United States or Norfolk Island ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In itself the confession was little. To possess this faculty was neither laudable nor culpable, nor had it been exercised in a way which I should be very much ashamed to acknowledge. It had led me into many insincerities and artifices, which, though not justifiable by any creed, was entitled to some excuse, on the score of youthful ardour and temerity.
Such were the aims that, newly returned to England, he confides to the sister who had ever prophesied great things of "her boy"; and in the end he made good the works spoken so boldly, yet surely in no mere spirit of boasting. He "left his mark somewhere, clear and distinct," without taint of the insincerities which he had an almost morbid dread of discovering in any act of his own.
"And how do you suppose that fact makes me feel?" she asked, looking up at him, her eyes full of tears, her heart swelling, her face scarlet. Bayne would have given much to avoid this moment. But now that the discussion was upon him, he said to himself that he would not traffic with the insincerities, he would not be recreant to his own identity.
He was a rugged Orson, rending his rough way through actual true work, doubtless with many a fall therein. Insincerities, faults, very many faults daily and hourly: it was too well known to him; known to God and him! The Sun was dimmed many a time; but the Sun had not himself grown a Dimness. Cromwell's last words, as he lay waiting for death, are those of a Christian heroic man.
"You have paid my brother such a short visit, after all," said Irene. "Please don't go away because you fancy you are tiring him." But it was no use. Her ladyship meant to go, and went. Regrets of all sorts, of course; explanatory insincerities about stringent obligations elsewhere; even specific allegations of expected guests; false imputation of exacting claims to the Earl.
Benham, on the other hand, was shy with small animals and faintly hostile to big ones. Beasts he thought were just beasts. And Prothero had a gift for caricature, while Benham's aptitude was for music. It was Prothero's eyes and pencil that first directed Benham to the poor indolences and evasions and insincerities of the masters.
So he edited them into a further banality and thus concealed his inability to give lofty utterance to his emotions by amusing himself with deliberately cheapened insincerities. "Saving my linguistic face," he thought suddenly, and laughed again. Rachel was sad. They left her home in silence. "We'll go toward the park," he announced. It irritated him to utter matter-of-fact directions.
Grant that some woman whom he loved supremely must, on his account, pass through a harsh trial would it not be in his power to compensate her amply? Religious fanaticism could not exist in her, for in that case she would never have attracted him. Little by little she would learn to think as he did, and her devotedness must lead her to pardon his deliberate insincerities.
The little insincerities incident to their almost daily intercourse, the small deceits made use of in shopping, marketing, making visits, or sending invitations, were no such mighty matters as to jeopardise the happiness, or even the comfort of any one with eyes keen enough to detect, and with skill and will to circumvent them.
The Quakers, as we know, made a mighty stand against verbal insincerities, with one striking exception, the use of the word "Friend." They said and believed that this word represented their attitude towards humanity, their spirit of universal tolerance and brotherhood.
Word Of The Day