ORALITY—keeping up appearances in this world, or becoming suddenly devout when we imagine that we may be shortly summoned to appear in the next.
Horace Smith, The Tin Trumpet.
ON PATRONS' PROMISES.
MINISTER'S answer is always so kind!
I starve, and he tells me he'll keep me in mind.
Half his promise, God knows, would my spirits restore—
Let him keep me, and, faith, I will ask for no more.
Lord Holland, in Moore's Diary.
KNOW there's a stage of speculation in which a man may doubt whether a pickpocket is blameworthy—but I'm not one of your subtle fellows who keep looking at the world through their own legs.
Felix Holt, in George Eliot's novel.