Cant

…It is vey near to being the grossest form of cant, and I never did bear the cant.”

…was vanity indeed which, when Sir Hearty came to think of it, bore a disconcertingly close relation to cant. Wherefore Sir Hearty Luncheon, who never did bear the cant, now forbore by effort of will to consider beauty’s transience or other similarly morbid abstractions.

“Beastly little yap dog,” he mutters, “the veyest embodiment of cant. Never did bear it.”

“Do please spare me the cant,” murmured Sir Hearty vey hollowly and a propos of nothing in particular, “for I never did bear the cant.”

“What a thing is a man,” he murmured, vey faintly, “Australopithecine, one supposes. Positively exuding cant,” adding mechanically, but also somehow wistfully, “I never did bear the cant.”

…Other gentlemen may find it in themselves to bear the cant. I never did.”

…All of it: all of it had been cant, which he never had borne.

Sir Hearty Luncheon, finding himself even more than usually prostrated by the bearing of unbearable cant, nonetheless endured a succession of barbarian supplicants, who interrupted his catatonic contemplation of the green figures marching across the screen and his listless buying and fretful selling of money, and against whom he was in consequence sorely tempted to bar the gates.

…Curzon of provincial finance, looking at their beer, and then added, inevitably, “only do please spare me the cant, for I never did bear the cant.”

…of the exquisite twerps loitering without, and informed all and sundry of his continuing inability to bear the cant.

…gnawed at his oesophagus, forcing him to loosen his tie, and gaze through the window slantwise at suburbs. Cant, cant, everywhere cant. Beige and ugly and pettifogging cant. Palsied and wan, acrylic fibered, nugatory cant. Cant.

…All of it: all of it was cant. Total, complete, and utter cant.