"Quack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flood, Save rare sharp stridence (that means "quack"), Low amber light in Ariel track Athwart the dun (that ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... him great attention, and so did Madame de Pompadour. It was from her I learnt what I have just related. M. Queanay said, talking of the pearls, "They are produced by a disease in the oyster. It is possible to know the cause of it; but, be that as it may, he is not the less a quack, since he pretends to have the elixir vitae, and to have lived several centuries. Our master is, however, infatuated by him, and sometimes talks of him as if ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... monk— (What vineyards have those priests!) And Gobbo to quack-salver sunk, To leech vile murrained beasts; And lazy Andre, blown off shore, Was picked up by the Turk, And in some harem, you be sure, Is forced at last ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... can get what they want without going to the actual polls for it; moreover, they are out of sympathy with most of the brummagem reforms advocated by the professional suffragists, male and female. The mere statement of the current suffragist platform, with its long list of quack sure-cures for all the sorrows of the world, is enough to make them smile sadly. In particular, they are sceptical of all reforms that depend upon the mass action of immense numbers of voters, large sections of whom are wholly devoid of sense. ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... of the system, he appears eventually to have profited but little by his schemes. "He was a quack," says Voltaire, "to whom the state was given to be cured, but who poisoned it with his drugs, and who poisoned himself." The effects which he left behind in France were sold at a low price and the proceeds dissipated. His ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... as my knowledge goes the United States stands out as preeminently the "Land of Contrasts"—the land of stark, staring, and stimulating inconsistency; at once the home of enlightenment and the happy hunting ground of the charlatan and the quack; a land in which nothing happens but the unexpected; the home of Hyperion, but no less the haunt of the satyr; always the land of promise, but not invariably the land of performance; a land which may be bounded by the aurora borealis, but which has also undeniable acquaintance ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... Times catches my eye (it just came in) and something from the Lancet is extracted, a long article against quackery—and, as I say, this is the first and only sentence I read—'There is scarcely a peer of the realm who is not the patron of some quack pill or potion: and the literati too, are deeply tainted. We have heard of barbarians who threw quacks and their medicines into the sea: but here in England we have Browning, a prince of poets, touching the pitch ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... Tansey bawled: "Yew low cuss, git outer this here taown! Yew air meaner 'n pussley an' meaner 'n quack-root, an' we air bound tew run yew into them mountings, ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... to waddle like mother, Or quack like my silly old dad. I want to be utterly other, And ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... embodies is the most emphatic negation of these. It professes to rest on experience, and yet no Christian legend ever contradicted experience more. It professes to be sustained by proof, and yet the professions of no conjuring quack ever ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... and there round the vicarage. Life was so regular and quiet there that you might almost tell the time without looking at the clock. When you heard cling, clang, from the blacksmith's forge, and quack, quack, from the army of ducks waddling down to the river, it was five o'clock. Ding, dong from the church-tower, and the tall figure of Mr Vallance climbing the hill to read prayers—eight o'clock. So on throughout the day until evening came, and ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... with the famous Astrologer William Lilly, whose prophetic Almanacks, under the title of Merlinus Anglicus, had been appearing annually since 1644. But indeed all sorts of men were in contact with this quack or quack-mystic. He had been consulted by Charles I as to the probable issue of events; he had been consulted and feed by partisans of the other side: his Almanacks, with their hieroglyphics and political predictions, had a boundless popularity, and were bringing ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... the only quack doctor extant who greedily swallows his own medicine and foolishly imagines that it does ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Quixote in high wrath, turning upon him angrily, as his way was; "and it is a very great slander, or rather villainy. Queen Madasima was a very illustrious lady, and it is not to be supposed that so exalted a princess would have made free with a quack; and whoever maintains the contrary lies like a great scoundrel, and I will give him to know it, on foot or on horseback, armed or unarmed, by night or by day, or as ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... I, when I saw myself transformed into a physician, at a moment's notice. I kept silent, looking very modest, but hardly able to control my mirth, whilst the doctor was staring at me with a mixture of astonishment and of spite, evidently thinking me some bold quack who had tried to supplant him. At last, turning towards M. de Bragadin, he told him coldly that he would leave him in my hands; he was taken at his word, he went away, and behold! I had become the physician of one of the most ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... tribes first gazed at him in mute surprise; then hurried, with every variety of squeak, and quack, and fluttering ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... smiling. He felt rather as if he were being treated like a quack doctor, to whom people (if foolish enough) appeal only ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... to acquire applause, Try various arts to get a doubtful cause; Or, as a dancing master in a jigg, With various steps instructs the dancing prig; Or as a doctor writes you different bills; Or as a quack prescribes you different pills; Or as a fiddler plays more tunes than one; Or as a baker bakes more bread than brown; Or as a tumbler tumbles up and down; So does our author, rummaging his brain, By various methods try ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... invited in London to be introduced to a great man, by any of his parasites or hangers-on, you may be assured that your great man is no such thing; you may make up your mind to be presented to some quack, some hollow-skulled fellow, who makes up by little arts, small tactics, and every variety of puff, for the want of that inherent excellence which will enable him to stand alone. These gentlemen form the Cockney school proper ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... of doctor," Russ replied. "I think he's a quack, myself. I wouldn't have him for a sick cat. But he calls himself a doctor and surgeon. So ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... refused to surrender Buckingham, and a few days later he prorogued parliament in anger. The popular feeling was greatly excited. Lampoons circulated freely from hand to hand, and Dr Lambe, a quack doctor, who dabbled in astrology, and was believed to exercise influence over Buckingham, was murdered in the streets of London. Rude doggerel lines announced that the duke ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... his business, and was never heard of for months. Then he turned up in Sussex with a little girl, who had been saved from diphtheria by tracheotomy, and some unknown quack. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... plenty of water-fowl in the marsh; and there was something else which Mildred did not seem to like. While George was quack-quacking, and making himself as like a little goose as he could, Mildred softly called to Ailwin, and beckoned her to the hedge. Ailwin came, swinging the great spade in her right hand, as easily as ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... excessive heat; the pitch was bubbling up from the seams of the deck; a strong, hot, burning smell pervaded the vessel; the chickens in the hencoops hung their heads and forgot to cackle; the ducks refused to quack, and sat with their bills open, gasping for breath; the pig lay down, as if about to yield up the ghost; and even Ungka, who generally revelled in a fine hot sun, and selected the warmest place on board, now looked out for a shady spot, ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... with touching belief in his own claims, regard the quack as a hoary-headed sage, who from disinterested motives devotes his life to curing ailments, by methods of which he alone has the secret, at low fees. To fight this dangerous idea I have tried to show in an interesting way how science deals with nerve ills, and to prove ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... from us, our pharmacopoeia would be much extended. When metallic medicines were first introduced into general use by a physician, an ancestor of mine, and the wonderful effect of them established by the cures, the whole fraternity was up in arms, and he was decried us a quack; notwithstanding which, the works he wrote have gone through twenty five editions, and the doses prescribed by him are to this day made use of ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the garden and flew over the fence, "Chung" (the drake) would solemnly waddle to a certain hole in the fence well known to himself, and, by dint of much pushing with his strong, yellow feet, would squeeze himself through, and rejoin his companion with many a guttural quack and flirt of his tail. If "Chung" desired to take a bath, he would make for the brook, where "One Lung" would soon join him, always remaining, however, on the bank, where he would strut about and crow continuously. ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... generous sympathy with the poor and the wronged, a desire to ameliorate human suffering, which would have done credit to the "philanthropisms of Exeter Hall" and the "Abolition of Pain Society." Latterly, however, like Moliere's quack, he has "changed all that;" his heart has got upon the wrong side; or rather, he seems to us very much in the condition of the coal-burner in the German tale, who had swapped his heart ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... caw." There was no need of looking to see who that was. Peter Rabbit knew without looking. Mrs. Quack knew without looking. Just the same, both looked up. Just alighting in the top of a tall tree was Blacky the Crow. "Caw, caw, caw, caw," he repeated, looking down at Peter and Mrs. Quack and Mr. Quack and the six young Quacks. "I hope I am not ...
— Blacky the Crow • Thornton W. Burgess
... them, so that there are more outcries of 'Stop thief!' at their door, and more constables fetched to that shop, than to all the shops in the row. There was a brave trade at that shop in Mr—'s time: he was a true shopkeeper; like the quack doctor, you never missed him from seven in the morning till twelve, and from two till nine at night, and he throve accordingly—he left a good estate behind him. But I don't know what these people are; they say there are two partners of them, but there had as good be none, for they are never ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... of the good old days of Europe, before the cowardice of the French aristocracy (in the shameful Revolution, which served them right) brought ruin on our order.... You call a doctor an honourable man—a swindling quack, who does not believe in the nostrums which he prescribes, and takes your guinea for whispering in your ear that it's a fine morning; and yet, forsooth, a gallant man who sits him down before the baize and challenges all comers, his money against theirs, his fortune against theirs, is proscribed ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... with a grave face, "you would not compare the spiritual Christian, such as Luther, holding his cardinal doctrine about justification, to any such formal, legal, superstitious devotee as Popery can make, with its carnal rites and quack remedies, which never really cleanse the soul or ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... all belief; and his remedy so simple! For some days we all took him for a quack, and would have no faith in him at all, although he performed some wonderful cures upon poor folks, who could not afford to send for the doctor. The Indian village was attacked by the disease, and he went out to them, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... account of him in the European Magazine, Jan. 1786. BOSWELL. There we learn that he was in his time a grammar-school usher, actor, poet, the puffing partner in a quack medicine, and tutor to a youthful Earl. He was suspected of levying blackmail by threats of satiric publications, and he suffered from a disease which rendered him an object almost offensive to sight. He was born in 1738 or 1739, and died ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... with there was the mamma duck. She was Mrs. Wibblewobble, a nice, white duck, being a cousin to Mrs. Quack-Quack, who once rescued Billie and Johnnie Bushytail, and Jennie Chipmunk from the desert island where they ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis
... calm, in the stillness of morn,— When to call 'em to breakfast Josh toots on the horn, The ducks gives a quack, and the caow gives a moo, And the childen chimes in with their ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... and escaped the jail only by the skin of my teeth. I was held up to public reprobation as a Socialist, who, having nothing myself, wished to prey upon the goods of others, and as an anti-vaccination quack who, to gain a few votes, was ready to infest the whole community with a loathsome disease. Of all the accusations of my opponents this was the only one that stung me, because it alone ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... dynasties and loyalties of our time. "Patched up things, Benham, temporary, pretentious. All very well for the undignified man, the democratic man, to take shelter under, all very well for the humourist to grin and bear, all very well for the crowd and the quack, but not for the aristocrat—No!—his mind cuts like steel and burns like fire. Lousy sheds they are, plastered hoardings... and such a damned nuisance too! For any one who wants to do honourable things! With their wars and their diplomacies, their tariffs and their ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... bad place, and I wish we were away, having nothing but chickens and chickens, ducks and ducks, until we shall all crow and quack." ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... fetch the doctor?" asked the porter. "She has something to do besides curing sick starvelings. Besides, that is not her office. Go to Imhotep or to Chunsu the counsellor, or to the great Techuti herself, who helps the sick. There is no quack medicine ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... nineteen-twentieths of individuals below their former place. There is a progress in the domain of law and a falling back in the domain of art. And meanwhile the artists see multiplying before them their bete-noire, the bourgeois, the Philistine, the presumptuous ignoramus, the quack who plays at science, and the feather-brain who thinks himself the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... great ring for the dancing; and one of the long mirrors opened, showing a door, whose existence I had not suspected; and a great negro with a flaming firepot entered the room. His entry brought applause; but he was a common quack of a performer at the beginning, for he made pretence to eat the fire, and to bring it up again from his vitals. Then, to some wild music from a fiddler, he bound coils of the flaming stuff about his ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... and railed sardonically at all the world, mingling flattery of the crowd with abuse of the great, and of all the restrictions of society. These were the street preachers of cynicism, who found their trade by no means an unprofitable one. Often, after a few years of squalid abstinence and quack philosophy, they had picked up enough to enable them to shave their beards, don the robes of good society, and end their days in the vicious self-indulgence which was the original ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... realize this idea of his, being forced to fight for himself the while; before he got it tried to any extent in the civil province of things, his head by much victory grew light, (no head can stand more than its quantity,) and he lost head, as they say, and became a selfish ambitionist and quack, and was hurled out, leaving his idea to be realized, in the civil province of things, by others! Thus was Napoleon; thus are all great men: children of the idea; or, in Ram-Dass' phraseology, furnished with fire to burn up ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... appear who offered a cure for tuberculosis on the ground that it was justified by the Bible and that it conformed to the opinions of that great mass of the American people who believe that fresh air is the devil, we should promptly lock up that doctor as a dangerous quack. When the negroes of Kansas were said to be taking pink pills to guard themselves against Halley's Comet, they were doing something which appeared to them as eminently practical and entirely reasonable. Not long ago we read of the savage way in which a leper ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... King this little tract I wrote Against tobacco." And the Mermaid roared With laughter. "Well, you went the way to hang All three of them," cried Lyly, "and, as for Ben, His Trinidado goes to bed with him." "Green gosling, quack no more," Selden replied, Smiling that rosy silken smile anew. "The King's a critic! When have critics known The poet from his creatures, God from me? How many cite Polonius to their sons And call it Shakespeare? Well, I took my text From sundry creatures of our great big Ben, And ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... discontent existed among the people that Law had been suffered to escape. The mob and the Parliament would have been pleased to have seen him hanged. The few who had not suffered by the commercial revolution, rejoiced that the quack had left the country; but all those (and they were by far the most numerous class) whose fortunes were implicated, regretted that his intimate knowledge of the distress of the country, and of the causes that had led to it, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... said the duck and "A-quack!" said the daughter, "We've never seen objects like this in the water! Suppose we submit it to old Mrs. Ewe? She's wise about wool, and has seen the ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... to determine visual defects. Children showing any symptoms of eyestrain should be required to have their visual defects corrected by a competent oculist, and should be warned not to have the correction made by a quack. There is great popular ignorance and even prejudice concerning visual defects, and it is very important that teachers have a clear understanding ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... tied under the chin. A foppery cousin-german to this of which I am speaking was Jacques Pelletier who lived in the house, presented to me for a singular rarity and a thing of sovereign virtue. I had a fancy to make some use of this quack, and therefore privately told the count that he might probably run the same fortune other bridegrooms had sometimes done, especially some persons being in the house who, no doubt, would be glad to do him such a courtesy; but let him boldly ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... thought Van Berg, "that is just the trouble. She has been under a course of treatment that would make any woman ill, save her mother, and I'm inclined to think that I was the veriest quack of them all in ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... duck too, Missie! Lard, now I don't know how I'd be without I had me duck. Duckie I calls 'er and Duckie she is; company she is, too, to me mornin's, with her 'Quack, Quack,' under ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... would you do if asked to hold a consultation with a practitioner whom you have every reason to suppose an incapable quack? ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... Miltons, Chattertons, starving in garrets, Shakespeares in the workhouse, while dull modern productions are applauded on the silly English stage, and poetasters are crowned by the Academies; but believe me that in Archaeology, in the deciphering of manuscripts, the quack is detected immediately. The science has been carried to such a state of perfection that, if our knowledge is still unhappily imperfect, our materials inadequate, the public recognition of our services ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... top of the medical profession was composed of men who devoted themselves to fighting the public welfare for life! We have that kind of doctors—but we call them quacks. We don't allow 'em in our medical societies. We punish them by ostracism. But the quack lawyers who devote themselves to skinning the public—they are at the head of the bar. They are made judges. They are promoted to supreme courts. A damn nice howdy-do we're coming to when the quacks run a whole profession. And Tom Van Dorn is a quack—a hair-splitting, ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... But the meaning of these differences in the trachea of the two sexes of the Anatidae is not understood; for the male is not always the more vociferous; thus with the common duck, the male hisses, whilst the female utters a loud quack. (47. The spoonbill (Platalea) has its trachea convoluted into a figure of eight, and yet this bird (Jerdon, 'Birds of India,' vol. iii. p. 763) is mute; but Mr. Blyth informs me that the convolutions are not constantly present, so that perhaps ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... already distinguished in the annals of the English landed gentry, he had to make his own fortune under conditions of some difficulty. He was born in North America, and began life, it is said, as a quack doctor. There is also a legend of his having made a first marriage with a person of obscure birth in America. Yet such was the charm of his address, the beauty of his person, the dignity of his bearing, and the vigour of his will, that he succeeded in winning the hands and fortunes of two ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... one man who you think is estimated by the public at his precise value? As for present popularity, it depends on two qualities, each singly, or both united,—cowardice and charlatanism; that is, servile compliance with the taste and opinion of the moment, or a quack's spasmodic efforts at originality. But why bore you on such matters? There are things more attractive round us. A good ankle that, eh? Why, pardon me, it is strange, but you don't seem ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and honesty were not conspicuous virtues of his. He lied, broke faith, and plundered wherever and whenever it suited his purpose, and some of his other vices were unspeakable. There is no doubt he was both a quack and a coward when he broke the Pragmatic Sanction and began to steal the territory of Maria Theresa. The powers of England, France, Spain, Russia, Poland, Prussia, Sweden, Denmark, the Germanic body, all had agreed by treaty to keep ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... eccentricities. Still, my young friend certainly went beyond all bounds. Master Ambroise Pare, who was the first to attempt the ligature of arteries, and who, having commenced his profession at a time when surgery was only performed by quack barbers, nevertheless succeeded in lifting the science to the high place it now occupies, was assailed in his old age by all the young sawbones' apprentices. Being grossly abused during a discussion ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... origin of it. Men, I say, never did believe idle songs, never risked their soul's life on allegories; men in all times, especially in early earnest times, have had an instinct for detecting quacks, for detesting quacks. Let us try if, leaving out both the quack theory and the allegory one, and listening with affectionate attention to that far-off confused rumour of the Pagan ages, we cannot ascertain so much as this at least, That there was a kind of fact at the heart of them; that they too were not mendacious and distracted, but in their own poor ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... some years past they have not been advertised in newspapers, they being filled with sensational advertisements of quack nostrums got up for no other purpose ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw
... for special study during the season: mustard (such varieties as are found in the vicinity), Canada thistle, purslane, lamb's quarter, pink-rooted pigweed, and quack grass. The pupils should be familiar with the general appearance of the plant; its appearance when coming up in the spring; whether annual, biennial, or perennial; nature of the root, and whether hard to pull up; if hard to eradicate, why so; its rate of growth compared ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... disposed of the two sermons[120] to the bookseller Colburn for L250—well sold, I think—and is to go forth immediately. The man is a puffing quack; but though I would rather the thing had not gone there, and far rather that it had gone nowhere, yet, hang it! if it makes the poor lad easy, what needs I fret about it? After all, there would ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... kind, but of different origins. When told by the comparative philologists that this was impossible, because the languages spoken through that wide region, demonstrated that its inhabitants must have had a common descent, he could only answer that as ducks quack everywhere, he could not see why men should not everywhere ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... he do to you?" Henrietta asked, frowning as if she were enquiring into the operations of a quack doctor. ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... think over plans for seeing a doctor. He had heard somewhere a story about a young fellow who had fallen into the hands of a quack, and been ruined forever. So he decided that he would consult only the ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... call the profession of the law an honourable one, where a man will lie for any bidder;—lie down poverty for the sake of a fee from wealth; lie down right because wrong is in his brief. You call a doctor an honourable man,—a swindling quack who does not believe in the nostrums which he prescribes, and takes your guinea for whispering in your ear that it is a fine morning. And yet, forsooth, a gallant man, who sits him down before the baize and challenges all comers, his money against theirs, his fortune against ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... remark, with a knowing wink, at sight of an innocent cow at pasture, "The simple cow knows her way to the hay!" Nor do I regard it as evidence of notable mental gifts to answer the greeting of the inoffensive duck, "The quack shoots off his mouth!" No, the extravagances of that Blackbird, who makes me bristle, no more constitute wit than ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... Rule by bayonets, bribes, and spies, Charlatans in church and throne, France is opening all her eyes— Down go minion, king, and quack, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... All pride and business, bustle and conceit; With looks unaltered by these scenes of woe, With speed that, entering, speaks his haste to go, He bids the gazing throng around him fly, And carries fate and physic in his eye: A potent quack, long versed in human ills, Who first insults the victim whom he kills; Whose murderous hand a drowsy Bench protect, And whose most tender mercy is neglect. Paid by the parish for attendance here, He wears contempt upon his sapient sneer; In haste he seeks ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... laughed at the very imposing draught, that was said to cure lords and ladies of this jumble between apoplexy and paralysis; but this was no moment for laughing, and he was in despair at fancying his mother wanted to lead her off on the quack medicine; ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... our patient exclaimed, hurriedly; "I want no meddlesome quack near me, with his solemn face and pretended knowledge. There is not a doctor in Ballarat that I would trust with my life. Besides, they are so expensive, and where is the money to come from to ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... the first things that Mrs. Byron did on her removal to Newstead was to intrust her son to the care of a quack in Nottingham, in order to cure him of his lameness. As the doctor was not successful, the boy was removed to London with the double purpose of effecting a cure under an eminent surgeon, and of educating him according to his rank; for his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... A quack had brought a remedy which would cure gangrene, he said. The sore on the leg was hopeless, but they gave the king a dose of the elixir in a glass of Alicante. "To life and to death," said he as he took the glass; "just as it shall ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Council ordered Stukely, 'all delays set apart,' to bring the body of Sir Walter Raleigh speedily to London. Two days later, Stukely and his prisoner started from Plymouth. A French quack, called Mannourie, in whose chemical pretensions Raleigh had shown some interest, was encouraged by Stukely to attend him, and to worm himself into his confidence. As Walter and Elizabeth Raleigh passed ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... parson's part: Quotes from the Bible many a sentence, That moves his patients to repentance; And, when his medicines do no good, Supports their minds with heavenly food: At which, however well intended, He hears the clergy are offended; And grown so bold behind his back, To call him hypocrite and quack. In his own church he keeps a seat; Says grace before and after meat; And calls, without affecting airs, His household twice a-day to prayers, He shuns apothecaries' shops, And hates to cram the sick with slops: He scorns to make his art a trade; Nor bribes ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... extraordinary figure. Ambrose was reminded of a quack doctor in poor circumstances. He was middle-aged and flabby, and had long, straggling gray hair, bound round with a cotton fillet, none ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... "Quack-quack! Take me out! Oh, take me out!" cried poor Fluffy-dumpty. The other six ducks crowded around and ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... boding shepherd heaves a sigh, For, see, a rainbow spans the sky: The walls are damp, the ditches smell, Closed is the pink-eyed pimpernel. Hark how the chairs and tables crack! Old Betty's joints are on the rack; Loud quack the ducks, the peacocks cry, The distant hills are seeming nigh. How restless are the snorting swine; The busy flies disturb the kine; Low o'er the grass the swallow wings, The cricket too, how sharp he sings; Puss on the ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... a respectable man, I understand, this Grimshawe,—a quack, intemperate, always in these scuffles: let him get out as ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... treated in vain. Already surrounded by a crowd of admirers waiting for the words of wisdom to fall from his lips, he would start on that exordium which bore no little resemblance to the patter of the modern quack, albeit interlarded with many a Latin quotation and great display of mediaeval learning. "Good people and worthy citizens of this town," he might say, "behold in me the great master ... prince of necromancers, astrologer, ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... to have luck on his side this time; for the ducks, instead of alighting in the swamp, as he had supposed, had come down in the creek; and, as he was hurrying along the road, which ran close to the creek, a slight splashing in the water and a hoarse "quack" attracted his attention, and caused him to proceed with more caution. He listened until the noise was repeated, in order that he might know exactly where the ducks were, and then began to worm his way through the wet bushes, in the direction of the sound. At length he crawled up behind ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... nearly all crimes, vices, cruelties, and other evil acts are due to ignorance or to mental disease. I do not hate the man who calls me an infidel, a liar, a blasphemer, or a quack. I know that he is ignorant, or foolish, or ill-bred, or vicious, and I am ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... flavouring of Almonds. The regular Practitioners, however, grew jealous of him, and beginning to ask him impertinent questions about his Diploma, he was fain to give up Legitimate practice, and to pick up a dirty Living as a mere Quack, and Vendor of Pills, Potions, Salves, Balsams, and Elixirs of Life. Then he came down in the world, owing to a Waiting Gentlewoman whose fortune he must needs tell, and whom, 'tis said, he cozened out of three quarters' wages; so, for fear of being committed by the justices as ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... abasement of life, the knowledge is used, by both him and them, to teach what constitutes its essential elevation; and by the very coarseness and vulgarity of the materials employed we measure the gentlemanliness and beauty of the work that is done. The quack in morality will always call such writing immoral, and the impostors will continue to complain of its treatment of imposture, but for the rest of the world it will still teach the invaluable lesson of what men ought to be from what they are. We cannot learn it more ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the sheet format lent itself largely and conveniently to teachers, quack doctors, astrologers, announcing their addresses, qualifications, and terms, no less than to the official, municipal, or parochial authorities, and to private persons who desired to give publicity to some current matter by the exhibition of the placard on a wall or a church ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... into futurity, nor a cloud of witnesses from our modern philosophers, attesting the truth of the phenomena of somnambulism, but only observe that this very Academy of Paris, which in 1784 anathematised Mesmer as a quack, a cheat, and a charlatan or fool, and which in conjunction with all the academies of Europe (that of Berlin alone excepted) reviled his doctrines and insulted all who upheld them, as witches had been reviled in preceding centuries, and compelled Mesmer himself to fly for protection to Frankfort—this ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... city under the sun. Why, it was but the other day, the police were sent to disperse a crowd which had gathered round the fanatic, Sergius Thord; only the people had sufficient sense to disperse themselves. A street-preacher or woman ranter is like a cheap- jack or a dispenser of quack medicines;—the mob gathers to such persons out of ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... imagine that they have something the matter, they are invariably the willing prey of quack doctors and every ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... parts of Syria, as in Arabia, almost every ill and affection is attributed to the rheums, or called so. Rheumatism, for instance, is explained by the Arab quack as a defluxion of rheums, failing to discharge through the upper orifices, progress downward, and settling in the muscles and joints, produce the affection. And might there not be more truth in that than the diagnosis ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... constantly increasing force. Foremost among them was a knowledge of anatomy, and how could that be acquired except at a medical school? It was every day more evident that if I continued in my position I should reach my majority without being trained for any life but that of a quack. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... Wakes is more ear-splitting, more terrific, more dizzying, or more impassable. When you go to Knype Wakes you get stuck in the midst of an enormous crowd, and you see roundabouts, swings, switchbacks, myrioramas, atrocity booths, quack dentists, shooting-galleries, cocoanut-shies, and bazaars, all around you. Every establishment is jewelled, gilded, and electrically lighted; every establishment has an orchestra, most often played by steam ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... and sat at the window. At this height it was unlikely that any stray bullet would come near him. But he could not see any one. He could hear the wild-fowl crying in the Park ... distinctly, in the pause of the firing, he could hear a duck's quack-quack.... ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... lost its glow. Over in the town her brother faced a ruined life, and the girl beside him a dark humiliation and a shame which would poison her life hereafter, unless—his look turned to the little house where the quack-doctor lived. ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... a long time, when the moon had climbed high above the trees, and everything was very quiet, that a long, slim fox stole softly beneath the fence and came creeping—creeping across the barn yard. Mamma Goose was so frightened that she almost said "Quack! quack!" out loud, but still she kept her eyes on the big white cock, and that was ...
— The Wise Mamma Goose • Charlotte B. Herr
... The advertising quack who wearies With tales of countless cures, His teeth, I've enacted, Shall all be extracted By terrified amateurs: The music-hall singer attends a series Of masses and fugues and "ops" By Bach, interwoven With Spohr ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... had said that, if he was spared, he was hopeful to stretch to his height again, which had been six feet all but an inch. The stranger, said he, had put him in the way of new life, and whatever he might mean—whether that he were a Salvationist or a quack doctor—he would say no more. After that, a young woman went to him to get him to name the father of her child, and returned, and was modest for a month, and a good mother when the time came. And true it was that her chap came forward and ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... languages, and whatever countryman he pretends to be, he is accepted as such. He appears now as a merchant, then a soldier, again as a seafaring man; to-day a Turk, to-morrow a Greek. He once came out as a Polish count, then as the betrothed of a Russian princess, and again as a quack doctor, who cured all maladies with his pills. What his real profession may be no one knows. But one thing is certain, he is a paid spy. Whether in the service of the Turks, Austrians, or Russians, who can tell? Perhaps he is in the pay of all three and more besides—he serves ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... on, mingled with bumpers, and bursts of Slavonic good-fellowship, I could not help asking myself whether Lavater was not quack and physiognomy a folly? Could this be the dashing Revolutionist? No plodder over the desk ever wore a more broadcloth countenance; an occasional smile was the only indication of his interest in what was passing around him. He evidently avoided taking a share ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... letter, though shattered by the sharp shot of Dr Horne of Oxford's wit, in the character of 'One of the People called Christians', is still prefixed to Mr Home's excellent History of England, like a poor invalid on the piquet guard, or like a list of quack medicines sold by the same bookseller, by whom a work of whatever nature is published; for it has no connection with his History, let it have what it may with what are called his Philosophical Works. A worthy friend of mine in London was lately consulted by a lady of quality, of most distinguished ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... Bordeaux, that induced General Vinoy to consent to their departure. As for Gambetta, he says, it is not probable that he has now many adherents in the provinces; and it is certain that he has very few here. When a patient is given up by the faculty a quack is called in; if the quack effects a cure he is lauded to the skies; if he fails, he is regarded as a charlatan, and this is now the case with M. Gambetta. My informant is of opinion that a large number of Ultra-Radicals ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... of modern remedies is almost endless, and many of them hold alcohol in some form; but every intelligent physician knows that 90 per cent. of these alleged remedies have little or no intrinsic value. The nostrums of the quack, the bitters, elixirs, cordials, extracts, etc. nearly all contain alcohol, and this is the ingredient which aids their sale. The whole unclean list might, with advantage to mankind, ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... called Clean-Limbed Tom, whose true name was never known, being killed in a duel at Kilkenny in Ireland. This last mentioned person had been bred with an apothecary, and sometimes travelled the country in the high capacity of a quack doctor, at others, in the more humble station of a merry-andrew. Travelling once down into the west, with a little chest of medicines which he intended to dispose of in this matter at West Chester, at an inn about twenty miles short of that city he overtook a London wholesale dealer, who ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... the ground, in leaping a fence. This fall produced some disease of the spine, which clung to me till I was twelve years old, when it was almost miraculously cured by an itinerant Arab physician. He was generally pronounced to be a quack, but he certainly effected many wonderful cures, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... proximity by the dropping of a false nut, or the fragments of the shucks rattling upon the leaves. Or, again, after contemplating you a while unobserved, and making up his mind that you are not dangerous, he strikes an attitude on a branch, and commences to quack and bark, with an accompanying movement of his tail. Late in the afternoon, when the same stillness reigns, the same scenes are repeated. There is a black variety, quite rare, but mating freely with the gray, from which it seems to be ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... unwariness of the Legislature, and closed the doors of the medical schools to female applicants. Against unqualified female practitioners they never acted with such zeal and consent; and why? The female quack is a public pest, and a good foil to the union; the qualified doctress is a public good, and a blow to ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... really so deteriorate! There is nothing but feebleness in us. Our youths, who spend their days in trying to build up their constitutions by sport or athletics and their evenings in undermining them with poisonous and dyed drinks; our daughters, who are ever searching for some new quack remedy for new imaginary megrim, what strength is there in them? We have our societies for the prevention of this and the promotion of that and the propagation of the other, because there are no individuals among us. Our sexes ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... written on the pages of the records of man's progress. Likewise must the quack doctor ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... sailors That stood between the decks, Were four-and-twenty white mice With rings about their necks. The captain was a duck, a duck, With a jacket on his back, And when this fairy ship set sail, The captain he said, "Quack!" ...
— The Baby's Bouquet - A Fresh Bunch of Rhymes and Tunes • Walter Crane
... had noticed a venerable man in a fine blue surtout and a wide-brimmed hat, who sat upon the shaft of a cart and puffed slowly at a great pipe. And as he puffed, he listened intently to the quack-salver's address, and from time to time his eyes would twinkle and his lips curve in an ironic smile. The cart, upon the shaft of which he sat, stood close to a very small, dirty, and disreputable-looking tent, towards ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... the weather was splendidly bright, and the sun shone on all the green trees. The Mother Duck went down to the water with all her little ones. Splash! she jumped into the water. "Quack! quack!" she said, and then one duckling after another plunged in. The water closed over their heads, but they came up in an instant and swam capitally; their legs went of themselves, and there they were, all in the water. The ugly gray Duckling ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... soon as he had climbed into the automobile, and it took him almost 23 1/2 seconds to do it, for the splinter was so long that it caught on the door, Uncle Lucky started off and by and by they came to the house where the good Duck Doctor lived.—Dr. Quack, you remember. ...
— Billy Bunny and Uncle Bull Frog • David Magie Cory
... legend upon it to which I have referred. [Laughter.] Think, Mr. President, of the feelings of the illustrious Turner if he returned to life to see the luggers and the coasting ships which he has made so glorious in his paintings, converted into a simple vehicle for the advertisement of a quack medicine—although I will not say "quack," because that is actionable [laughter]—I will say of a medicine of which I do not know ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... on the other impinges a bluff still covered with its forest growth of shrubs and wood-plants,—while upon the frowning front of a cliff that has for centuries faced nothing meaner than the Alleghany, with its mountain background, some Vandal has daubed the advertisement of a quack nostrum. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... permeated, steeped, and bathed in a longing desire to behold Niagara," and that, when he beheld it, his "feelings were not so much those of astonishment as of an overpowering sense of Law"; or that a peddler in a railroad-car sold nine bottles of quack medicine at a dollar a bottle; or that he had eight pages of interview with a Baltimore madman, who proved his insanity by perpetually calling Mr. Mackay the "Prince of the Poets of England." The dreary solemnity with which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... talent for conspiracy. He is too sanguine and visionary. He desires power, office, and emolument—rewards for his henchmen before they desert him; but I believe he'd go—or get—no farther, and the country is strong enough to stand a quack or two; ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... was a boy six or seven years old a quack phrenologist stopped at our house and Father kept him over night. In the morning he fingered the bumps of all of us to pay for his lodging and breakfast. When he came to my head I remember he grew enthusiastic. "This boy will be a rich man," he said. "His head beats 'em all." ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... if certain noble lords could have their way the measure would become a veritable octopus, stretching its absorptive tentacles over all the Departments of State. It would take over the inspectorship of factories from the Home Office, the control of quack medicines from the Privy Council and the relief of the poor from the Local Government Board. Fortunately for Dr. ADDISON the Government refused to throw these further burdens upon him. After all, DISRAELI'S famous phrase, "Sanitas ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... notice. To being the last person informed (instead of the first) of Mr. Nugent Dubourg's exaggerated and absurd view of the case of his afflicted child. To the German surgeon, as being certainly a foreigner and a stranger, and possibly a quack. To the slur implied on British Surgery by bringing the foreigner to Dimchurch. To the expense involved in the same proceeding. Finally to the whole scope and object of Mr. Nugent Dubourg's proposal, which had for its origin rebellion ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... politician, or an actor charged with a part, have but one pre-occupation; they must search all round and upon every side, and grope for some central conception which is to explain and justify the most extreme details; until that is found, the politician is an enigma, or perhaps a quack, and the part a tissue of fustian sentiment and big words; but once that is found, all enters into a plan, a human nature appears, the politician or the stage-king is understood from point to point, from end to end. This is a degree of trouble which will be gladly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Therefore, do not mind what opinion the world has of you, good or bad; do not distress yourself about it, whichever it be. To say that we are not what the world thinks, when it speaks well of us, is wise, for the world, like a quack ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... forms of which varied perpetually. He says that neurotic patients are the despair of science, for the causes of their conditions are only to be found in some as yet unexplored system. He advised me to have recourse to a physician who has been called a quack; but he carefully pointed out that this man was a stranger, a Polish Jew, a refugee, and that the Parisian doctors were extremely jealous of certain wonderful cures he had made, and also of the opinion expressed by many that he is very learned and extremely able. Only, Dr. Berton says, he is very ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... tried to make the duck come over and carry her, but the duck said, "Quack! Quack!" and ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... knave to be no liar, an upright man not too bold and hearty to his own loss, one that drawls when he speaks not to be crafty and circumventing, one that winks on another with his eyes not to be false and deceitful, a sailor and hangman to be pitiful, a poor man to build churches, a quack doctor to have a good conscience, a bailiff not to be a merciless villain, an hostess not to over-reckon you, and an usurer ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... power of that terrible genius would have had their attraction, but the minute ferocities of Hogarth's ruthless irony would certainly have revolted him. Such a scene as Lord Squanderfield's visit to the quack doctor, or as the Rake's debauch, would have filled him with inextinguishable horror. He could never have forgiven an artist who, in the ghastly pathos of a little child straining from the arms of its nurse towards the mother, as she lies ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... magic; I ask not its aids, and I dread not its terrors. For the rest, I am confident of one mournful courage—the courage that comes from despair. I submit to your guidance, whatever it be, as a sufferer whom colleges doom to the grave submits to the quack who says, 'Take my specific and live!' My life is naught in itself; my life lives in another. You and I are both brave from despair; you would turn death from yourself—I would turn death from one I love more than myself. Both know how little aid we can win from the colleges, and both, therefore, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... in the Buffo line. When things seem getting slack, I'm to the front, with lots of go. My critics may cry "Quack!" But quacking's not confined to me. I do extremely well, And the more "I give them physic," why The more they squirm ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various
... square in the midst of the city. The courthouse was on one side, and over the door there was a sign which read "The Hall of Justice." Everybody seemed to be at the fair: peasants, nobles, soldiers, and citizens; rope-dancers, quack doctors, waxworks, showmen of all sorts, and bells rang and flags flew, and altogether it was just the thing ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... for the credit of the country. "But may not many people be far more worthy of the appointment than myself?" said the writer. "Where?" said the friendly Radical. "If you don't get it, it will be made a job of, given to the son of some steward, or, perhaps, to some quack who has done dirty work; I tell you what, I shall ask it for you, in spite of you; I shall, indeed!" and his eyes flashed with friendly and patriotic fervour through the large pair of ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... romance at the present moment than the fortunes of WILLIAM OF ORANGE, and if Miss MARJORIE BOWEN'S Prince and Heretic (METHUEN) shows some traces of having been rather hastily finished it is easy to pardon this defect. The alchemist's assistant, part seer and part quack, whom she introduces into the earlier part of the story foretells the violent deaths of the young princes of the house of Nassau and the ravaging and looting of the Netherlands by ALVA, Defender of the Catholic Faith and servant of the House of Hapsburg; but he cannot conjure ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... was that of Van Butchell, the quack doctor, who died at London in 1814, in his 80th year. This singular individual had his first wife's body carefully embalmed and preserved in a glass case in his "study," in order that he might enjoy a handsome annuity to which he was entitled "so long as his wife remained ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... well-paid position in the boy choir, which, for his poor mother's sake, he must retain as long as possible. So, with mingled grief and hope, he dipped deeply into his slender purse when, at Neumarkt, where the travelling musicians spent the night just at the time the annual fair was held, he met a quack who ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... abundant and physically weakening, but they relieved the psychic symptoms, though they occasioned mental distress, since F.C. is scrupulous in a religious sense, and also apprehensive of bad constitutional effects, the result of reading alarmist quack pamphlets. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... well enough, but it is somewhat overdone at all times, and requires a heavy outlay, with the possible result of ill-success. Indeed, I believe fifty quack remedies fail for one that succeeds; and millions must have been wasted in placards, bills, and advertisements, which never returned half their value to the speculator. If I live, I think I shall beguile my time with writing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... grassy slopes, the Tsomass ends. When they approached the river mouth, they saw extending from the bank a salmon trap, and even to-day, the Indians will show at Lup-se-kup-se some old rotten sticks, which they affirm formed part of that same trap. The land was green, the wild duck's quack was heard among the reeds which edged the river bank, while flocks of geese were feeding on the grass which grows thickly upon the tidal flats, the flats ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... purple and gold, yet Paul's Walk was crowded. There were court-gallants in ruffles and plumes; ballad-singers chanting the not over-delicate ditties of the Earl of Rochester; usurers exchanging gold for bonds worth three times what they gave for them; quack-doctors reading in dolorous tones the bills of mortality of the preceding day, and selling plague-waters and anti-pestilential abominations, whose merit they loudly extolled; ladies too, richly dressed, and many of them masked; and booksellers who always made St. ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... owl and make a fair "hoot," otherwise keeping still, he may attract many birds that will feel bound to settle the question of his identity. A young friend of mine, by a good imitation of a blue jay's quack, finds many little woods' folks peering at him from the trees which he might not otherwise see. The "smack" which is produced by violently kissing the back of the closed fingers will call many birds from their hiding places, especially during the nesting season. The sound is similar ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... Advocate", of Harrisburg, Pa., which publishes quack advertisements disguised as editorials. One of them Mr. ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... taken no notice of them. By each nest is a little mound, on which the mother stands perched, from time to time projecting her head outward and upward, at the same time giving forth a queer chattering noise, half quack, half bray, with the air of a stump orator haranguing an open-air audience. Meanwhile, the youngster stands patiently waiting below, evidently with a fore-knowledge of what is to come. Then, after a few ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... with it. Would our lady critic select a cheap sign painter to represent the beauty and glory of art, or the exhibitors of laughing gas to illustrate the science of Sir Humphrey Davy, or the performances of an illiterate quack to illustrate the dignity of the medical profession? Is our critic so profoundly ignorant of the progress of psychic science as to think such representations fair ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... to the ultima ratio, after all compromises have been tried. There may be an inevitable conflict. The permanent principles of nature and society, which are beyond all laws, will decide the issue. But Manning's is a mere quack remedy. ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... was this conclusion in any way shaken when it was explained to him that the Egyptians were not in the habit of erecting corn stacks after the English model. All these classes readily lend an ear to quack, though often very well-intentioned politicians, who go about the world preaching that countries can be regenerated by shibboleths, and that the characters of nations can be changed by Acts of Parliament. This frame of mind appeals with irresistible force ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... Quack Matrick, a negro, fought through the Revolutionary war, as a soldier, for which he was pensioned. Also Jonathan Overtin, who was at the battle of Yorktown. The grandfather of the historian Wm. Wells Brown, Simon Lee, was also a soldier "in the times ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... flat beaks, swimming like their mother, but in a hurried pop-and-go-one fashion, in and out, and round and round, and seeming to go through country dances on the water in chase of water beetles and running spiders or flies, while the duck kept on uttering a warning quack, and the drake, who, first with one eye and then with the other, kept a sharp look up in the sky for falcons and hawks, now and then muttered ...
— Young Robin Hood • G. Manville Fenn
... of my life. Just think of shutting down on the boys, after being one of them for sixty years! But Sir Morell told the truth. The Garrick Club boys were terribly mad about it; they said Sir Morell was a quack, and they adopted resolutions declaring a lack of confidence in his medical skill. But my mind was made up. 'Billy,' says I to myself, 'you must let up, you've made a record; it's a long one and an honorable one. Now you must retire. Your life henceforth shall be reminiscent and its declining years ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... cellars, wheeling baggage, driving teams, &c. So lawyer Bunker turned his attention from Blackstone, Chitty, Coke on Littleton, and those fellows of deep-red, blue-black law, to the manufacture of quack nostrums. Bunker found that the great appetite we Yankees have for quack medicines, pills and powders, suffered no diminution in the gold country; on the contrary, the appetite became rather sharpened for those luxuries, and Bunker ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... had reached the court, and the empress herself became interested in his extraordinary achievements. In vain Van Swieten and Stork besought her to silence the audacious quack, who was ruining a great profession. She shook her head, and would have nothing ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... gloomy Cathedral of Our Lady to say a word or two at the base of a pillar within flare of a rusty little gridiron-full of gusty little tapers; without the walls encompassing Paris with dancing, love-making, wine-drinking, tobacco-smoking, tomb-visiting, billiard card and domino playing, quack-doctoring, and much murderous refuse, animate and inanimate—only last Sunday, my Lady, in the desolation of Boredom and the clutch of Giant Despair, almost hated her own maid ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... prediction made for the month of June, 1645—"If now we fight, a victory stealeth upon us." A fight did occur at Naseby, and concluded the overthrow of the unfortunate Charles the First. The words are sufficiently ambiguous; but not so much so, as many other "prophecies" of the same notable quack, happily constructed to shift with changes in events, and so be made to fit them. Lilly was opposed by Wharton, who saw in the stars as many good signs for the Royal Army; and Lilly himself began to see differently as the power of Cromwell waned. Among the hundreds of pamphlets poured from the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and counterplotting as to the disposal of the crown, the poor boy-king lay there almost neglected, or watched only by those who waited the moment of his death with impatience. As the disease took deeper and fatal hold of him, all forsook him save an incompetent quack nurse; and how far she may have helped on the ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... pastor to another. But what value have these rudimentary, vague experiences, compared to the united experience of all the men of science there have been in the world? It is as if you told me that the stock of knowledge of a quack was greater and better than that of a ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... sudden frost had nipped all my thoughts, I grew suddenly conscious that the first ceremony I assisted at with Aniela was a funeral. As a person in long sickness, having lost faith in medicine, turns to quack doctors and wise women, so the sick soul, doubting everything, still clings ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... through the theatre, were just those whose disgusting habits rendered it impossible for women to pass through some of the principal streets in Venice,—just those who formed the gaping audience, when a mountebank offered a new quack medicine on the Riva dei Schiavoni. And, as fearful imagery is associated with the weakness of fever, so it seems to me that imbecility and love of terror are connected by a mysterious link throughout the whole life of man. There is a most ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... hesitating to characterize this latest Minerva-birth. For it is either that "new sensation" demanded by the Sir Charles Coldstream who has used up all religions and all philosophies, or, being a reductio ad absurdum of speculative pretension, it fulfils the promise of a recent quack advertisement, and is in very ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various |
