"Sham" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is come home; and, to be sure, has been where he said. So once he has told truth; and this matter seems to be gone off without a plot: No doubt he depends upon his sham wicked marriage! He has brought a gentleman with him to dinner; and so I ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... model in his table-book: Thought himself now exactly skill'd, And so resolved a house to build: A real house, with rooms and stairs, Five times at least as big as theirs; Taller than Miss's by two yards; Not a sham thing of play or cards: And so he did; for, in a while, He built up such a monstrous pile, That no two chairmen could be found Able to lift it from the ground. Still at Whitehall it stands in view, Just in the place where first it grew; There all ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... that when we wrongly assimilate our remote to our present self, and clothe our childish nature with the feelings and the ideas of our adult life, we identify ourselves overmuch. In this way, through the corruption of our memory, a kind of sham self gets mixed up with the real self, so that we cannot, strictly speaking, be sure that when we project a mnemonic image into the remote past we are not really running away from our ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... Warrior whose sword Was edged for sham and shame; We dreamed a Statesman far above ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... dost thou think, that after all this pains, that I have been at to get an answer to my question, that thou canst banter me with such sham stuff as this? Hold the candle to his face that we may ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... he conjured up the scene when the MS. had been shown to Darrell—his pretence of disapproval, his sham warnings, and the smile on his sallow face as he walked off with it. Ashe looked back to the early days of his friendship with Darrell, when he, Ashe, was one of the leaders at Eton, popular with the masters in spite of his incorrigible idleness, and popular ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... speedy war with Russia. Lieutenant-Colonel Uh——turned rather a deaf ear to the battery by which his neighbour assailed him, but for all that he probably felt it not the less heavy, because after several little sham coughs he rose up, and left our Petrea alone ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... abstract of Little Nelly's wanderings which interests her much, leaving out the Swivellers, etc. For children do not understand how merriment should intrude in a serious matter. This might make a nice child's book, cutting out Boz's sham pathos, as well as the real fun; and it forms a kind of Nelly-ad, {174a} or Homeric narration of the child's wandering fortunes till she reaches at last a haven more desirable than any in ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... dictator as in Byron's day, there were thousands to whom the world 'was a blank' at twenty or thereabouts, and of whose dark imaginings,' as Macaulay says, the waste was prodigious; so now there are hundreds of dilettanti pantheists', mystics and sceptics to whom everything is a 'sham,' an 'unreality'; Who tell us that the world stands in need of a great 'prophet,' a seer,' a 'true prophet', a large soul,' a god-like soul,'*—who shall dive into 'the depths of the human consciousness,' and whose 'utterances' shall rouse the human mind from ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... shrugged his shoulders. "Then it appears that the sham Karl died none too soon," he said lightly. "And yet"—he bent his eyes with mischievous reproach upon ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... voice lifted itself belligerently. "What do you think she is? Imitation? Why, she's the one REAL thing in this whole sham world! I guess you've never met anybody who knew her or you wouldn't keep gulping out idiotic things like that! I guess if you ever talked with her even a minute you'd understand how real she is. She has the crispest—the sincerest way of speaking. Though of course it's not a bit like other people's ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... Thackeray. But I think the trouble with Thackeray is not that he makes first-personal interventions, but that he does so with a curious touch of dishonesty. I agree with the late Mrs. Craigie that there was something profoundly vulgar about Thackeray. It was a sham thoughtful, sham man-of-the-world pose he assumed; it is an aggressive, conscious, challenging person astride before a fire, and a little distended by dinner and a sense of social and literary precedences, ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... outlines of your likeness. You do not care to admit it; but it is so. You are not content with yourself. The desire to be more truly literary persists in you. You feel that there is something wrong in you, but you cannot put your finger on the spot. Further, you feel that you are a bit of a sham. Something within you continually forces you to exhibit for the classics an enthusiasm which you do not sincerely feel. You even try to persuade yourself that you are enjoying a book, when the next moment ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... observer, astonished at the unusual capacity for government displayed by an Oriental people, was tempted to accept the famous assertion which Nubar Pasha put into the mouth of the Khedive Ismail: 'We are no longer in Africa, but in Europe.' Yet all was a hateful sham ['The government of the Egyptians in these far-off countries is nothing else but one of brigandage of the very worst description.'—COLONEL GORDON IN CENTRAL AFRICA, April 11, 1879.] The arbitrary and excessive taxes were collected only at the point of the ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... emotions up to now had been pleasantly and superficially stirred, suddenly saw the play from a new angle. With quick imagination she visualized the great reality of which all this was but a clever sham. She saw Quin passing through it all, not to the thunder of stage shrapnel and the glare of a red spot-light, but in the life-and-death struggle of those eighteen months in the trenches. Before she knew ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... wall at the end of the room. This wall is false, and generally of wood. It is built some three or four feet from the real wall of the room, thus forming a closet. As the whole room is papered and but dimly lighted, a visitor cannot detect the fact that it is a sham. A panel, which slides noiselessly and rapidly, is arranged in the false wall, and the chair with the visitor's clothing upon it is placed just in front of it. While the visitor's attention is engaged in another quarter, the girl's confederate, who is concealed in ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... who have been sending out ships with sham bolt-heads on their timbers, and only half their bolts, may meditate on that "buildeth ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... wooed me as passionately as I wooed them: there was a certain little bronze, a little Venus Callipyge, who had drawn me, drawn me, drawn me, imploring me to rescue her from her unspeakable surroundings in a vulgar bric-a-brac shop at Biarritz, where she shrank out of sight among sham Sevres and Dutch silver, as one has seen certain women—rare, shy, exquisite—made almost invisible by the vulgar splendours surrounding them. Well! that little Venus, who was just a specious seventeenth century attempt at the 'antique,' but who had penetrated me with ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... concessions made to the South were two. In the first place Territorial Governments were set up in New Mexico and Utah (since then the home of the Mormons) without any restriction on slavery. This concession was defended in the North on the ground that it was a sham, because the physical character of those regions made successful slave plantations impossible there. But it was, of course, a surrender of the principle which had been struggled for in the Wilmot Proviso during ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... is justice here below; and even, at bottom, that there is nothing else but justice! Forget that, thou hast forgotten all. Success will never more attend thee: how can it now? Thou hast the whole Universe against thee. No more success: mere sham-success, for a day and days; rising ever higher,—towards its Tarpeian Rock. Alas, how, in thy softhung Longacre vehicle, of polished leather to the bodily eye, of red-tape philosophy, of expediencies, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... the ladies were getting up. So Miss Van Siever also got up, and left Mr Conway Dalrymple to consider whether he could say or could think of himself that he was not a sham in anything. As regarded Miss Clara Van Siever, he began to think that he could not object to paint her portrait, even though there might be no sugar-plum. He would certainly do it as Jael; and he would, if he dared, insert dimly in the background some idea of the face of the mother, half-appearing, ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... the world?" she raised her eyes again as she asked the question. "Have you seen anything really of the world? I do not mean to be rude, but this world of ours, this world of society that holds us all, is there anything real about it, since nearly everything in it is a sham? Look at the lives we lead, look at Paris and London and Berlin. Why the very language of society is framed to say ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... duty to let you know, cousin Deborah, that this here chap's an impostor—a sham—and that you are a fool," was his conciliatory opening. "Search the register. The Thornlys have been yeomen of this parish ever since the time of Elizabeth—more shame to you for forcing the last of the race to seek his bread elsewhere; ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... the site of the present Castle. The new Hawarden Castle stands in front of the massive ruin of the old Castle, which has looked down on the surrounding country for six centuries. A recent writer speaking of the new structure as a sham Castle, with its plaster and stucco, and imitation turrets, says: "It would not have been surprising if the old Castle had, after the manner of Jewish chivalry, torn its hair of thickly entwined ivy, rent its garments of moss ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... from the caliph's throne, and Mesrour went before him, to shew him the way into an inner apartment, where there was a table spread; several eunuchs ran to tell the musicians that the sham caliph was coming, when they immediately began a concert of vocal and instrumental music, with which Abou Hassan was so charmed and transported, that he could not tell what to think of all he saw and heard. "If this is ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... made it his diversion to alarm the inhabitants, in January 1804, by assuming the figure of a spectre. This sham ghost has certainly much to answer for. One poor woman, who was far advanced in her pregnancy of a second child, was so much shocked, that she took to her bed, and survived only two days. She had been crossing near the church-yard about ten o'clock at night, when she beheld something, as she ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... outward forms which pass current in society and at home for vital Christianity. These spurious forms, fortunately or unfortunately, soon betray themselves. How little there is in them becomes gradually apparent. And rather than indulge in a sham the budding sceptic, as the first step, parts with the form and in nine cases out of ten concerns himself no further to find a substitute. Quite deliberately, quite honestly, sometimes with real regret and even at personal sacrifice he takes up ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... might excel, we allow; but we do not know how to wear these things. We ought either to limit ourselves to the smallest possible bow in front, or else we ought to let the square ends of the scarf be pendant and unconfined. Instead of this, we either put on a stock with a sham tie, (now all sham things, of what kind soever, militate against good taste,) or else, to make the most of our scarf, we fill up the aperture of the waistcoat with an ambitious quantity of drapery, and we stick therein an enormous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... to have me sham insanity during the trial, and he became irritably insolent in his manner toward me because I positively refused to do so. He told me that if I stuck to the truth I would surely be convicted, but if I followed ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... family altar at your house a bridge from earth to heaven, or is it a sham, and a helper to those who say, Prayer ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... This contention, which has not escaped the malice of Porphyry, supposes some error and passion in one or both of the apostles. By Chrysostom, Jerome, and Erasmus, it is represented as a sham quarrel a pious fraud, for the benefit of the Gentiles and the correction of the Jews, (Middleton's Works, vol. ii. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... Briarly, who had rather more basis to his character, and who, although he dressed well, and moved in good society, by no means founded thereon his claim to be called a gentleman. He never liked L—, because he saw that he had no principle whatever; that all about him was mere sham. The consequence was that he was hardly civil to him, a circumstance which L—was slow either to ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... he be, take my word for it," returned the whip-jack, or sham sailor. "Look at his rigging—see how he flashes his sticks[33]—those are the tools to rake a three-decker. He's as clever a craft as I've seen this many a ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... discussion. Both the Senate and House appointed compromise committees, which met and labored, but could find no common ground of agreement. A peace convention met and deliberated at Washington, with no practical result, except to waste the powder for a salute of one hundred guns over a sham report to which ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... out, sir, unless there's some other Amphitryon to manage your business, no matter if you are away, and to do your job for you when you have gone. I tell you what, that sham Sosia was monstrous surprising, but this second ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... orator, for whose instruction I make these remarks, accustom himself as much as possible to copy nature and truth. As in schools he often engages in sham battles, in imitation of the contests of the bar, let him even then have an eye to victory, and learn to strike home, dealing moral blows and putting himself on his defense as if really in earnest. It is the master's business to require this duty, and to commend it according ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... proud sense of propriety and abhorrence of every sham profession cannot be reconciled to such step at this time. Has not this field been interdicted by Providence? Are her faculties to find employment in the ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... European Powers lay dormant under the spell of the new doctrine of non-intervention, the King of Piedmont vigorously pursued his career of spoliation. Having accepted a sham plebiscitum, he annexed, by a formal decree of 18th March, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchies of Parma and Modena, and that portion of the Papal States known as the Legations, to his ancient kingdom of Sardinia and Piedmont. ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... orders to prison under the guard of his pantomime beefeaters, as he sits down to dine on his pantomime pudding? It is grave, it is sad, it is theme most curious for moral and political speculation; it is monstrous, grotesque, laughable, with its prodigious littlenesses, etiquettes, ceremonials, sham moralities; it is as serious as a sermon, and as absurd and outrageous as ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... t' go home 'n' lie about, tellin' how they fit with it, would 'a suited our sham hunters better 'n' a whole passle o' antlers; so I busted through th' bush fast as I could, fallin' 'n' rippin' my clothes nigh off—only t' find our hounds snappin' 'n' bayin' round a mighty big buck, that when I first sighted ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... accepting him as a fiery exponent of pure democracy. Perhaps he even fooled himself; charlatans usually do so soon or late. A study of Nietzsche reveals the sources of much that was honest in him, and exposes the hollowness of much that was sham. Nietzsche, an infinitely harder and more courageous intellect, was incapable of any such confusion of ideas; he seldom allowed sentimentality to turn him from the glaring fact. What is called Bolshevism today he saw clearly a generation ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... enjoyed hating! At that rate it was better to be at the front. Men were more humane when they were killing each other than when they were talking about it. So was civilization nothing but a vast edifice of sham, and the war, instead of its crumbling, was its fullest and most ultimate expression. Oh, but there must be something more in the world than greed and hatred and cruelty. Were they all shams, too, these gigantic phrases that floated ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... explore that shell. To our eye, its external appearance is more pleasing than that of the building we just left. The one central and four terminal towers, with their open, kiosk-like tops, are really graceful, and the slender spires which surmount them are preferable to the sham of sheet-iron turrets. Thanks, too, to the necessity of projecting an annex for hydraulic engines from one side of the middle, the building is distinguished by the possession of a front. The main cornice is forty feet in height upon the outside; the interior height being seventy feet in the two ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... sir," said the attendant, "the captain don't; but this chap does. I haven't seen what I have amongst the sick and wounded without picking up a little, and I say Master Corporal here's doing a bit o' sham Abram ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... Right my Gallic friend! 'Tis my duty, sad but binding. Free the Wolf—to what good end? Loose the Snake—what vantage finding? Faction flusters, Cant appeals In the name of sham-humanity. Right, not wrath, my bosom steels; Softness ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 19, 1892 • Various
... of that district. On the whole, however, the Nazarenes were but little troubled for the first twenty years of their existence; and the undying hatred of the Jews against those later converts, whom they regarded as apostates and fautors of a sham Judaism, was awakened by Paul. From their point of view, he was a mere renegade Jew, opposed alike to orthodox Judaism and to orthodox Nazarenism; and whose teachings threatened Judaism with destruction. ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... forms after the life had gone out of them—that is, we continued to live in populous cities, and we toiled to heap up riches for the moth to corrupt, and we slaved on in making utterly useless things, merely because we had the habit of making them to sell. For a while we made the old sham things, which pretended to be useful things and were worse than the confessedly useless things. I will give you an illustration from the trades, which you will all understand. The proletariate, in the competitive and monopolistic time, used to make a kind of shoes for the ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... suffering which follows a misuse of the nervous power comes from exaggerated, unnecessary, or sham emotions. We each have our own emotional microscope, and the strength of its lens increases in proportion to the supersensitiveness of our nervous system. If we are a little tired, an emotion which in itself might hardly ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... told him that the rest of the gods were gone to the Peacestead—a broad, green plain which lay just outside the city. This was the playground of the gods, where they practised trials of skill and held tournaments and sham fights. These last were always conducted in the gentlest and most honorable manner; for the strongest law of the Peacestead was, that no angry blow should be struck, or spiteful word spoken, upon the sacred field; and for this reason some ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... What is to be done?—If you had killed a man, there might be some help for it. But forgery—forgery! And time—the time is flying," he went on, shaking his fist towards the old clock. "You will want a sham passport now. One crime leads to another. First," he added, after a pause, "first of all we must save the ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... black velvet gold-embroidered waistcoat, white corded breeches, immense patent leather boots, a gold chain as thick as a cable of a small yacht with a dagger at the end of it, and a bright red fur cap with a sham diamond star in front. The poor man will look an awful ass, and feel it. I wouldn't have let him in for the uniform if I could possibly have helped it, but that brute Scarsby was as vindictive as a red Indian and as obstinate as a swine. His wife could do nothing with him at first. She came to me ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... similarly in their education, the immense preponderance of "accomplishments" proves how here, too, use is subordinated to display. Dancing, deportment, the piano, singing, drawing—what a large space do these occupy! If you ask why Italian and German are learnt, you will find that, under all the sham reasons given, the real reason is, that a knowledge of those tongues is thought ladylike. It is not that the books written in them may be utilised, which they scarcely ever are; but that Italian and German songs may be sung, and that the extent of attainment may bring whispered ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... Jacques, who stood ready for battle by the entrance, wheeled round, shot a look at his master, and dropping his point, made a sign to me to do the same. The door was thrust rudely open, and Captain Settle, his hat cock'd over one eye, and sham drunkenness in his gait, lurched into the room, with the whole villainous crew behind him, huddled on the threshold. Jacques and I stepp'd quietly back, so ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... resource left; and, very unwillingly, Ketch's details were drawn from him, bit by bit. The sham invitation, the disappointment touching the tripe and onions, the missing the cloister keys when he reached home, and the finding them ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... trumpery. Thank Heaven, the Hazeldeans of Hazeldean were never tuft-hunters and title-mongers; and if I never ran after an English lord, I should certainly be devilishly ashamed of a brother-in-law whom I was forced to call markee or count! I should feel sure he was a courier, or runaway valley-de-sham. Turn up your nose at a doctor, indeed, Harry!—pshaw, good English style that! Doctor! my aunt married a Doctor of Divinity—excellent man—wore a wig and was made a dean! So long as Rickeybockey is ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Now good sweet Nurse: O Lord, why lookest thou sad? Though newes, be sad, yet tell them merrily. If good thou sham'st the musicke of sweet newes, By playing it to me, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... evening. Certainly she had laid out the two-pound-ten to advantage. She was in a perfectly decent dark dress with a red stripe in it; she had a large hat and some species of boa round her neck; she even carried a cheap umbrella with a sham silver band and a small hand-bag with one pocket-handkerchief inside it. And to her own mind, no doubt, she was a perfect picture of the ideal penitent—very respectable and even prosperous looking, and yet with a dignified reserve. She was not at all flaunting, she must ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... all the energy, had been sapped out of me long before, and even her promise couldn't revive it. My search for a berth wasn't much more than a sham. At the back of my head I knew very well what I'd come to. The only work I was capable of was dancing attendance on her, and filling in what remained of the day and night at a rotten restaurant, a Bohemian club, and ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... before or after the conflict, by certain males, and thus unconsciously prefer them. In the case of Tetrao umbellus, a good observer (23. 'Land and Water,' July 25, 1868, p. 14.) goes so far as to believe that the battles of the male "are all a sham, performed to show themselves to the greatest advantage before the admiring females who assemble around; for I have never been able to find a maimed hero, and seldom more than a broken feather." I shall have ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... finish this letter, Monseigneur, by telling you that he set out yesterday, July 10th, with a detachment of two hundred men. All Quebec was filled with grief to see him embark on an expedition of war tete-a-tete with the man named La Chesnaye. Everybody says that the war is a sham, that these two will arrange every thing between them, and, in a word, do whatever will help their trade. The whole country is in despair to see how matters are managed." [Footnote: Meules au Ministre, 8-11 ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... for years—almost from the beginning," Rachael asserted eagerly. "You know it, and I know it- -everyone does. You're not happy, and I'm wretched. I'm sick of excuses, and pretending, and prevaricating. There isn't a thing in the world we feel alike about; our life has become an absolute sham. It isn't as if I could have any real influence over you—you go your way, and do as you please, and I take the consequences. I realize now that every word I say jars on you. Why, sometimes when you come into a room and find me there I can tell by the expression on your face that you're angry just ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... uttered after the Armada had ceased to threaten her throne. We now know that the common opinion on this subject, like the common opinion respecting some other crises, was all wrong, a delusion and a sham, and based on nothing but plausible lies. Mr. Motley has put men right on this point, as on some others; and it is impossible to read his brilliant and accurate narrative of the events of 1588 without coming to the conclusion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... you who stands steadfastly near me, Knows me and likes me for just what I am, Some one like you who knows just how to cheer me, Some one who's real without pretense or sham. Some one whose fellowship isn't a fetter Binding my freedom—who's loyal all through, Some one whose life in this world makes it better, Blest to me, best to me—Some ...
— Some One Like You • James W. Foley
... our inner culture and our spiritual life, and that an intellectual underworld threatens our time, which demands a no less rigorous fight until its vice is wiped out. The vice of the social underworld gives a sham satisfaction to the human desire for sensual life; the vice of the intellectual underworld gives the same sham fulfilment to the human longing for knowledge and for truth. The infectious germs which ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... a photograph for the last five years," he remarked, as we walked down to the quay together. "Yet I think I should know him anywhere, if it is only by his height. He used to look so well on horseback. I remember as a child seeing him in a sham fight charging ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... entered. Over these the blankets are placed and folded back at the head under the fold of the upper sheet. Pillow-shams should never be used, as ornamentation on a bed is not necessary, and if it were a sham is never an ornament. ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... stalled pound with a lot of other children, beaten if you talk, beaten if you move, beaten if you cannot prove by answering idiotic questions that even when you escaped from the pound and from the eye of your gaoler, you were still agonizing over his detestable sham books instead of daring to live. And your childish hatred of your gaoler and flogger is nothing to his adult hatred of you; for he is a slave forced to endure your society for his daily bread. You have not even the satisfaction of knowing how you ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... NEARLY POWERLESS FOR ANY PURPOSE OF OFFENCE.'—Lord Palmerston, in the House of Commons, 1853.]; the necessity of permanently upholding the Mahometan rule in Europe is an absurdity. Our love for civilization, when we subject the Greeks and Christians to the Turks, is a sham; and our sacrifices for freedom, when working out the behests of the Emperor of the French and coaxing Austria to help us, is a pitiful imposture. The evils of non-intervention were remote and vague, and could neither be weighed nor described ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... exercise and sham-fight; an enemy supposed to be attacking a convoy. Being in the convoy, I haven't a clear idea of what happened, but only know we were kept dodging about kopjes, and bolting ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... had heard by letter and otherwise of the warlike scenes in which he was mingling. All his amusements took a military turn. He made soldiers of his schoolmates; they had their mimic parades, reviews, and sham fights; a boy named William Bustle was sometimes his competitor, but George was commander-in-chief ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... pounds, he decided not to leave the house, and to sham sickness, so he stayed in his room and had the landlady serve ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... energies towards the whitewashing of the actuality. Both cherished the naive conviction that to acknowledge an evil is in a manner to countenance its existence, and both clung fervently to the belief that a pretty sham has a more intimate relation to morality than has an ugly truth. Yet so unconscious were they of weaving this elaborate tissue of illusion around the world they inhabited that they called the mental process by which they distorted the reality, "taking a true view of life." ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... "All sham. Downright sneakin'!" said Molloy. "The short an' the long of it is, that I see'd from the first the on'y way to humbug them yellow-faced baboons was to circumwent 'em. So I set to ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... of iron, and it so happened that it was the very article which he wanted. When I gave it to him, the first lieutenant looked at me, and said, "So you know what a monkey's tail is already, do you? Now don't you ever sham stupid ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... was roped and hog-tied in record time by Clay MacGarnigal of Lincoln County. A seven-mile relay race was won by a buck named Slonny Begay. In the bronco busting contest two men were injured to the huge enjoyment of the crowd. The twenty-seventh cavalry from Fort Bliss performed a sham battle. The home team beat several other teams. Enormous apples raised by irrigation in the Pecos Valley attracted much attention, and a hungry Mexican absconded with ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... house and into the cellar. By merely sounding along the wall we discovered the door; it was cleverly constructed and for a time defied our efforts; but Jerome got it open by means of a jemmy and a pick. The outside was a clever piece of sham work shaped like stone and smeared over with cement. In the dim light we had ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... words and phrases, that he is not a raffine of expression, nor a jeweller of style. When I read the maunderings, the stilted and staggering sentences, the hesitating phrases, the far-sought and dear-bought and worthless word-juggles; the sham scientific verbiage, the native pedantries of many modern so-called "stylists," I rejoice that Dumas was not one of these. He told a plain tale, in the language suited to a plain tale, with abundance of wit ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... eternity for his faithlessness." The characteristic of Leslie Stephen's essays is that they are less directed to showing that orthodox theology is untrue as that there is no reality about it, and that its solutions of difficulties are sham solutions. If it solved any part of the mystery, it would be welcome, but it does not, it only adds new difficulties. It is "a mere edifice of moonshine." The writer makes no attempt to prove by logic that ultimate reality lies outside the limits of human reason. He bases this conclusion ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... our public buildings we destroyed and burnt as we reshaped our plan of habitation, our theater sheds, our banks, and inconvenient business warrens, our factories (these in the first year of all), and all the "unmeaning repetition" of silly little sham Gothic churches and meeting-houses, mean looking shells of stone and mortar without love, invention, or any beauty at all in them, that men had thrust into the face of their sweated God, even as they thrust cheap food into the mouths of their sweated workers; all these we ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... fought in defense of their own right to social veracity and sincerity in their thee-ing and thou-ing, in not doffing the hat or giving titles of respect. It was laid on George Fox that these conventional customs were a lie and a sham, and the whole body of his followers thereupon renounced them, as a sacrifice to truth, and so that their acts and the spirit they professed might ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... a sham semblance of religion which you are right in regarding as dull, for it is dull. When it is unreal and insincere it is deadly dull; when phrases are repeated, parrotwise, by people who have either never felt or have long lost their power and inspiration, ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... against liberty itself. Let me then say boldly that I am all for liberty. I want boys and girls, men and women, to see far more of each other and get to know each other much better than in the past. I believe in co-education, and in real co-education—not the sham that is practised in some of our universities and colleges. I see the risks and I want to take them. I know there will be "disasters," and I think them much less disastrous than those attending the methods of ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... jars o' fancy pickles 'n' a jug o' rare old rum 'n' played Ned in general. 'N' afterwards they went to bed in the guest-room where Mrs. Brown never lets any one sleep, 'n' they got right in on top o' her Hottentot pillow-shams 'n' old Dr. Carter tore a sham with his toothpick. 'N', added to all that, Amelia 's furious 'cause she read in a book 't teaches how to stay married 't a husband's first night out is the first rift in the lute, 'n' she was down town buyin' a dictionary so 's to be sure what a lute is afore she accuses ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... preaches those saintly sermons to us about our baptismal vows, and the nobleness of an unworldly life, and calls on us to live for something purer and higher than we are living for, I confess that sometimes all my life seems to me a mere sham,—that I am going to church, and saying solemn words, and being wrought up by solemn music, and uttering most solemn vows and prayers, all to no purpose; and then I come away and look at my life, all resolving itself into a fritter about dress, and sewing-silk, cord, braid, and buttons,—the ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... picturesque little church has been built near the mansion. Some of the factories of this metropolis of hardware are fine structures, but when their product is spoken of, "Brummagem" is sometimes quoted as synonymous for showy sham. Here they are said to make gods for the heathen and antiquities of the Pharaoh age for Egypt, with all sorts of relics for all kinds of battlefields. But Birmingham nevertheless has a reputation for more solid wares. Its people ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... greatest apprehensions of my father's suspicion, though I am convinced these were causeless had his designs been honourable. To blind these, I consented that he should carry on sham addresses to the widow, who was now a constant jest between us; and he pretended from time to time to acquaint me faithfully with everything that past at his interviews with her; nor was this faithless woman wanting in her part of the deceit. She carried herself to me all the while ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... answered Bill; "but the only ghosts hereabouts are those curious figures, which can't move from their places. For my part, I don't believe there are such things as ghosts at all going about to frighten people. The only one I ever heard tell of was 'The Cock Lane Ghost', and that was found out to be a sham long ago." ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... had devised a plan by which he hoped to lure the garrison from the fort. His scouts had apprised him that Harrison with a large force was at Sandusky, about sixty miles distant. The chief proposed that the Indians should gain the road which led from Sandusky to Fort Meigs and that a sham battle should be enacted there to deceive the garrison, who would naturally suppose that some of Harrison's force, coming to the fort, were being attacked. They would hasten to the assistance of their comrades, and the British would fall ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... suffer to sink into oblivion. [229] A still more infamous apostate was Joseph Haines, whose name is now almost forgotten, but who was well known in his own time as an adventurer of versatile parts, sharper, coiner, false witness, sham bail, dancing master, buffoon, poet, comedian. Some of his prologues and epilogues were much admired by his contemporaries; and his merit as an actor was universally acknowledged. This man professed himself a Roman Catholic, and went to Italy in the retinue ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "Ha! ha! Mere sham. I was bound to have you in one way, if I could not get you in another. All's fair in love and war. You ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... his pride and the vile passion he dared to dignify with the name of love: and when she now asked him to do her the justice which he could no longer plead his father's anger for denying—O God, where were thy thunderbolts!—he told her that their marriage was a sham one, that the chaplain was but a servant in disguise, and that in truth she was only his mistress. I had been dismissed the service through him—I will speak of that anon—the chaplain was dead—she did not even ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... be Baini's when it is said to be Allegri's, as well as at the railing of the Chapel, where the washing of the feet takes place, and at the supper-table, where twelve country-boors represent the Apostolic company, and are waited on by the Pope, in a way that shows how great a sham the whole thing is. The air is close to suffocation in this last place. Men and women faint and are carried out. Some fall and are trodden down. Sometimes, as at the table this year, some unfortunate pays for her curiosity with her life. It is "Devil take the hindmost!" and if any one is down, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... there exists the right of appeal there is a chance of acquittal. Otherwise the right of appeal would be a sham and an insult more intolerable, even, than that of the man convicted of murder to say why he should not receive the sentence which nothing he may say will avert. So long as acquittal may ensue ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... Raskolnikoff inserted his finger in a small crevice in the floor under his couch, and brought out the PLEDGE with which he had been careful to provide himself. This pledge was, however, only a sham—a thin smooth piece of wood about the size and thickness of a silver cigarette case, which he had found in a yard adjoining a carpenter's shop, and a thin piece of iron of about the same size, which he had picked up in ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... * * O, Conspiracy! Sham'st thou to show thy dangerous brow by night, When evils are most free? O, then, by day, Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough To mask thy monstrous visage? Seek none, Conspiracy; Hide it in smiles and affability; For if thou path thy native semblance on, Not Erebus ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... soldiers, and there was suspicion of unjust favour shown to the French soldiers when their English allies sought a healthy camping-ground. The war ended in 1855 with the fall of Sebastopol, and it was notable afterwards that the Napoleonic splendour increased vastly, that the sham royalty seemed resolved to entertain the royal visitors who had once ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... Joe, his shrewd eyes sparkling with excitement, "I'll do it in fine style. Ask no questions. I've got a plan. I'll have another breakdown, not a sham one, this time. I'll have you two well covered up in the wagon box, and you can lie there until some ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... ampler part. For the literature of the past Page had great respect, but his interest was ever in the present and the future. He was forever fulminating against bad writing, and hated the ignorant and slipshod work of the hack almost as much as he despised the sham of the man who affected letters, the dabbler and the poetaster. His taste was for the roast beef of literature, not for the side dishes and the trimmings, and his appreciation of the substantial work of others ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... was ringing the bell for Agnes, Charlie's piece of paper fell out on the floor. I had forgotten all about it. Wasn't it a mercy it did not drop while I was with Lady Carriston? This was all it was: "Come down to tea half-an-hour earlier; shall sham a hurt wrist to be back from shooting ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... Court of Chancery would not grant an injunction against him) be so far carried away by jealousy as to attempt the crime of murder upon his carcass; and no great matter as regards HIM. But it would be a sad thing for me to find myself hanged; and for what, I beseech you? for murdering a sham, that was either nobody at all, or oneself repeated once too often. But if you show to Wordsworth a man as great as himself, still that great man will not be much like Wordsworth—the great man will not be Wordsworth's doppelganger. If not impar (as you say) he will be dispar; ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... unduly distrustful of his fellow-men. He was not always suspecting them of something indistinguishable from fraud. When he wrote, "The world is still deceived with ornament" which "obscures the show of evil," he was expressing downright hatred—not suspicion—of sham, of quackery, of cant. His is the message of all commanding intellects which see through the hearts of men. Shakespeare's message is Carlyle's message or Ruskin's message anticipated by nearly three centuries, and more ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... as a witness when my lord had heard that there was a traveller from France in the house, and showed how that slight circumstance had first awakened his suspicions of foul play. He provoked some amusement when he dealt with his detection and exposure of the sham parson. But in the main he was heard with a stern and ominous attention—ominous ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... is governed by prudential considerations, and is always asking, Will it pay? is the incarnation of fickleness, instability, and feebleness. The apparent strength of the selfish will is usually a hollow sham. But truth, right, and love are motives stronger than death. And the will, dominated by these, gives the body to be burned. The man of the future will have an iron will, because he will keep these highest motives constantly ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... may be enrichment, as in the case where a wooden spire built upon a stone tower is taken down to be replaced by honest work. It would be an enrichment if in St. George's Chapel, the central shrine of British royalty, the sham insignia now overhanging the stalls of the knights of the garter were to give room to genuine armor. Not merely then by addition, but possibly, in some instances, by both subtraction and substitution, we may find the "Prayer-book as ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... prepense, Had bewitched and bamboozled the young lady's sense; Others thought, with more reason, the secret to lie In a magical wash or indelible dye; While Society, with its censorious eye And judgment impartial, stood ready to damn What wasn't improper as being a sham. ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... work—then you will not like it. Then you will throw up your hands and cry 'Beatrice!' Then you will tell me that he loves me to distraction, and you will even try to make me think that I love him. It is all a miserable sham, mamma, a vile miserable sham! Give it up. I have said that I will marry him, since it appears that I have promised. But do not try to make me think that I am marrying him of my own free will, or he marrying me out of disinterested, pure, ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... a bluff game, and I knew it, for as yet I had not secured my credentials; but when I saw the swart face of the sham agent change to a sickly yellow, and Smug begin to draw back and look anxiously from left to right, I was inwardly triumphant; but, alack! it is only in fiction that the clever detective always has the best of it, and at this moment there came an ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... of his client, in this desperate strait maintained that there might exist several copies of the books found in his possession, and that it was out of the question to condemn, on his own sham avowal, a man who appeared to be half cracked. The counsel for the prosecution said that that plea could not be urged in the case of the book printed by Lambert Palmart, as but one copy of that was in existence. But the prisoner's counsel retorted by putting in evidence attested affirmation ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... out more fully, though by different ways, in Bottom and Malvolio.' Has it indeed come to this? Have the Zeitgeist and the Weltschmerz and the other things compared to which 'le spleen' was gay, done so much for us? Is there to be no laughter left in literature free from the preoccupation of a sham real-life? So it would seem. Even what the great master has not shown us in his work, that your critic convinced of pathos is resolved to see in it. By the penetration of his intrusive sympathy he will come ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... of Isle Rathan, Stair and Patsy could see that the sham defences had been carried with a rush, and that something lay very still behind the hastily-dug trench. Patsy's keen eyes noted that it was still ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... tie and dirty collar?" young Clarkson asked, indignantly. "What price your eight and sixpenny trousers, eh, with the blue stripe and the grease stains? What about the sham diamond stud in your dickey, and your three inches of pinned on cuff? Fancy your appearance, perhaps! Why, I wouldn't walk the streets ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... pale; at some parts he will even distill the dew from his friendly eyes; he will jump about; he will beat the ground [with ecstasy]. As those who mourn at funerals for pay, do and say more than those that are afflicted from their hearts; so the sham admirer is more moved than he that praises with sincerity. Certain kings are said to ply with frequent bumpers, and by wine make trial of a man whom they are sedulous to know whether he be worthy of their friendship or not. Thus, if you ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... Dorn tried to fight his devil away with his law book, down in South Harvey death still lingered. Death is no respecter of persons, and often vaunts himself of his democracy. Yet it is a sham democracy. In Harvey, when death taps on a door and enters the house, he brings sorrow. But in South Harvey when he crosses a threshold he brings sorrow and want. And what a vast difference lies between sorrow, and sorrow with want. For sometimes the want that death brings ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... a bottle of sham, a bottle of port and a shass caffy, it ain't so bad, hay, Pen?" Foker said, and pronounced, after all these delicacies and a quantity of nuts and fruit had been dispatched, that it was time to "toddle." Pen sprang up with very bright eyes, and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cupola does not bear the heavy weight of the lantern it has been denounced as a sham, but this is an exaggeration. It is evident, as we look at it, that it is incapable of bearing any such weight. Much more practical is the objection of Gwilt that the elaborate framework of beams supporting this outside cover is certain to decay in course of time. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... in addition had all the prayers, fasting, obedience, patience, chastity, and innocence of all the saints combined. For the chief work is not present, without which all the others are nothing but mere sham, show and pretence, with nothing back of them; against which Christ warns us, Matthew vii: "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing." [Matt. 7:15] Such are all who wish with their many good works, as they ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... their teeth, got seventy-five head of volunteer labour on board, of whom not more than a dozen died of injuries. He had a hand, besides, in the amiable pleasantry which cost the life of Patteson; and when the sham bishop landed, prayed, and gave his benediction to the natives, Bostock, arrayed in a female chemise out of the trade-room, had stood at his right hand and boomed amens. This, when he was sure he was among good fellows, was his favourite yarn. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... We were out five days before we got a letter with leave to part, and then our ship quitted the fleet and steered for England. The other two packets he still detained, carried them with him to Halifax, where he stayed some time to exercise the men in sham attacks upon sham forts, then altered his mind as to besieging Louisburg, and returned to New York, with all his troops, together with the two packets above mentioned, and all their passengers! During his absence the French ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... a great name, was emperor because of that name and criminal daring. By a series of happy accidents he had gained credit in the Crimean War, and at Magenta and Solferino. But the unmasking time came in the Franco-Prussian War, as it always comes when sham, artificial toy-men meet genuine self-made men. And such were the German leaders,—William, strong, upright, warlike, "every inch a king;" Von Roon, Minister of War, a master of administrative detail; Bismarck, the master mind of European politics; and, above all, Von Moltke, chief ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... life and customs of our people; indeed, we practiced only what we expected to do when grown. Our games were feats with the bow and arrow, foot and pony races, wrestling, swimming and imitation of the customs and habits of our fathers. We had sham fights with mud balls and willow wands; we played lacrosse, made war upon bees, shot winter arrows (which were used only in that season), and coasted upon the ribs ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... was all a sham! A mask to hide the terrible conflict that was raging within her soul, ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... of His appearing they will assume new attitudes and receive His quickening and thrill with His pulse. When I conceive of this reward for our Daysman I protest that all other triumphs seem as tinsel and sham. The Desire of all nations shall then see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied. The subtle patience of China, the fierce resistance of Japan, the brooding soul that haunts the Ganges valley, the tumult of emotion of the Ethiopian breast, all are for His appearing; ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... just now that things might be done by religious mania. Have you ever heard of irreligious mania? I assure you it exists very violently, especially in men who like showing up magicians in India. But here the skeptic had the temptation of showing up a much more tremendous sham nearer home." ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... be trifled with, that she would better bestir herself and give more thought and attention to what was going on in that superbly shaped head of his—about her, about her and him. "Oh, I don't just know," replied she, quite honestly. "It seems to me now that there'll be too much fuss and care and—sham. And I intend to interest myself in your work. You've hardly spoken of it ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... more honesty in his clients, and less sham ridicule; but fundamental belief consoled him for superficial irony. As stated, he was enabled to live; people supported him with their backs turned. He was sometimes astonished that men could profess so little and believe so much at his house, when at church they professed ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... "But I'll never be an artist. I sort of felt that long ago, but now I'm dead certain of it, and it seems like a sham to haul out that effort in the face of Elinor's ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... thing is to be done, the next question is, how is it to be done? There is many a man that knows there is too much canvas on a ship, who can't tell how to shorten sail. Well, then, if the thing is really to be done, we must either land a gang to seize them, or we must show false lights and sham colors, to lead them off to the ship. As for landing, Captain Munson, I can only speak for one man, and that is myself; which is to say, that if you run the ship with her jib-boom into the king of England's parlor- windows, why, I'm consenting, nor do I care how much of his crockery is cracked ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... which had long been enigmas,[34] and which denoted the act of catching a steer or a ram by means of a hurled weapon, probably the thong of a lasso. Without doubt even this act was finally reduced to a mere sham under the Roman empire, but the weapon with which the animal was slain always remained a hunting weapon, a ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... as "on duty", "on furlough", "in imprisonment", "deserted", "deceased", "in hospital." Regiments are also marched out of barracks into the country with bands playing and colours flying, and there are reviews and sham fights occasionally. Soldiers, too, are placed as sentries before officers' quarters and other places, and they have many other duties to perform even in the piping times of peace. I shall soon have to show the life they lead in war-time. Theirs is not an idle life, but ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... and furnished in yellow satin, whose high white panels were decorated with trophies of antique weapons carved in wood and gilded. A dauber from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts would have branded with the epithet "sham" the armchairs and sofas ornamented with sphinx heads in bronze, as well as the massive green marble clock upon which stood, all in gold, a favorite court personage, clothed in a cap, sword, and fig-leaf, who seemed to be ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... have come back, and will be glad to see thee; thou must he blithe and buxom to him, and he will think a good change has come over thee, and thou must show no signs of coldness or ill-temper, but when spring comes thou must sham sickness, and take to thy bed. Hrut will not lose time in guessing what thy sickness can be, nor will he scold thee at all, but he will rather beg every one to take all the care they can of thee. After that he will set off west to the Firths, and Sigmund with him, for he ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... to speak one word more in defence of Fifine and her masquerading tribe; it will recall his early eulogium on her frankness. "All men are actors: but these alone do not deceive. All you are expected to applaud in them is the excellence of the avowed sham." ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... him again and again to bribe the witch, who refuses cup, steed, and girdle. Here our version makes such abrupt transitions, that it will be well to explain what takes place. The Belly Blind or Billie Blin (see Young Bekie, First Series, pp. 6, 7) advises Willie to make a sham baby of wax, and invite his witch-mother to the christening. Willie does so (in stanzas lost between our 33 and 34); the witch, believing the wax-baby to be flesh and blood, betrays all her craft by asking who ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... treaty and alliance with France for mutual supports and for a Dutch war; and when various pretended obstacles and difficulties were surmounted, a sham treaty was concluded with their consent and approbation, containing every article of the former real treaty, except that of the king's change of religion. However, there was virtually involved, even in this treaty, the assuming of absolute government in England; for the support ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... the opposition was not due merely to the readiness with which the faction out of power will seize on the weak aspects of a question in order to embarrass the government. Such sham-fight tactics are common enough and may be rated at their proper value. The leaders of the British party were sincere in their belief that the success of this measure meant the triumph of the French and the reversal of all that had been done to hold the colonies for the Empire against rebels ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... no more could be had, unless they sent more powder and shot. Upon this Clipperton weighed anchor, and stood in for the harbour, sending the pinnace a-head to sound. The people on shore had raised a battery during the sham treaty about the ransom of the marquis, from which they fired on the pinnace. The pinnace now returned to Clipperton, and reported that the only channel they could find lay within pistol-shot of the shore; yet at six in the afternoon Clipperton persisted to carry the Success ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... time I was afraid to open my eyes, or even to breathe; and I thought that, if I could sham being dead, they would carry me on deck, and I would then soon show them the contrary. I guessed that I must have rolled over with my face away from the door, so that they couldn't see it. Presently I felt a hand placed on my shoulder to draw me round. I let them move me ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... twelve month," said Rob-in, "Under this green wood tree. It were great sham-e," said Rob-in, "A knight alone to ride, Without squy-er, yeoman or page, To walk-e by his side. I shall thee lend Little Johan my man, For he shall be thy knave; In a yeoman's stead he may thee stand If thou ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... really nothing to prevent us from taking possession of the ship. The crew were a set of ruffians, specially picked for the job. The sham chaplain came into our cells to exhort us, carrying a black bag, supposed to be full of tracts, and so often did he come that by the third day we had each stowed away at the foot of our beds a file, a brace of pistols, a pound of powder, ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... not know what you consider virtues," he answered lightly: "If honesty is one, I have that. I make no pretence to be what I am not. I would not pass off somebody else's picture as my own, for instance. But I cannot sham to be moral. I could not possibly love a woman without wanting her all to myself, and I have not the slightest belief in the sanctimonious humbug of a man who plays the Platonic lover only. But I don't cheat, and I don't lie. I am ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... thou needs woldst vnderstand my sham Which I did grieue and blush to ope to thee, And had lear di'd then told thee of the same, Now be not slacke to lend thy helpe to me, Thou forst me for to open my disgrace, Then lend thy help to ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... forgery, and now they can be taking him anywhere, and bringing him to trial as soon as they do find him. Forgery! name o' goodness, why 'ould he be forging, as I do say to every one, and his own mother as 'ould be giving him thousands of pounds. My Howels! Ach a fi! for sham to them! But he 'ont be found guilty, if they do tak him. Owen, bach! it was killing me, ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale |
