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Disavowal   Listen
noun
Disavowal  n.  The act of disavowing, disclaiming, or disowning; rejection and denial. "An earnest disavowal of fear often proceeds from fear."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Disavowal" Quotes from Famous Books



... von Tirpitz, creator of the submarine policy, will oppose any disavowal of the action of German's submarines. But the Kaiser is expected to approve the steps the Chancellor and Foreign Secretary contemplate taking, swinging the balance in favour of von Bethmann-Hollweg's contention that ships in the future must be ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman

... he was notified by me, and my friend from Pennsylvania (Mr. Morris) announced on the floor, that this resolution was regarded by me as a menace, and, if withdrawn, would lead to a frank avowal, or disavowal. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... that the Confederate government would disavow the action of their commanding general at the Fort Pillow massacre, I have forborne to issue any instructions to the colored troops as to the course they should pursue toward Confederate soldiers. No disavowal on the part of the Confederate government having been made, but, on the contrary, laudations from the entire Southern press of the perpetrators of the massacre, I may safely presume that indiscriminate slaughter is to ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... unjustifiable as to constitute a truly terrible example of the inhumanity of submarine warfare as the commanders of German vessels have for the past twelvemonth been conducting it. If this instance stood alone, some explanation, some disavowal by the German Government, some evidence of criminal mistake or wilful disobedience on the part of the commander of the vessel that fired the torpedo might be sought or entertained; but unhappily it does not stand alone. Recent ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson

... (3) The idea, not merely of the sphericity of the earth, but an explicit conception of the antipodes, is expressed. (4) A conception of the sanitary influence of the air is clearly expressed. (5) An idea of the problems of generation and heredity is shown, together with a distinct disavowal of the doctrine of spontaneous generation—a doctrine which, it may be added, remained in vogue, nevertheless, for some twenty-four hundred years after the time of Pythagoras. (6) A remarkable analysis of mind is made, and ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... negotiation was now removed to Madrid, and, in September, Mr. Harris was directed to demand, from Grimaldi, the Spanish minister, the restitution of Falkland's island, and a disavowal of Buccarelli's hostilities. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... by Burke, and many of the opposition harangued in its favour. Ministers, however, opposed such a step, on the ground that this inquiry into grievances had been proffered only to those who should return to their duty, and hence a disavowal of independence, and an acknowledgment of British supremacy were requisite, before any measures of reconciliation could be adopted by Great Britain. On a division the motion was lost by a majority of one hundred and nine ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... writer really believes is a very good description indeed. 'T is ever thus, and thus 't will ever be, and the description of these songs is so good that any person gifted with imagination or poetry cannot fail to smile at the preceding disavowal of her ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... Endicott approached the crucial difficulty—the choice of a new teacher—with all the wariness of a practised committee-man, laying his innocent parallels and bringing up his guns under cover of a pleasant disavowal to which the three Dissenters responded with "Hear, hear!" John Rosewarne listened not at all, nor to the fence of debate that followed as Church and Dissent grew heated and their friction struck out the familiar sparks— 'sectarian,' 'undoctrinal,' ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... now, say a word about insurrection" are to be found, and my learned friend, Mr. Gurney, suggested to you that it was an excitement, at some future period, to insurrection. I, gentlemen, repeat that these words are not only no excitement to insurrection, but an express disavowal of it. If you infer that he means insurrection at any future time, you must also suppose that the insurrection he contemplates is conditional, and in speculation of conduct in the government that may justify it. Is there any ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper

... Mellor, had first of all given his great-aunt the news of the coroner's verdict, and had then gone on to break to her the putting-off of the marriage. His championship of Marcella in the matter, and his disavowal of all grievance were so quiet and decided, that Miss Raeburn had been only able to allow herself a very modified strain of comment and remonstrance, so long as he was still there to listen. But she was all the more outspoken when he was gone, and Lady Winterbourne was sitting ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... They were instructed, in case they were not received and welcomed as the messengers of Christ, to show their just displeasure as they departed from the place, by shaking off the dust from their feet, an Oriental custom which in this case indicated the disavowal of any possible relationship with ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman

... am informed that Mr. Moore published at the time a disavowal of the statements in the newspapers, as far as regarded himself; and, in justice to him, I mention this circumstance. As I never heard of it before, I cannot state the particulars, and was only made acquainted with the fact very lately. November ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... John gathered around Him, filled with the idea that He was the Messiah come to lead them to victory and triumph. But He disappointed them by His calm, simple manner, and His disavowal of royal claims. "What seek ye of me?" he asked them, and many, abashed, left His circle and returned to the crowd. But a few humble souls remained and around these few gathered a few more, until at last a little band of faithful students was formed—the first ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka

... a pretty speech to me, but, as usual, the disavowal was not slow in coming. Fortunately, here comes your friend Lenaieff, who is hastening to make ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... affecting an unconsciousness of language used by his party little suited to his own sacred calling, or to the noble simplicities of Christianity. Certainly it is unhappy for the Seceders, that the only disavowal of the most fiendish sentiments heard in our days, has come from an individual not authorized, or at all commissioned by his party—from an individual not showing any readiness to face the whole charges, disingenuously dissembling the worst of them, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... hardly dared to hope that we should have obtained such a victory as we have done. To have disavowed the illegal transaction at once,—before any demand came from England,—to have placed that disavowal on the broad ground of principle which we have always cherished, and thus with a clear conscience, and to our entire honor, to have kept ourselves clear from a war which must have given the Confederacy the invincible alliance of England,—was exactly ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... happened upon which it is difficult to speak and impossible to be silent. My Lords, I have been disavowed by those who sent me here to represent them. My Lords, I have been disavowed in a material part of that engagement which I had pledged myself to this House to perform. My Lords, that disavowal has been followed by a censure. And yet, my Lords, so censured and so disavowed, and by such an authority, I am sent here again, to this the place of my offence, under the same commission, by the same authority, to make good the same charge, against ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... officers who took part in this transaction a subject of grave complaint. Regarding Koszta as still his subject, and claiming a right to seize him within the limits of the Turkish Empire, he has demanded of this Government its consent to the surrender of the prisoner, a disavowal of the acts of its agents, and satisfaction for the alleged outrage. After a careful consideration of the case I came to the conclusion that Koszta was seized without legal authority at Smyrna; that he was wrongfully detained on board of the Austrian brig of war; that at the time of his seizure ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson

... when she found that Becky was trading on her connection with the democratic-aristocratic spinster to make her way into the Faubourg St. Germain. Too impatient to write in French, the old lady posted off a furious disavowal of the little adventuress in vigorous vernacular, but, adds the author, as Madame la Duchesse had only passed twenty years in England, she didn't understand one word. It may be hoped that the new Academician will, in conjunction with the new ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... mistaken, it'll help a lot. Public disavowal of your engagement to Bayard will be likely to bring Shaynon's affairs to a crisis. I firmly believe they're hard pressed for money—that it wasn't consolidation of two going-concerns for mutual advantage, but the finding of new capital for a moribund ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... for a disavowal of engagements formed by diplomatic functionaries in cases where by the terms of the engagements a mutual ratification is reserved, or where notice at the time may have been given of a departure from instructions, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... Rawlins fished on, to find out from her either a confirmation or disavowal of my story—Was Lord M. my uncle? Did I court her at first with the allowance of her friends, her brother excepted? Had I a rencounter with that brother? Was she so persecuted in favour of a very disagreeable man, one Solmes, as to induce her to throw herself ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... of August the governor informed the secretary that he should call, in a peremptory manner, on all the tribes, to deliver up such of their people as had been concerned in the murder of our citizens; that from the Miamis he should require an absolute disavowal of all connection with the Prophet; and that to all the tribes he would repeat the declaration, that the United States have manifested through a series of years, the utmost justice and generosity towards their ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake

... written, and of his unfitness for the ambitious task he has undertaken. He quotes the following passage from Collins's "Historical Sketches of Kentucky":—"Before Mr. Clay took any active part as the counsel of Burr, he required of him an explicit disavowal, [avowal,] upon his honor, that he was engaged in no design contrary to the laws and peace of the country. This pledge was promptly given by Burr, in language the most broad, comprehensive, and particular. He had no design, he said, to intermeddle with or disturb the tranquillity of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... beginning of his attempts to obtain from Germany a disavowal for the sinking of the Lusitania and a promise not to sink without warning, the President took his stand upon high ground. Not merely did he insist upon the rights guaranteed to neutrals by the law of nations; he took the controversy out of the class of ordinary ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... that he did not hasten, behind pyramidal blushes, into the shelter of a general disavowal. The cassock seemed to cover an obligation ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... of Fabricius of Meissen (August 24, 1556), Flacius made a further effort, addressing Melanchthon in a letter of September 1, 1556, in which he implored him to make his peace with God and the Church by an unequivocal disavowal of Adiaphorism. As a result, Melanchthon wrote his famous letter of September 5, 1556, referred to in our chapter on the Adiaphoristic Controversy, in which he admitted in a qualified way that he had sinned in the matter. In his reply ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... supply. Moreover, it began to be obvious that the aid of foreign powers would be desirable; and their intervention, if to be obtained at all, could not be solicited or hoped for, without the most explicit disavowal of an intention to reestablish a traffic which had already been denounced as infamous and piratical by the leading powers of the world. The rebels, therefore, were compelled by the exigencies of their condition to prohibit the slave trade in their permanent constitution. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... countries permitted themselves to load their adversaries. It is remarkable that there is no trace of the divines who attended this unfortunate man having exhorted him to a particular repentance of his manifesto, or having called for a retraction or disavowal of the accusations contained in it. They were so intent upon points more immediately connected with orthodoxy of faith, that they omitted pressing their penitent to the only declaration by which he could make any satisfactory atonement to those whom ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox

... outlined; I tested the conduct there given as I should have tested the conduct of any ordinary historical character; I noted that in the Synoptics no claim to Deity was made by Jesus himself, nor suggested by his disciples; I weighed his own answer to an enquirer, with its plain disavowal of Godhood: "Why callest thou me good? There is none good save one, that is God" (Matt, xix., 17); I conned over his prayers to "my Father", his rest on divine protection, his trust in a power greater than his own; I noted his ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... for the future temple. When the time comes for the proud and stately edifice to stand on the purified place, and for the living divinity of the new belief to erect his throne upon it, I, the modest digger of dung, will go to him and say: 'Here am I who restlessly crawled in the dust of disavowal. When surrounded by fog and soot, I had no time to raise my eyes from the ground; my head had only a vague conception of the future building. Will you reject me, you just one, Just, and ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... villain I am deemed, the service rendered So recently would not permit you to Pursue me to the death, except through shame, Such as would leave your scutcheon but a blank. But this is nothing: I demand of you 230 Justice upon your unjust servants, and From your own lips a disavowal of All sanction of their insolence: thus much You owe to the unknown, who asks no more, And never thought ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... engage, I'll answer for it, I'll be bound, I'll venture to say, I'll take my oath; in fact, forsooth, joking apart; so help me God; not to mince the matter. Phr. quoth he; dixi[Lat]. 536. Negation. — N. negation, abnegation; denial; disavowal, disclaimer; abjuration; contradiction, contravention; recusation[obs3][Law], protest; recusancy &c (dissent) 489; flat contradiction, emphatic contradiction, emphatic denial, dementi[Lat]. qualification &c 469; repudiation &c 610; retraction ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... were kind to him. They cautioned him not to attack Popery, but to leave the Bible to speak for itself. The caution was vain, but in spite of the harm done to Borrow and themselves they recalled Graydon with but a qualified disavowal of his conduct. Borrow did not conceal from the Society his opinion that this man, with his "lunatic vagaries," had been the "evil genius" of the Bible cause and of himself. The incident did no good to the already bickering relations between ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... very base that no acts of theirs can be called high, even as a description of criminality; and the Assembly, in accepting, proclaiming, and publishing this forged alliance, has been guilty of a plain aggression, which would justify our court in demanding a direct disavowal, if our policy should not lead us to wink ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the Christian Evidence Society, in their street preaching, made the foulest accusations against me of personal immorality. Remonstrances addressed to the Rev. Mr. Engstroem, the secretary of the society, brought voluble protestations of disavowal and disapproval; but as the peccant agents were continued in their employment, the apologies were of small value. No accusation was too coarse, no slander too baseless, for circulation by these men; ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... bitterly weeping sat and leaned my head Against the hopeless hated massiveness Of that detested hold. A lifting moon Had made encroachment on the dark, but deep Was shadow where I leaned. Within a while I was aware, but saw no shape, of one Who stood beside me, a dark shadow tall. I cared not, disavowal mattered nought Of grief to one so out of love with life. But after pause I felt a hand let down That rested kindly, firmly, a man's hand, Upon my shoulder; there was cheer in it. And presently a voice clear, whispering, ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow

... recollected that the words which she had used when her son was coming into the room might have betrayed her. On the other hand, it was not certain that he had heard them. She hesitated. From the shame of a disavowal, which would have answered no purpose, but to sink her lower in her son's opinion, she was, however, saved by ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... by saving from the general conflagration the FUTURE WHICH IS WITHIN YOU. To each word of hatred uttered by the combatants, make answer by an act of kindness and love toward all the victims. Let your simple presence show a calm disavowal of errant passions; make of yourselves onlookers whose luminous and compassionate gaze compels us to blush at our own unreason. Amid war, be the living embodiment of peace. Be the undying Antigone, who renounces hatred, and who makes ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland

... proposed by Auguste Comte for the malady of the modern world; this is his revolutionary scheme for the establishment of society on such a basis as would conduce to progress. It involves, as may be seen, the disavowal of the belief in God and king; the substitution of a republic for a monarchy, and of humanity for God. Comte conceived religion as the concentration of the three great altruistic affections, namely, of reverence towards that which is above us; of love towards that which helps and sustains us, ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... his disavowal of any thought that her gift was a penitential act. He confessed that he had been concerned for Phil's future; and that so far he had not been able to provide for her in case of his death. This brought him to Amzi, whose ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... with his duty, or with the truth, he went immediately to the King's minister, the Duke of Otranto; reproached him severely with having compromised the committee and declared, that he would not quit his house, till he had obtained a formal disavowal of it. The minister protested, that the article was not written by him; and consented to ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... intentions;" to further require them to cause such of their warriors as had joined the Prophet to immediately return to their tribes, or be put out of their protection. Of the Miamis he would demand an absolute disavowal of all further connection with the Prophet, and a disapprobation of his continued occupancy of their lands. All the tribes were to be reminded of the lenity, justice and continued consideration of the ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... second time, he kept out of sight till accident betrayed him to the police, and he was then thrown into prison. In spite of threats, promises, and blows, he there maintained his resolution, refused to save his life by a fresh disavowal of Christianity, and was finally decapitated in one of the most frequented parts of the city ...
— Correspondence Relating to Executions in Turkey for Apostacy from Islamism • Various

... faith in his own acuteness. The matter had, to Dr Grantly, been so plainly corroborated by such patent evidence, borne out by such endless circumstances, that he at first refused to take as true the positive statement which Mr Harding made to him of Eleanor's own disavowal of the impeachment. But at last he yielded in a qualified way. He brought himself to admit that he would at the present regard his past convictions as a mistake; but in doing this he so guarded himself, that if, at any future time, Eleanor should come forth to ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... adorer by her stern aunt or duenna, and that he considered himself to be doing her a kindness by keeping her informed of her hero's vicinity, while he denied it to her companion; but she scorned to enter into an explanation, or make any disavowal, and found the few displeased words she spoke were received with compassion, as at the dictation ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... considerations. Upon the proclamation followed a despatch from Madison to Monroe, July 6, which opened with the just words, "This enormity is not a subject for discussion," and then proceeded to discuss at length. Demand was to be made, most properly, for a formal disavowal, and for the restoration of the seamen to the ship. This could have been formulated in six lines, and had it stood alone could scarcely have been refused; but to it was attached indissolubly an extraneous requirement. "As a security for the future, an entire abolition of impressment ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... hands in Manuscript, and I think I have prevented both their Printing. The first Was advertised in the Gazette here and Called the Scots atalantis[8] ... The Other Pamphlet is called Atalantis Major." The letter concludes with a short description of the work, a disavowal of any knowledge of its authorship, and the hope that he can suppress ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe

... international life. Here too conduct is based upon estimation of effects, freedom is relative to and subordinate to economic values. A theory of the state takes precedence over all subjective ethical principles, and there must be a disavowal of all native sentiments and judgments as regards justice which issue from an appreciation of the worth of personality and other fundamental human values and possessions; and all common human sentiments which would stand in the ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... Mrs. Allen in a state of irreconcilable dislike, and the door was for ever barred against her. This exclusion she resented with so much bitterness as to refuse any legacy from Pope, unless he left the world with a disavowal of obligation to Allen. Having been long under her dominion, now tottering in the decline of life, and unable to resist the violence of her temper, or, perhaps, with a prejudice of a lover, persuaded that she had suffered improper treatment, he complied ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... openly avowed the act. This has brought on the most extraordinary memorial of Sir Joseph Yorke to the States-General, which, perhaps, any foreign Minister ever made to an independent State; calling for their open disavowal of the conduct of the Regency; censuring them as a mad cabal, ever ready to sacrifice the public interests to private views, aiding the natural enemy (France) of both countries in destroying their mutual happiness; and it demands of the States-General also, an exemplary punishment of the Pensionary, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various

... Serbia they must pass over fifty miles of neutral Greek territory. Venizelos, prime minister of Greece, gave them permission. King Constantine, to preserve his neutrality, disavowed the act of his representative, and Venizelos resigned. From the point of view of the Allies, the disavowal came too late. As soon as they had received permission from the recognized Greek Government, they started, and, leaving the King and Venizelos to fight it out between them, landed at Salonika. The inhabitants received them calmly. The Greek officials, the colonel ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis

... caught, that by far the greater part of them entertained the sentiments of the audacious sectary. Such, it is highly probable, were the sentiments of a majority of the government of the colony, notwithstanding their disavowal, afterwards, of all sympathy, with the act, and public censure of the bold Puritan. Not that a democratical feeling lurked therein, as some may fancy, but for the very reasons manfully proclaimed by Endicott—reasons, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... Notwithstanding the disavowal given by the German Ambassador at Petrograd to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, that the German Government had no knowledge of the text of the Austrian note before it was handed in, and did not exercise any influence on its contents, Mr. Beck ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck

... any from him. And as for the copy of my letter to the French king, I pray God confound me eternally, if ever I sent him word, message, token, or letter, by any means." With respect to the last clause of this disavowal, it may be fit to observe, that there is indeed no proof that Elizabeth ever returned any answer to the letters or messages of the French king; but that it seems a well-authenticated fact, that during some period of her adversity Henry II. made her the offer of an asylum in France. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... body, perhaps the majority of citizens, disapprove, but I fear there will not be public disavowal. Even N. Wright but faintly opposes, and Dr. Fore has been exceedingly violent. Mr. Hammond (editor of the 'Gazette') in a very dignified and judicious manner has condemned the whole thing, and Henry has opposed, but otherwise the papers have either been silent or in favor of mobs. We ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... is no need to blush for a passion so glorious, nor to seek means of making a disavowal of it; a laudable [sense of] shame in vain solicits thee; thy honor is redeemed, and thy duty performed; thy father is satisfied, and it was to avenge him that thou didst so often place thy Rodrigo in danger. Thou seest how heaven otherwise ordains. ...
— The Cid • Pierre Corneille

... a suspected heretic, inasmuch as bodily seizure was the exclusive prerogative of the officers of the crown. The judges of this supreme court had summoned to their bar a bishop, and his "official," or vicar, and had exacted from them an explicit disavowal of any intention to arrest, in the case of a person whom they had merely detained, as they asserted, until such time as they could deliver him into the hands of a competent civil officer.[262] And it had become a maxim of French jurisprudence, that "an inquisitor ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... to be submitted. Her smile, however, on such occasions, was a melancholy one, and the secret tears she shed might prove, as they did to her brother, who was alone privy to her grief, the extent of those terrors which, notwithstanding her disavowal of them, wrung her soul so bitterly. Day after day her spirits became more and more depressed, till, as the crisis of Connor's fate arrived, the roses had altogether flown ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... that was not good enough for a woman who could bring her husband neither fortune, beauty, nor connections. I saw plainly how you would look; and heard your impetuous republican answers, and your haughty disavowal of any necessity on your part to augment your wealth, or elevate your standing, by marrying either a purse ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... those elegant amusements, which, during the usurpation, had been condemned as heathenish, or punished as appertaining especially to the favourers of royalty. To frequent them, therefore, became a badge of loyalty, and a virtual disavowal of those puritanic tenets which all now agreed in condemning. The taste of the restored monarch also was decidedly in favour of the drama. At the foreign courts, which it had been his lot to visit, the theatre was the chief entertainment; and as amusement was always his principal pursuit, it cannot ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... Sir, permit me to lodge my disavowal and defiance of these slanderous falsehoods. BURNS was a poor man from birth, and an exciseman by necessity: but I will say it! the sterling of his honest worth, no poverty could debase, and his independent British mind, oppression might bend, but ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... in her cousin Mary's dominions, and that, unless they would, in the presence of the foreign embassadors at her court, disavow her having done so, she could not help them or countenance them in any way. The miserable men, being reduced to a hard extremity, made this disavowal. Elizabeth then said to them, "Now you have told the truth. Neither I, nor any one else in my name, incited you against your queen; and your abominable treason may set an example to my own subjects to rebel against ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... not said all there was to be said in the Lusitania notes? But there was no doubt that the press correctly divined what was passing through his mind, and the press said that, short of a satisfactory explanation from Germany, made in a proper spirit, accompanied by a disavowal of the deed, a break in diplomatic relations was inevitable. But the onus was on Germany to speak before the Administration took action, which could not take the form of another protest. The situation had grown beyond the stage of protests. They ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... uninformed, at the terrible interview with his wife, of the purpose which her assumption of a widow's dress really had in view, Midwinter's first vague suspicions of her fidelity had now inevitably developed into the conviction that she was false. He could place but one interpretation on her open disavowal of him, and on her taking the name under which he had secretly married her. Her conduct forced the conclusion on him that she was engaged in some infamous intrigue; and that she had basely secured herself beforehand in the position of all ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... Besides, it was not an easy matter to explain, especially to a girl like her. With a married woman or a widow it would have been a simple thing enough. But Ethel Leigh, the minister's daughter—innocent, ignorant, passionate—she would tolerate nothing short of a public disavowal and discontinuance of my relations with Mrs. Murray, and that, of course, I could not consent to, though heaven knows (and so must Ethel, by this time) that Mrs. Murray was nothing to me save as she was the wife of my friend, ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne

... solemnization of the marriage could be proved by witnesses present at the ceremony, this view of the case, which seemed to promise an interruption of the Succession, could not fail to suggest some disquieting apprehensions and speculations, which nothing short, it was thought, of a public and authentic disavowal of the marriage altogether would ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... here—it comes near to being ridicule, in fact, for seeming to jump at Bernstorff's unfrank assurances. And, as I have telegraphed the President, English opinion is—well, it is very nearly disrespectful. Men say here (I mean our old friends) that with no disavowal of the Lusitania, the Falaba, the Gulflight, or the Arabic or of the Hesperian, the Germans are "stuffing" Uncle Sam, that Uncle Sam is in the clutches of the peace-at-any-price public opinion, that the United States will suffer any ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick

... consequence of it, declares he has no intention to intermeddle with force in the affairs of Holland, and that he will entertain hostile views in no quarter, for what has been done there. He disavows having ever had any intention to interpose with force in the affairs of that republic. This disavowal begins the sentence, which acknowledges he had notified the contrary to the court of London, and it includes no apology to soothe the feelings which may be excited in the breasts of the Patriots of Holland, at hearing the King declare he never did ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... of subdued passion roused him now to earnestness, and he framed a disavowal of the worst she might have imagined. He could calm her fears at once, and the lines in his face relaxed at the thought that it was in his power to ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... Valencia," the letter continues, rather inconsistently, in the light of the assurance in the early part that recall would be the punishment for another such lapse into indiscretion, "you must not expect anything beyond a qualified disavowal of it, and that simply as unbecoming an Agent of ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... this moderate and wise address produced a general sensation of relief; for the earl's disavowal of the revolt took away all hope of its success. But the common approbation was not shared by Hilyard. He sprang upon the table, and, seizing the broken fragments of the truncheon, which the earl had snapped as a willow twig, exclaimed, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... artistic life, with its inevitable sensuousness.—I did but taste a little honey with the end of the rod that was in mine hand, and lo, I must die!—It has sometimes seemed hard to pursue that life without something of conscious disavowal of a spiritual world; and this imparts to genuine artistic interests a kind of intoxication. From this intoxication Winckelmann is free; he fingers those pagan marbles with unsinged hands, with no sense of shame or loss. That is to deal with the sensuous ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... of a simple minded girl like Jenny Lawson, a deep impression. New impulses were given to her feelings, and a new direction to her thoughts. Nature told her that Mark Clifford loved her; and nothing but his cold disavowal of the fact could possibly have affected this belief. He had met her, it was true, only three or four times; but their interviews during these meetings had been of a character to leave no ordinary effect behind. So long ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur

... lecture was a little discursive, I fancy for my especial benefit, and summarized Mr. Burns' system, which is to a great extent original. Beginning by a disavowal of all dogmas, he began by advancing what was to me the entirely novel doctrine, that the brain was not the sole organ of the mind, but that the whole organism of man had to be taken into account ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... appears to me uncommonly weak in logic. But as Mr. Buckle's views have been given to the world, with whatever weight may be derived from their publication in this magazine, it is no more than just and necessary that through the same channel there should be conveyed another contributor's strong disavowal of them, and keen protest against them. I do not intend to argue against Mr. Buckle's opinions. This is not the time or place for such an undertaking. And Mr. Buckle, in his article, has not argued but dogmatically asserted, and then called hard names ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... in the chapel, and both satisfied him far better than what he had seen among the French Calninists; and the peace and family affection of the two houses were like a new world to him. But he had not yet made up his mind to that absolute disavowal of his own branch of the Church, which alone could have rendered him eligible for any foundation at Oxford. His attainments in classics would, Mr. Adderley thought, reach such a standard as to gain one of the very few scholarships open to foreigners; and his noble blood ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... agreed what is the end. Sainte-Beuve speaks of it as an attempted suicide of the hero—the most justifiable of all his actions, if he had succeeded. Prevost himself, in the Preface to the Doyen de Killerine, repeats an earlier disavowal (which he says he had previously made in Holland) of a fifth volume, and says that his own work ended with the murder of Cleveland by one of the characters. Again, this is a comprehensible and almost excusable action, and might have followed, though it could ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury



Words linked to "Disavowal" :   disavow, abjuration, disclaimer, retraction, denial



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