Humbug Quotes - Page 3

• It didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn't no kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds. But I never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it's the best way; then you don't have no quarrels, and don't get into no trouble. If they wanted us to call them kings and dukes, I hadn't no objections, 'long as it would keep peace in the family; and it warn't no use to tell Jim, so I didn't tell him. If I never learnt nothing else out of pap, I learnt that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them have their own way.

  Mark Twain

  Kings, Liars, Long

  Mark Twain (2008). “10 Books in 1”, p.110, Shoes & Ships & Sealing Wax

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• How can you see something that isn't there?" yawned the Humbug, who wasn't fully awake yet. "Sometimes, it's much simpler than seeing things that are,"he said. "For instance, if something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn't there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed. That's why imaginary things are often easier to see than real ones." "Then where is Reality?" barked Tock. "Right here,"cried Alec, waving his arms.

  Norton Juster

  Real, Eye, Arms

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• Talk of the abuses of slavery! Humbug! The thing itself is the essence of all abuse!

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Essence, Abuse, Slavery

  Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Beecher STOWE (2015). “Uncle Tom's Cabin”, p.310, Harriet Beecher Stowe

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• Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's nephew. "You don't mean that, I am sure?" "I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? what reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough.

  Charles Dickens

  Uncles, Mean, Merry Christmas

  Charles Dickens (2007). “SAT Words from Literature - A Christmas Carol”, p.11, Prestwick House Inc

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• Will a day come when the race will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them—and by laughing at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution--these can lift at a colossal humbug,—push it a little— crowd it a little—weaken it a little, century by century: but only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand. - "The Chronicle of Young Satan," Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts

  Mark Twain

  Laughter, Blow, Race

  The Mysterious Stranger ch. 10 (1916)

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• He who neither drinks, nor smokes, nor dances, he who preaches & even occasionally practice piety, temperance and celibacy, is generally a saint, or a mahatma or more likely a humbug but he certainly won't make a leader or for that matter a good soldier

  Sam Manekshaw

  Leadership, Dance, Drinking

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• I am glad that the country world...retains a power to use our English tongue. It is a part of its sense of reality, of its vocabulary of definite terms, and of its habit of earthly common sense. I find this country writing an excellent corrective of the urban vocabulary of abstractions and of the emotion disguised as thinking which abstractions and humbug have loosed upon the world. May there always be such things as a door, a milk pail, and a loaf of bread, and words to do them honor.

  Henry Beston

  Country, Writing, Reality

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• Calm and silent and steady work, and no newspaper humbug, no name-making, you must always remember.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Inspirational, Motivational, Names

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.1910, Manonmani Publishers

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• The balance between faith and reason is for the determination of each individual, and of the people as a whole, not of unauthorized government officials uttering impious humbug as they arbitrarily try to define that balance.

  Conrad Black

  Determination, Government, People

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• I know that you're selfish, selfish beyond words, and I know that you haven't the nerve of a rabbit, I know you're a liar and a humbug, I know that you're utterly contemptible. And the tragic part is'--her face was on a sudden distraught with pain--'the tragic part is that notwithstanding I love you with all my heart.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Pain, Selfish, Women

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• The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states.

  Charles Dickens

  Southern, Desire, Pieces

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• I have found life highly competitive. I accept it. It is useless, merely a hypocritical humbug, to sincerely wish your opponent to win. If you are out to win you are better not wanting to know your opponent, much less grow to like him - and wish him, honestly success over you. I have never functioned that way.

  Percy Cerutty

  Sports, Winning, Over You

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• No great work can be achieved by humbug. It is through love, a passion for truth, and tremendous energy, that all undertakings are accomplished.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Inspirational, Motivational, Passion

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.2851, Manonmani Publishers

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• The upheavals of adolescence silenced 'A Christmas Carol' for a few years. I became a firebrand atheist. Christmas - humbug! Too commercial! Then I became an agnostic. Christmas was a pro-forma affair, basically a chore. Buy mother a book, dad a new tie, my brother and sister small gifts. Pretend thanks for the fountain pens and shirts I received.

  Whitley Strieber

  Christmas, Mother, Brother

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• I'm a songwriter first...In my career I have never felt that my being a woman was an obstacle or an advantage. I guess I've been oblivious...Sensitive, humbug. Everybody thinks I'm sensitive...There is a downside to having one of the biggest-selling albums ever.

  Carole King

  Thinking, Careers, Albums

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• Every one of the aristocratic conspirators and would-be murderers claims to be an arch-patriot; every one of them insists that the war is being waged to make the world safe for democracy. What humbug! What rot! What false pretense! These... tyrants, these red-handed robbers and murderers, the "patriots," while the men who have the courage to stand face to face with them, speak the truth, and fight for their exploited victims - they are [called] the disloyalists and traitors. If this be true, I want to take my place side by side with the traitors in this fight.

  Eugene V. Debs

  War, Fighting, Men

  Eugene V. Debs' speech he gave across the street from a jail, where he had just visited three socialists who were in prison for opposing the draft, June 1918.

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• It is pleasure that lurks in the practice of every one of your virtues. Man performs actions because they are good for him, and when they are good for other people as well they are thought virtuous: if he finds pleasure in helping others he is benevolent; if he finds pleasure in working for society he is public-spirited; but it is for your private pleasure that you give twopence to a beggar as much as it is for my private pleasure that I drink another whiskey and soda. I, less of a humbug than you, neither applaud myself for my pleasure nor demand your admiration.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Helping Others, Men, Practice

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• Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy.

  George Orwell

  Writing, Order, Long

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.164, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Sensible men no longer belive in miracles; they were invented by priests to humbug the peasants.

  Alfonso X of Castile

  Men, Miracle, Priests

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• The Social Contract is nothing more or less than a vast conspiracy of human beings to lie to and humbug themselves for the general Good. Lies are the mortar that bind the savage individual man into the social masonry.

  H. G. Wells

  Lying, Men, Savages

  'Love and Mr Lewisham' (1900) ch. 23

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• I think everyone is throwing happy stuff at you, and that's when you come over all humbug. It's happy stuff in your face, happy stuff is being sold to you.

  Colin Firth

  Thinking, Stuff, Faces

  "Disney's A Christmas Carol - Colin Firth and Bob Hoskins interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• What will the preachers say? .. to teach men not to persecute men: for, while a few sanctimonious humbugs are burning a few fanatics, the earth opens and swallows up all alike.

  Voltaire

  Men, Burning, Earth

  Francois Voltaire (1977). “The Portable Voltaire”, p.348, Penguin

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• there is such a mistaken notion abroad in this country that the individual who makes sharp remarks must be sincere, while the one who says pleasant things must be more or less a humbug.

  J. E. Buckrose

  Country, Sincere, Individual

  Annie Edith Foster Jameson, J. E. Buckrose (1923). “What I Have Gathered”

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• It boils down to this: we should have done with humbug, and let war be war, and not a game ... If there were none of this magnanimity business in warfare, we should never go to war, except for something worth facing certain death for.

  Leo Tolstoy

  War, Should Have, Games

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• Real merit requires as much labor, to be placed in a true light, as humbug to be elevated to an unworthy eminence; only the success of the false is temporary, that of the true, immortal.

  Francis Alexander Durivage

  Real, Light, Merit

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