Sham

“ I tell you I have lived so long by sham heroics and sham sentiment—and I am so sick of shams, and the world is generally such a big, shameless sham—that I'm mighty apt to know a genuine thing when I see it by the sheer force of contrast. ”

“ We hear much of the human error which accepts what is sham as what is real. But it is worthwhile to remember that with unfamiliar things we often mistake what is real for what is sham. It is true that a very young man may think the wig of an actress is her hair. But it is equally true that a child yet younger may call the hair of a negro his wig. Just because the woolly savage is remote and barbaric he seems to be unnaturally neat and tidy. Everyone must have noticed the same thing in the fixed and almost offensive color of all unfamiliar things, tropic birds and tropic blossoms. ”

“ The real woman is of flesh and blood. The real woman is so much better than the sham. Don’t you think so?”
“It depends on what you call sham,” said Herbert.
“I was a sham until that plaster image of me broke. I indulged in sham sentiment, sham emotion, sham thoughts. Look at me now, since I went outside these four walls and faced the facts of life, and saw other people’s misery besides my own, and the happiness of people with so much more to bear than I had. Look into my eyes, Herbert.” ”

“ How often, when the abominations of Lupton, its sham energies, its sham morals, its sham enthusiasms, all its battalia of cant surged and beat upon me, have I been sorely tempted to yield, to suffer no more the press of folly, but to steal away by a secret path I knew, to dwell in a secure valley where the foolish could never trouble me. ”

“ The shade of the original Kurtz frequented the bedside of the hollow sham, whose fate it was to be buried presently in the mold of primeval earth. But both the diabolic love and the unearthly hate of the mysteries it had penetrated fought for the possession of that soul satiated with primitive emotions, avid of lying fame, of sham distinction, of all the appearances of success and power. ”

“ Real emotions, whether painful or delightful, leave one eventually with a new supply of strength; the sham, without exception, leave their victim weaker, physically and mentally, unless they are recognized as sham, and voluntarily dismissed by the owner of the nerves that have been rasped by them. It is an inexpressibly sad sight to see a woman broken, down and an invalid, for no reason whatever but the unnecessary nervous excitement of weeks and months of sham emotion. ”

“ There yet remain several distinct divisions of Slang to be examined;—the Slang of the stable, or jockey Slang; the Slang of the prize ring; the Slang of servitude, or flunkeydom; vulgar, or street Slang; the Slang of softened oaths; and the Slang of intoxication. I shall only examine the last two. If society, as has been remarked, is a sham, from the vulgar foundation of commonalty to the crowning summit of royalty, especially do we perceive the justness of the remark in the Slang makeshifts for oaths, and sham exclamations for passion and temper. ”

“ Some of the girls were very pretty, many of them were young, most of them well-dressed; and all tried to diffuse about themselves an atmosphere of reckless life, zest, enjoyment. But seen in the mass, all these various attempts resulted in one great effect of sham. ”

“ If these false Arts, mock sighing, and Dying prevail upon any foolish, easie, credulous Woman, the Sham Lover is blown up with the Success, he is big and in Labour till he be deliver’d of the Secret, which with great satisfaction he proclaims in all Places where he comes: ’tis his highest Exploit of Gallantry, which he will by no means lose the credit of. ”

“ Appearance too often takes the place of reality—the stamp of the coin is there, and the glitter of the gold, but, after all, it is but a worthless wash. Sham is carried into every department of life, and we are being corrupted by show and surface. We are too apt to judge people by what they have, rather than by what they are; we have too few Hamlets who are bold enough to proclaim, "I know not seem!" ”

“ She made no answer, and he went on: "What's the use? You gave me my first glimpse of a real life, and at the same moment you asked me to go on with a sham one. It's beyond human enduring—that's all." ”

“ If it is anywhere in the neighbourhood, the shaman soon catches and replaces it in the patient's body. If it is far away, he searches the wide world till he finds it, ransacking the deep woods, the lonely steppes, and the bottom of the sea, not to be thrown off the scent even though the cunning soul runs to the sheep-walks in the hope that its footprints will be lost among the tracks of the sheep. But when the whole world has been searched in vain for the errant soul, the shaman knows that there is nothing for it but to go down to hell and seek the lost one among the spirits in prison. ”

“ A sham entertainment given by the Fu-t‘ai, or governor, to all the successful candidates. I say sham, because the whole thing is merely nominal; a certain amount of food is contracted for, but there is never anything fit to eat, most of the money being embezzled by the underlings to whose management the banquet is entrusted. ”

“ Sham's tongue began to clack again and Rand listened with growing interest.
"The beggar's giving us his pedigree. Says he's a shaman of the desert Mongols, and has a son who is wiser than he. As nearly as I can make out he learned from his son that it would be dangerous for us to go to Lanchow. Sham, as you call him, came to this place because tez bazin-yat, the ancestor spirit, called. Tez basin-yat was or is angered.
"Sham's family deity is the bear. He was running, in spirit, with the bear spirit when we interrupted the magic. When he runs like that he is hungry. At such times, he feeds. ”

“ In the wretched shed which he called "home," a young wife lay on a truss of straw, listening to the hungry cries of two little children, and awaiting her hour to become the weeping mother of a third. And the recollection that but for an act of domestic treachery experienced by his father and himself, both would have been comfortable and respectable in the world, aggravated the bitterness of the feeling in which Shamus contemplated this lot. ”

“ With fire of hell shall shame consume him shameless,
And dying, all the night darken his death.
The years are as thy garments, the world's ages
As sandals bound and loosed from thy swift feet;
Time serves before thee, as one that hath for wages
Praise or shame only, bitter words or sweet. ”

“ Fly from the court's pernicious neighbourhood; Where innocence is sham'd, and blushing modesty Is made the scorner's jest; where hate, deceit, And deadly ruin, wear the masks of beauty, And draw deluded fools with shows of pleasure. ”

“ Now God grants them the approach of a healthy shame, if they despise not the medicine of confession: but if they will not now be ashamed, then they shall be ashamed, when “their iniquities shall convince them to their face.” ”

“ No: at all costs, it is to be prayed by all men that Shams may cease. Good Heavens, to what depths have we got, when this to many a man seems strange! Yet strange to many a man it does seem; and to many a solid Englishman, wholesomely digesting his pudding among what are called the cultivated classes, it seems strange exceedingly, a mad ignorant notion, quite heterodox, and big with mere ruin. He has been used to decent forms long since empty of meaning, to plausible modes, solemnities grown ceremonial,—what you in your iconoclast humour call shams,—all his life long ”

“ But as not only pain may be inflicted, but lust gratified on the body of another, whenever anything of this latter kind takes place, shame invades even a thoroughly pure spirit from which modesty has not departed,—shame, lest that act which could not be suffered without some sensual pleasure, should be believed to have been committed also with some assent of the will. ”

“ O Lord, let me not be put to shame by those who insult me, for that I have called upon Thee. “Let the ungodly be ashamed, and be brought down to hell.” Let them rather who call upon stones be ashamed, and made to dwell with darkness. ”

“ Shame, divine Shame (Schaam, Modesty) , as yet a stranger to the Anthropophagous bosom, arose there mysteriously under Clothes; a mystic grove-encircled shrine for the Holy in man. Clothes gave us individuality, distinctions, social polity; Clothes have made Men of us; they are threatening to make Clothes-screens of us. ”

“ Thus the New-Testament Babylon, which had made the nations drunk with the cup of her fornications, shall have blood given her to drink, for she is worthy, Rev. xviii. 3, 6. (2.) Does he take a pleasure in putting his neighbour to shame? He shall himself be loaded with contempt: " Thou art filled with shame for glory, with shame instead of glory, or art filled now with shame more than ever thou wast with glory; and the glory thou hast been filled with shall but serve to make thy shame the more grievous to thyself, and the more ignominious in the eyes of others. ”

“ By virtue of this reaction it is that the shams and ceremonies we may fancy mere curious survivals, mere kinks and tortuosities, cloaks and accessories to-day, will, if we are silent and acquiescent, be halfway to reality again in the course of a generation. To our children they are not evidently shams; they are powerful working suggestions. ”

“ In her pride and conscious superiority, any suggestion of shame at thus appearing before a common man and a mendicant was as impossible to her nature as it would have been to a queen or the goddess of his simile. ”

“ If I had but done sooner what Eve asked, this would not have happened. I will bear it.'
'Sir Edric, do not be angry with me, for if I did not say this, then I should be but an ill counsellor. And, firstly, do not use the word shame. The ways of nature are past all explaining; if a woman be frail and easily impressed, and other circumstances concur, then in some few rare cases a thing of this sort does happen. If there be shame, it is not upon you but upon nature—to whom one would not lightly impute shame. ”

“ Shame indeed there is when each makes known his sins, but that shame, as it were, ploughs his land, removes the ever-recurring brambles, prunes the thorns, and gives life to the fruits which he believed were dead. ”

“ Sunk down in shame too deep for shame's control.
His kind keen eye was light to lighten hope
Where no man else might see life's darkness ope
And pity's touch bring forth from evil good,
Sweet as forgiveness, strong as fatherhood. ”

“ There is, there is indeed, even in the shameless, a small portion of shame. For God hath sown in our nature the seeds of shame; for since fear was insufficient to bring us to a right tone, He hath also prepared many other ways for avoiding sin. ”

“ The shaman yawned, crept on hands and knees to the opposite corner of the tent where his great fur robe was thrown, stretched himself out upon it, and rolled over and over until it was wrapped about him like a mummy case. ”

“ I said it; martyrdom or shame! It is shame which awaits me.
So spoke the Curé, when Marianne had taken away her young mistress, and his conscience exaggerated the gravity and the consequences of his imprudent rapture.
—Yes, it is shame, it is shame.
—Do not despair in this way, said a jeering voice.
Marcel turned round, terror-struck.
His servant was behind him.
She had approached, noiselessly, and was looking at him with her strange, green eyes.
—Shame lies in scandal, she added sententiously. Reassure yourself; that pretty young lady will hold her tongue. ”

“ When a shaman declares that the soul of a sick Thompson Indian has been carried off by the dead, the good physician, who is the shaman himself, puts on a conical mask and sets off in pursuit. He now acts as if on a journey, jumping rivers and such like obstacles, searching, talking, and sometimes engaging in a tussle for the possession of the soul. ”

“ When the Shaman draws lines upon the sand, describes various curves with his arms, utters sundry incantations, he does not address a power he perceives, nor even one he has really seen, although he may believe that he, or some one else, has seen it. ”

“ CHAPTER XIV. It was morning when our tired dogs scented madame's village and began to run more eagerly and to give tongue. The noise awoke the shaman, who clutched the sides of the sled and pulled himself painfully upward.
“Think bes' go Lady's house,” he said, then mumbled something and shook his head doubtfully. I thought I caught the words in his own tongue, as if he were still bewildered and soliloquizing, “She must decide what is to be done. Must tell her everything. Too bad. She can put all the blame on me.” ”

“ We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins. ”

“ And now, if a man would be so mad as to be ashamed, for fear of the rebuke that he should have of such rebukeful beasts, to confess the faith of Christ, then, with fleeing from a shadow of shame, he would fall into a true shame—and a deadly painful shame indeed! ”

“ And let thy princes and the court give ear!
’Tis time all heard how Vashti feels her shame.
Ahasueras
Shame is no word to couple with thy name!
Shame and a spotless woman may not meet,
Even in a sentence. Choose another word. ”

“ Lavendar. "Shame is a curious thing, William. It's like some of your medicines. The right amount cures. Too much kills. I've seen that with hard drinkers. Where a drunkard is a poor, uneducated fellow, shame gives him a good boost towards decency. But a man of education, William, a man of opportunity—if he wakes up to what he has been doing, shame gives him such a shove he is apt to go all round the circle, and come up just where he started! Shame is a blessed thing,—when you don't get too much of it. ”