Humbug

Definition and stakes

A. Leah Underhill,  The Missing Link in Modern Spiritualism

“ This word humbug is in great request. It is of modern origin, and the moderns are making the most of it. Everything new, while going through its incipient stage, is denominated ‘humbug.’ Everything and everybody a whit in advance of the age or its intelligence is looked at askance by the gaping crowd, and ‘humbug’ is the ready watchword. ”
Source: Gutenberg

Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton,  Paul Clifford — Complete

“ They are very inviting to the indolence of the mob of gentlemen who see the romance of a noble principle, not its utility. When a man looks at everything through this dwarfing philosophy, everything has a great modicum of humbug. You laugh with him when he derides the humbug in religion, the humbug in politics, the humbug in love, the humbug in the plausibilities of the world; but you may cry, my dear pupils, when he derides what is often the safest of all practically to deride,—the humbug in common honesty! Men are honest from religion, wisdom, prejudice, habit, fear, and stupidity ”
Source: Gutenberg

Portrait of Fergus Hume Fergus Hume,  Whom God Hath Joined: A Question of Marriage

“ But the mocking spirit of disbelief, the spirit which denies, damped this sudden impulse of strong faith, and he sat there in the cold twilight, pitying himself profoundedly with the self-commiseration of an egotist, for the weariness of his life, which came from the selfishness of his own actions.
"How infinitely dreary is this life of ours, with its cant and humbug, its hollow aspirations and unsatisfying rewards. We try to make ourselves happy and only succeed in rendering ourselves cynical.
”
Source: Gutenberg

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