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Use sanctimonious in a sentence

Definition of sanctimonious:

  • (adjective) excessively or hypocritically pious; "a sickening sanctimonious smile"

Sentence Examples:

Duchess Giovanna, Don Francesco's sanctimonious Austrian wife, offered a vigorous protest, and declined to have anything to do with the unfortunate young mother and her dissolute old lover.

Floods of light are thrown upon various incidents of devotee life, and also upon the disgusting and not otherwise intelligible character of the sanctimonious scoundrel, by the everyday experiences of the madhouse.

The fellow's heart rankled at the snubbing he had received, and he was plotting some way of "getting even" with the sanctimonious fellow, who would never swear or indulge in a coarse word.

Take your sobbing, sniveling, trembling, dolorous, sanctimonious voice down into some dismal swamp and bury it.

Winston Churchill is an odd and not disagreeable compound of Junker and Yankee: his frank anti-German pugnacity is enormously more popular than the moral babble (Milton's phrase) of his sanctimonious colleagues.

Foolish saints, crafty villains, sanctimonious women, and self-afflicting Pharisees are the destroyers of the world.

He was bidding for support merely on the ground that he was an honest man who proposed to keep his word; but honesty and good faith are qualities which the public have a right to take for granted in their officials, and no candidate can lay peculiar claim to them without becoming politically sanctimonious.

To that sanctimonious jargon which was his Shibboleth, was opposed another jargon not less absurd and much more odious.

It makes me very much mortified when I think what a corking good time I am having and what sanctimonious martyr's airs I put on about coming down here.

And they've made the poor man so revoltingly sanctimonious that one really can't feel sorry for him.

On this occasion he did not understand himself; if he had been a sanctimonious youngster he would have reproved his own seeming levity, but he was not so, and frankly felt himself restless and ill at ease.

What struck me was the total absence of any sanctimonious air about the old fellow, he was quite worldly and jocose; I suppose he knew that his position was secure, and thought his dirt and nakedness proved his holiness enough.

The sanctimonious woman accepted as facts these hints, which unluckily were not merely hypothetical, and Madame de Granville was stricken as by a thunderbolt.

People shudder at the very thought of such unmentionable things: but there are circles in society in which such sanctimonious shuddering is a mighty thin veil of hypocrisy.

Where there was so much sanctimonious talk about religion, and such an utter absence of it in those that prated the most of its possession.

Who can prove, nay, venture to insinuate, any such systematic roguery against a man hitherto so strict, so punctual, so sanctimonious?

Moreover, he had scarcely reached middle life, and was, or had been, a handsome man, so that, when he chose to dress decently and put on a sanctimonious look (which he could do with much facility), he seemed quite a respectable personage.

"Histrionic academies" tried to sneak in on the stage; and in 1762 a clever manager gave an entertainment whose playbill I present as the most amusing example of specious and sanctimonious truckling extant.

The hookah kept for occasions of this sort was brought in, and Gerrard took a whiff himself, then passed the mouthpiece to his guests, but it was politely refused, with a sanctimonious glance at the servants.

He saw that sanctimonious hypocrisy and self-righteous formalism had sheltered themselves behind clouds of incense.

Gone was the sanctimonious unction of his former behavior; the ruthless savage glared out of the red eyes, the flattened fingers were twisting and curling.

Sanctimonious reflections upon the superiority of Anglo-Saxon morals are the response to the urgent question of venereal diseases as a by-product of war.

This contriver of miracles, of a countenance at once sanctimonious, artful and sly, preceded other prelates carrying banners.

After that I was sent away traveling with a tutor, a sanctimonious fellow who urged me into all the devilment the Continent could provide, so that he might really enjoy himself.

James himself, who by nature was a spirited rather than a spiritual man, had no liking for sanctimonious transcendentalists, visionaries, or ascetics; he hated minds that run thin.

I had had no idea that the sanctimonious deacon had dared to raise his hypocritical eyes to Paula; and this suggested the thought that I might probably have been equally dim of sight in another quarter.

This pretence of innocence, in the opinion of the Reverend Grievous, was a wickedness exceeding all his other misdeeds; and the sanctimonious gentleman suggested the remedy, of having Dick beaten into confession and repentance!

He's just the same old narrow-minded, sanctimonious prig he always was!

I suppose, as Bob says, I must have become straitlaced and sanctimonious; but I hate to look upon it in that light.

It's true her husband was the most sanctimonious prig I've ever met in my life.

This pudding-faced, sanctimonious, yet merciless judge had listened to the heart-broken appeals of the victims, raising their manacled hands to heaven for that justice denied them upon earth.

"I shall now depart," essayed the German, swaying not too steadily before the bar, and raising his glass, "to become sanctimonious and good," and drained his glass.

Luckily she was not an old leaky vessel, overladen and heavily insured; one which the sanctimonious owners desired to see at the bottom, and which the captain did not care to save.

Beware lest it come so late that the prayers of yonder sanctimonious marquise avail you nothing.

No sinful zephyrs presumed to dally with the straight locks, plastered with such puritanical precision over his diminutive head; his mouth had a sanctimonious drawing down at the corners, and his voice was a cross between a groan and a wail.

Not that there was any cause for the bleating of sanctimonious platitudes, or the pointing of a proverb.

The words in their mouths imply sanctimonious pretension, and a certain Pharisaical and even hypocritical scrupulousness.

In Werner's writings we have exactly this same mixture of impudent lust and sanctimonious mystery; and we know that with Werner's mother it became a fixed idea that she was the Virgin Mary and her son the Savior of the world.

The first produces exclusively sanctimonious religiosity and gives edifying moral precepts.

It was not in human nature that William Gifford should withhold his hand from turning out some neat lines taking off the sanctimonious and pretentious cobbler, and so revenging himself for slights and insults many.

I maintain that what sanctimonious fools call filthy lucre may be a potent element of morality.

Considering that Confucius's only remark on the subject was that the man was no braggart, probably few of us except sanctimonious pedants would say that either the sage or his hero was guilty of an act or a word that was in any way discreditable.

Janet blue and still, Kelly heavily anxious, Cornelia sweetly sanctimonious, such was the curious tableau that Robert saw when he came in, his slender frame and vigorous movements forming a direct contrast to the static spectacle before him.

They hold like robbers the offices which they have obtained as sycophants, and cover all with the sanctimonious veil of religious hypocrisy.

He smiled apologetically, but there was a faint twinkle in his eye which palliated the somewhat sanctimonious expression of the lower part of his face.

Franklin was unmoved by any sanctimonious hankering to improve the heathen, or by any romantic anxiety to ease into the mud of barbarism.

The repulsive contrast too often seen between sanctimonious professions and unscrupulous conduct contributed to the disenchantment.

His look was humble and sanctimonious, and, either from tenderness of heart or of eyes, he had a weeping look about him, which those who knew him believed to increase greatly under reiterated tumblers of brandy and water.

He even knows what man should be like, does this sanctimonious prig: he draws his own face on the wall and declares: "ecce homo!"

Sir Stamford Raffles says "they are commonly nothing better than manumitted slaves, and they hold like robbers the offices they obtain as sycophants, and cover all with the sanctimonious veil of religious hypocrisy."

I never saw man, woman, or child, reckless young scapegrace, or sanctimonious old preacher among them, who would refuse it; and the most had no hesitancy in begging it whenever they could.

A shapeless, waddling woman, the duchess, with a sanctimonious voice.

An undersized, sanctimonious person, with a smooth upper lip and a tuft on his chin, carrying a covered basket, was approaching from the driveway.

When I was a policeman I became acquainted with the dirty habits of many of this class, and I felt so angry with them that when I would meet them going along the street during the day with their sanctimonious faces I would feel like slapping them.

And if she bore so patiently with his whims and crotchets, not none of the credit must be given to this sanctimonious Spelling-Book.

Threatening to expose him as a blackmailer got right through his sanctimonious guard.

If you ask for a reason, the only answer you get is: they were superstitious, bigots, sanctimonious humbugs!

I do not mean to say that no Greek or Roman was ever a sanctimonious hypocrite, still, sanctimoniousness does not readily enter into our notions of Greeks and Romans and it does so enter into our notions of the old Hebrews.

In fine, I can say that nothing is developed there but a long face and a sanctimonious soberness.

This was also the same sanctimonious Roberts, who, as has been brought out in the chapters on the Astor fortune, joined with John Jacob Astor and others in signing a testimonial certifying to the honesty of the Tweed Regime.

They were whispering, too, among themselves, and she knew that they were speaking of Nathan in the sanctimonious tone which they had consecrated to missionaries who had died at their posts or to distinguished generals of the Confederacy.

No longer is Prussia labeled hypocritical and sanctimonious; it is rather accused of rude frankness and insulting tactlessness.

They take it as so absolutely at their free disposal, by a right so exclusively vested in their taste and will, that a demand made even in behalf of their own most important interests, is contemptuously repelled as a sanctimonious impertinence.

Instead of shrinking from the encounter, my brow contracted increasing indignation; and my voice grew louder, as I stood forth the champion of chaste virginity and sanctimonious wedlock!

He had intended to stay a few days with his grandfather, but he was tired and irritated from a rough crossing, and quite unwilling to stand a subtle and sanctimonious browbeating.