses, living, and present at Paris's execution, would, surely, have given clear testimony against, as a notorious imposture." ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... in his hands; he was anxious not to let any sign of his give any clue in case of its being all imposture and extraordinary quickness of sight. He purposely passed over the letters, but was rapped back by the recognised signal till the name "Marguerite" was ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... wrong, began to call them dishonest prevaricators, and to urge that such men could not possibly come with a purpose to say or do anything that was sincere. The council was incensed, the people were in a rage, and Nicias, who knew nothing of the deceit and the imposture, was in the greatest confusion, equally surprised and ashamed at such a change in the men. So thus the Lacedaemonian ambassadors were utterly rejected, and Alcibiades was declared general, who presently united the Argives, the Eleans, and the people of Mantinea, into ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... aimed, not at indiscriminate alms-giving, but at "the encouragement of industry and frugality among the poor by visits at their own habitations; the relief of real distress, whether arising from sickness or other causes, and the prevention of mendicity and imposture." Visitors were appointed, who went from house to house among the poor, encouraging habits of thrift and cleanliness; whilst a savings bank received deposits, and trained these same poor to save ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... Sibyls, and the lying oracles of Heathenrie. Oblige me either to renounce my reason and the common principles which distinguish truth from error, or to admit the proof thou shalt allege, which proof, look thee, must be such as no imposture can lay claim to, otherwise it proves thy doctrine to be an imposture. If thy religion be true, there must be such a proof. For if the Being who gave this revelation which He requires all men to receive, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Atures found in the cavern of Ataruipe. Doubtless you think me pitiably benighted, and possibly I might find more favor in your sight if I affected a prodigious amount of literary enthusiasm, and boundless admiration for scholarship and erudition; but that would prove too troublesome an imposture,—for I am constitutionally, habitually, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... direction. When the boys come into my yard for leave to gather horsechestnuts, I own I enter into Nature's game, and affect to grant the permission reluctantly, fearing that any moment they will find out the imposture of that showy chaff. But this tenderness is quite unnecessary; the enchantments are laid on very thick. Their young life is thatched with them. Bare and grim to tears is the lot of the children in the hovel I saw yesterday; yet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... am interested in this young man; but I recoil from a possible imposture. If he is guilty, my duty bids me defend him, if he is innocent, his cause shall be mine. Yes, without doubt, Pamela, I am about to demand from you a great sacrifice, but he needs it. The visits which Jules made to you were ...
— Pamela Giraud • Honore de Balzac
... retired. It entered the vast arch of the capacious chimney, and then sunk into the earth. Lord L. returned to his bed; but not to rest. His mind was harassed by the consideration of the extraordinary event which had occurred to him. Was it real?—was it the work of imagination?—was it the result of imposture?—It was all incomprehensible. He resolved in the morning not to mention the appearance till he should have well observed the manners and the countenances of the family: he was conscious that, if any deception had been practised, its authors would be too delighted ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... government,—meaning thereby the Secretary of State of that day, John Quincy Adams,—in return for greater obligations than any one public servant of this nation was ever indebted for to another. The argument for the annexation, or reaennexation, of Texas is as gross an imposture as ever was palmed upon the credulity ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... harm, and that he and Sir Piercie are going on a hunting expedition. "Say not thus," said the maiden, interrupting him, "say not thus to me. Others thou may'st deceive, but me thou can'st not. There has been that in me from the earliest youth which fraud flies from, and which imposture cannot deceive." The transforming influence of the Lady is here just what it should be, and the consequence is ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... of that grace and communion with the Spirit which the Church under all circumstances, and every regenerate member of the Church of Christ, is permitted to hope and instructed to pray for, there is a positive difference of kind—a chasm, the pretended overleaping of which constitutes imposture, or betrays insanity. Of the first kind are the Law and the Prophets, no jot or tittle of which can pass unfulfilled, and the substance and last interpretation of which passes not away; for they wrote of Christ, and shadowed out the ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the city, as is said, in consequence of the place of his sepulchre having been revealed to one of his favourites in a dream; he immediately ordered an excavation to be made, and very soon, either by hazard or imposture, a marble slab ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... outskirts of the village. An old chief, who had been specially selected to deal with the Indian agent, and who kept a small trading outpost, had been killed and his goods despoiled by a reckless Redwood packer. The murderer had coolly said that he was only "serving out" the tool of a fraudulent imposture on the Government, and that he dared the arch-impostor himself, the so-called Minyo chief, to help himself. A wave of ungovernable fury surged up to the very tent-poles of Elijah's lodge and demanded vengeance. Elijah trembled and hesitated. In the thraldom of his selfish passion for Mrs. Dall ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... a very different original, for they reveal a spirit of which no enlightened Christian can approve, and promulgate principles which would sanction the boldest assumptions of ecclesiastical despotism. In a work published by me many years ago, I have pointed out the marks of their imposture; and I have since seen no cause to change my views. Regarding all these letters as forgeries from beginning to end, I have endeavoured, in the following pages, to expose the fallacy of the arguments by which Dr. Lightfoot has attempted ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen |
