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Falsehood   Listen
noun
Falsehood  n.  
1.
Want of truth or accuracy; an untrue assertion or representation; error; misrepresentation; falsity. "Though it be a lie in the clock, it is but a falsehood in the hand of the dial when pointing at a wrong hour, if rightly following the direction of the wheel which moveth it."
2.
A deliberate intentional assertion of what is known to be untrue; a departure from moral integrity; a lie.
3.
Treachery; deceit; perfidy; unfaithfulness. "Betrayed by falsehood of his guard."
4.
A counterfeit; a false appearance; an imposture. "For his molten image is falsehood." "No falsehood can endure Touch of celestial temper."
Synonyms: Falsity; lie; untruth; fiction; fabrication. See Falsity.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Falsehood" Quotes from Famous Books



... I was close by and heard every word. She was trying to shield me. I told her that I could be put in jail if anybody knew what I had done. I tempted the poor, loyal, loving little soul to tell the first falsehood that ever soiled her tongue. It was a wicked—a vile—a mean thing in me! I loathe myself when I think of it. Oh, Namesake!"—encircling me suddenly with her arm—"we will ask God together to forgive us. I am the ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... her that no woman possessed his love but her. Oh, what falsehood and deceit man can put on when ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown

... Osiris, Belus, Minerva, and the Queen of Heaven. Therefore, to speak briefly, it may appear very difficult to show that art has ever yet existed in a consistent and thoroughly energetic school, unless it was engaged in the propagation of falsehood, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... the study of Nature as the foundation of Art; and in the place of Nature, they had put other men's pictures. They had substituted a system of conventional rules and traditional methods, for the infinite variety and the unceasing study of truth. They preferred falsehood, they liked imitation, and their patrons soon came to consider the feeble results of falsehood and imitation as better than honest work and strong originality. Of course, here and there was a man whose native ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... not; by the gods, You dare not. All your family combin'd In one damn'd falsehood, to ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway

... home," said Arthur, blushing at the falsehood he stooped to utter; "I would really like to ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa

... A miracle is counter to universal experience, no event is counter to universal experience, therefore no event is a miracle. If you produce evidence to what Hume calls a miracle (we shall see examples) he replies that the evidence is not valid, unless its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact. Now no error of human evidence can be more miraculous than a 'miracle.' Therefore there can be no valid evidence for 'miracles.' Fortunately, Hume now gives an example of what he means ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... in it; and his immediate hope of her having been undisturbed by the tempest, with an arch reference to the character of the building they inhabited, was rather distressing. For the world would she not have her weakness suspected, and yet, unequal to an absolute falsehood, was constrained to acknowledge that the wind had kept her awake a little. "But we have a charming morning after it," she added, desiring to get rid of the subject; "and storms and sleeplessness are nothing when ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... and the passengers on board saw it as well as I, and yet you tell me you are that Sinbad. What impudence is this! To look at you, one would take you to be a man of honesty, and yet you tell a horrible falsehood, in order to possess yourself of what ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon

... first capital sin was committed in the church, in the conspiracy and falsehood {23} of Ananias and Sapphira, Peter's question is: "Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?" "How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Holy Ghost?" Not only is the personal presence of the Spirit in the body of believers thus distinctly recognized, but ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon

... here. I must have time to look this monstrous falsehood in the face and prepare for ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... private mark by which it was to be identified. That evening, at the inspection of arms, it was found in the hands of another cadet, who, when taxed with his offence, endeavoured to shield himself by falsehood. Jackson's anger was unbounded, and for the moment his habitual shyness completely disappeared. He declared that such a creature should not continue a member of the Academy, and demanded that he should be tried by court-martial and expelled. It was only ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... was in a passion, and gave me a blow. The lady said something to him about his improper conduct, and he said that I was such a careless little rascal, that he lost all patience with me. That hurt me a great deal more than the blow. It was a falsehood, and he knew it; but he wanted to excuse himself. I felt that I was going into a passion, too, but I thought of what you are always telling me about patience and forbearance, and I kept down my passion; I know he ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur

... folks meant everything they said? And looking into her broadly-smiling face and unscrupulous eyes, Darby Dene had his first lesson in the meaning of deceit. He there and then began to realize that there are people in the world to whom falsehood comes easy, who think little or nothing ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur

... 'evidently,' 'forsooth.' [574] 'You have many opportunities;' consequently the same as magnam opportunitatem. See Zumpt, S 756. [575] Demittere in pectus, 'to impress uponone's mind,' sibi persuadere. [576] This is a diplomatic falsehood, as hitherto Bocchus had committed no act of hostility towards Jugurtha, and had occupied no part of Numidia against his will; but it may be that Jugurtha had promised to give up to him a part of Numidia, if he should succeed in recovering the whole. ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)

... citadel, from which they fled unobserved during the night to Herbessus. The Syracusans, who had marched from home with eight thousand troops, were met at the river Myla by a messenger, who informed them that the city was taken. The rest which he stated was a mixture of truth and falsehood; he said that there had been an indiscriminate massacre of the soldiers and the townsmen, and that he did not think that one person who had arrived at puberty had survived; that the town had been pillaged, and the property of the rich ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... It is impossible to deny, that if interest is made the criterion by which the confidences of social intercourse are to be respected, the persons who admit this doctrine will have but little respect for the use of names, or deem it any reprehensible delinquency to suppress truth, or to blazon falsehood. In a word, man in London is not quite so good a creature as he is out of it. The rivalry of interests is here too intense; it impairs the affections, and occasions speculations both in morals and politics, which, ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt

... explain the falsehood of a gentleman, the betrayal of a friend, the treachery of ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... Mr. Dallas, to whom this threat of appealing to the people had been delivered, did not admit that the precise words had been used. Mr. Genet then, in the coarsest terms, averred the falsehood of the certificate which had been published, and demanded from the attorney general, and from the government, that Mr. Jay and Mr. King should be indicted for a libel upon himself and his nation. That officer accompanied his refusal to institute ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall

... with the daily life of his mistress. Moreover, his love of sincerity, not being disinterested, had not improved his character. The truth which he cherished was that which Odette would tell him; but he himself, in order to extract that truth from her, was not afraid to have recourse to falsehood, that very falsehood which he never ceased to depict to Odette as leading every human creature down to utter degradation. In a word, he lied as much as did Odette, because, while more unhappy than she, he was no less egotistical. And she, when she heard ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... promise that, when you had earned my if esteem, I would tell you—what no mortal knows—Ernest, my whole story? I delay the confession. It will cost me so many blushes, so many tears! And yet I hope, if you knew all, you would pity and forgive me. Meantime, did I ever tell you a falsehood?" ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade

... would have wished Jack Churchill's girl to grow—spirited and proud, with the fine spirit and gracious pride of pure womanhood, loyal and loving, with the loyalty and love of a frank and unspoiled nature; true to her heart's core, hating falsehood and sham—as crystal-clear a mirror of maidenhood as ever man looked into and saw himself reflected back in such a halo as made him ashamed of not being more worthy of it. Betty was kind enough to say that I had ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... have many more nights together here," she said—"many more blessed, blessed nights. The stillness of the hills is like all the truth of the world, sifted from the falsehood and made into one beautiful whole. Oh, Maurice, there is a Heaven on earth—when two people love each other in the midst of ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens

... and happy world. Ahriman instantly made deformity, impurity, and gloom, in opposition to it. All beauty, virtue, harmony, truth, blessedness, were the work of the former. All ugliness, vice, discord, falsehood, wretchedness, belonged to the latter. They grappled and mixed in a million hostile shapes. This universal battle is the ground of ethics, the clarion call to marshal out the hostile hosts of good and ill; and all other war is but a result ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... oft, in falsehood undismayed, Like heretics in flaming vest arrayed Each angry Don lifts high his injured head, Or 'stands between the living and the dead.' Still from St. Mary's pulpit echoes wide Primo, beware of truth, whate'er ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... said the Marquise, "with you I will be sincere. Alas! in future I can be sincere with no one; I am condemned to falsehood. The world requires continual grimaces, and we are bidden to obey its conventions if we would escape reproach. There are two kinds of motherhood, monsieur; once I knew nothing of such distinctions, but I know them now. Only half of me has become a mother; it were better for me if ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... the emigrants would depart with the pleasant assurance of being able to communicate with their friends at home—but the poorer classes in the mother-country would always hear the truth as to the prospects of emigrants; and not only the truth, but truth in which they would not suspect any falsehood.' He goes on to say, that the statements published about that time, by an emigration-board sitting in Downing Street, shewing what high wages were obtainable in the colonies, 'though perfectly true, have not been received with implicit ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various

... weeds, thistles and thorns is a benefactor, whether he soweth grain or not." I cannot for my life see why one should be charged with tearing down and not rebuilding simply because he exposes a sham, or detects a lie. I do not feel under any obligation to build something in the place of a detected falsehood. All I think I am under obligation to put in the place of a detected lie is the detection. Most religionists talk as if mistakes were valuable things and they did not wish to part with them without a consideration. ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... one day in conversation with me, haunted my imagination with a persistent suspicion of mystery. It had a familiar sound to me. It intimated knowledge of a world I knew so well; where ill-nature, malice, spite, envy, deceit, falsehood and dishonesty, ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley

... desert, met a woman standing alone and terribly dejected. He inquired of her, "Who art thou?" "My name is Truth," she replied. "And for what cause," he asked, "have you left the city to dwell alone here in the wilderness?" She made answer, "Because in former times, falsehood was with few, but is ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... together—must contract habits of coldness which the people whom she disconcerts call prudery. The power of modesty is so great that a tender woman betrays herself with her lover rather by deeds than by words. The evil of modesty is that it constantly leads to falsehood." ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... does me the honor to rank me with Lord Dunboyne, formerly titular Bishop of Cork, and with Mr. Kirwan. If they have changed their religion from a thorough conviction of its falsehood, they have done well. It is the duty of every sincere admirer after truth to comply with the immediate dictates of his conscience, in embracing that religion which he believes most acceptable to God. Deplorable, indeed, must be the state of the man who lives in wilful error. For, ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... father; for I tell you at this hour, when no one utters a falsehood, if my reputation was lost, my honor ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... since my mother answered the call of the Lord God; by thy side I have heard and seen thee deal in wise ways with all manner of men seeking profit, holy and unholy; and now I say, if indeed the young man be not the prince he claims to be, then before me falsehood never played so well the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... things. Indeed, she has already scanted the respect she owes you in uttering these words. As for herself, remain she here for an hour or for a month, she is in no danger of insult—unless she deem it an insult to have her base falsehood flung back at her, and the enmity in her fierce eyes answered with the ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... as deep draughts upon human credulity as were made by the Demonologists, against whose doctrine they protested. This error had a doubly bad effect, both as degrading the immediate department in which it occurred, and as affording a protection for falsehood in other branches of science. The champions who, in their own province, were obliged by the imperfect knowledge of the times to admit much that was mystical and inexplicable—those who opined, with Bacon, that warts could be cured by sympathy—who thought, with Napier, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... would be standing on your deck. No, no, that could not be done. Even now your ship would be taken from you were it not that Tararo has some feeling of gratitude towards you. But I know Tararo well. He is a man of falsehood, as all the unconverted savages are. The chief to whom he has promised this girl is very powerful, and Tararo must fulfil his promise. He has told you that he would do nothing to the girl for three days, but that is because the ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... diary [9] in which, during the last years of his life, he entered memoranda, ostensibly from which to compile his dispatches, there is conveyed more eloquently than by any laboured insistence the ceaseless fret of his guardianship and the impracticability which he experienced of sifting the truth or falsehood of the information on which his line of conduct was dependent. Incessantly do its pages recall, with elaborate care, the details of reported engagements and of reported manoeuvres of the enemy, supplied from some apparently unimpeachable source, and incessantly are such memoranda ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)

... richest and most important member of the party. After a single day's halt at Mioure, on they went to the town, and made their triumphal entry in September. Ivan found Maria Vorotinska a wife and mother, and his vanity was not much wounded by the falsehood. The ci-devant widow was a little astonished at Ivan's return, and particularly at his treasure of ivory: but she received his wife with politeness, a little tempered by her sense of her own superiority ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various

... honest man might drive one still young, and possibly repentant, into a career of crime. So this angel took up his pen and endorsed du Tillet's notes, telling him that he was heartily willing thus to oblige a lad who had been very useful to him. The blood rushed to his face as he uttered the falsehood. Du Tillet could not meet his eye, and no doubt vowed to him at that moment the undying hatred which the spirits of darkness feel towards the angels ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... employed every art of intrigue and diplomacy to protect itself in Washington. I wish to make plain that it was not by any superior cunning of negotiation that my mission succeeded. I undertook the task almost without instruction; I performed it without falsehood; I had nothing in my mind but an honest loyalty for my own people, a desire to be a citizen of my native country, and a filial devotion to the one man in the world, whom ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins

... Robert sternly, "falsehood and impudence will not help you in this case, and I wish to hear no more. I have only to say that we have evidence enough against you to insure a conviction, and your only hope lies in making your sentence as light ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton

... people who remark that 'they like dogs in their proper place,' and, as he stingingly adds, say, '"Poo' fellow! Poo' fellow!" and are themselves far poorer!' He knew, because he had taken the trouble to study him, that 'to the dog of gentlemanly feelings, theft and falsehood are disgraceful vices.' ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black

... a falsehood in my life, except when I was a very little girl, and then'—Miss Macdonald paused to wipe her eyes—'she spoke to me so beautifully out of the Bible ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... Sir Robert governed George the First in Latin, the King not speaking English, (63) and his minister no German, nor even French. (64) It was much talked of, that Sir Robert, detecting one of the Hanoverian ministers in some trick or falsehood before the King'S face, had the firmness to say to the German, "Mentiris, impudentissime!" The good-humoured monarch only laughed, as he often did when Sir Robert complained to him of his Hanoverians ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... mere discontent. These are the men who seek to excite a violent class hatred against all men of wealth. They seek to turn wise and proper movements for the better control of corporations and for doing away with the abuses connected with wealth, into a campaign of hysterical excitement and falsehood in which the aim is to inflame to madness the brutal passions of mankind. The sinister demagogs and foolish visionaries who are always eager to undertake such a campaign of destruction sometimes seek to associate themselves with ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... assuring grandpapa that she is perfectly happy. The servants lie, wearing grave faces behind their master's chair, and pretending to be unconscious of the fighting; and so, from morning till bedtime, life is passed in falsehood. And wiseacres call this a proper regard of morals, and point out Baucis and Philemon as ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... serve for the truth—at all times and for an indefinite period. There is bound to come a cropper somewhere—usually where you least expect it. And you lied to yourself in the beginning, a passive sort of falsehood, in merely refusing to see the truth and groping for the unreal. You had to justify your race for wealth, so you said, 'Oho, I'll love a story-book princess and let that be my incentive. Story-book princesses are expensive lovelies and you have ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... evermore you charge You hack no helmet and you need no targe. That wickedness is wrong and sin a vice, That wrong's not right and foulness never nice, Fearless affirm. All consequences dare: Smite the offense and the offender spare. When Ananias and Sapphira lied Falsehood, had you been there, had surely died. When money-changers in the Temple sat, At money-changing you'd have whirled the "cat" (That John-the-Baptist of the modern pen) And all the brokers would have ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... arguments and exactions. He had, indeed, expressed his anger at times against his traducers; but to hold this the cause of the judgment against him is to degrade the whole proceedings, and to convict Paul V, Urban VIII, Bellarmin, the other theologians, and the Inquisition, of direct falsehood, since they assigned entirely different reasons for their conduct. From this position, therefore, the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... Governor Don Pedro de Acuna wrote a very discreet letter concerning the matter. Now we are waiting to see how the greed of the king of China and of his eunuch will be affected by these things, and what measures the captain of the guard and the sureties will take to right their falsehood and save their lives; for, if they are declared impostors, they will lose their lives. We hope in the Lord, that He will look upon this Christian community which is being founded here, and will calm the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson

... proceeds to prove by witnesses the facts of the case and the falsehood of the charge against Gavius of having been a spy. "However", he goes on to say, addressing himself now to Verres, "we will grant, if you please, that your suspicions on this point, if false, were ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins

... the well-to-do, the newspaper was regarded as a necessary evil, largely composed of lies and garbled rumors. It was taken for granted that almost everything to be seen in print was vitiated by sensational falsehood, and so far as "business"—mystic word!—was concerned, all "news" was pure fabrication. This sceptical attitude had been intensified by John, who regarded any criticism of the actions of capital as dictated by envy, ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... like men, must have equal chances to earn a living. If the plea that poverty is the cause of woman's prostitution be not true, perfect equality of chances to earn honest bread will demonstrate the falsehood by removing that pretext and placing her on the same plane with man. Then, if she is found in the ranks of vice and crime, she will be there for the same reason that man is and, from an object of pity, she, like him, will become a fit subject of contempt. From being ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... to say that the reaction of opinion produced by the new school of Indian historians has not been sometimes carried too far, but these writers have certainly dispelled much exaggeration and some positive falsehood. They have shown that, although under circumstances of extreme difficulty and extraordinary temptation, some very bad things were done by Englishmen in India, these things were neither as numerous nor as grave as has ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... are classed under the general term of woodcraft. And, with all this, they inherited the splendid ideas of chivalry that had been developed in the thousand years preceding them, and fitted these ideas to the conditions of their own day, standing solidly against evil and falsehood whenever they lifted their head among them. They were not perfect, but they did their best to be of service to those who came within their reach and worked conscientiously for ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... She would have done anything in the world not to disgrace him. She answered Mrs. Curtis's letter by declaring that Philip Holt was no relative of hers, but a young man whom she knew because of his kindness to the poor. Mrs. Curtis was indignant. She insisted that Tania had told Madge a falsehood, and that Philip Holt was right in his opinion of Tania. It would not be well to send the child to a school; she should be put in some kind of an institution. This, however, Madge was determined should ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers

... to Athos, "if we are mistaken the error has originated with the queen. I do not suppose you will have the presumption to set it to rights—that would be to accuse Her Majesty, Queen Anne, of falsehood." ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... "oh, oh! If he rubs his great hand down my back he will feel the corners of the coffee-mill through my ribs as sure as fate! Oh, oh! I am a gone cat!" And with that, in an agony of apprehension lest his guilt and his falsehood be thus presently detected, he humped up his back as high in the air as he could, so that the corners of the mill might not make bumps in his sides and that the ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... somehow. What these words meant when translated was not the same as the pale rosary meant. There was a discrepancy, a falsehood. It irritated her to say, "Dominus tecum," or, "benedicta tu in mulieribus." She loved the mystic words, "Ave Maria, Sancta Maria;" she was moved by "benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesus," and by "nunc et in ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... officers are in the truest sense gentlemen free from swagger, and not over-bearing towards their men and their civilian compatriots. They represent a genuine type of manhood, free from artificiality or falsehood. One feels instinctively that they say what they think, and that they will do rather more instead of ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... been equally inconceivable, incredible, and impossible; and she could only protest, over and over again, that no two hours and a half had ever gone off so swiftly before, as Catherine was called on to confirm; Catherine could not tell a falsehood even to please Isabella; but the latter was spared the misery of her friend's dissenting voice, by not waiting for her answer. Her own feelings entirely engrossed her; her wretchedness was most acute on finding herself ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... falsehood to Erskine and persistence in her fatal policy, the reformers proceeded at once to set about such reform as they desired, and commenced rather roughly at Perth, where they had the majority of the population in their favour. Knox, along with ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... falsehood the gentleman escaped from by a mental reservation, saying to himself that it was not last night that ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner

... place. I know but of one thing that a philosopher should take for granted; and that only because he is forced to it by an irresistible impulse of his nature; and because, without doing so, neither truth nor falsehood could exist for him. He must take for granted the evidence of his senses; in other words, he must believe in the existence of things, as they exist to his senses. I know of no other existence, and can therefore believe in no other: although, reasoning from analogy, I may imagine other existences ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... that his conviction was entirely due to a misguided enthusiasm on the part of the prosecutor, the present writer, whom he characterized as a "novelist" and dreamer. The whole case, he alleged, was constructed out of the latter's fanciful imagination, a cobweb of suspicion, accusation and falsehood. Some day his friend Hubert would come out of the West, into which he had so unfortunately disappeared, and release an innocent man, sentenced, practically to death, because the case had fallen into the hands ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train

... his person instead of his writings, by one who was wholly a stranger to him, at a time when all the world knew he was persecuted by fortune; and not only saw that this was attempted in a clandestine manner, with the utmost falsehood and calumny, but found that all this was done by a little, affected hypocrite, who had nothing in his mouth at the same time but truth, candour, friendship, good-nature, humanity, and magnanimity. How the attack was clandestine ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson

... himself was that he came "to bear witness to the Truth," and in order that men "might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly"; consequently the principle to which he refers must be the exact opposite of Truth and Life—that is, it must be the principle of Falsehood ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... A falsehood has in itself no power but for evil. It is the spiritual truth clothed in the partially false form that is powerful. Clearer truth will follow in the wake of it, and cast the false forms out: they serve but to make a place of seeming understanding in ignorant minds, wherein the truths themselves ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... conviction is, from Lindsay's conversations with me, which are full of hesitations, and I fear much falsehood hidden under apparent candour, that he has told the Emperor his own views, and that those views are supported by the majority of the people of England, and by the present Opposition in Parliament, who would denounce the blockade if in power; that ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... seemed a blinding and confusing tissue of falsehood and deception that amazed and repulsed ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... right to consider we're higher class than 'The Tiger'; and to speak of the renowned garden as a 'bit of grass' was going much too far. It shows a wrong disposition, and it wasn't a gentlemanly thing, and if it weren't such a wicked falsehood, you might laugh at ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... and falsehood ne'er I knew, Nor grave nor temples e'er have torn, My youthful mate still found me true— Guiltless am I although forlorn! I 've seen brave Britto's son, the wild, The powerful champion, Fergus, too, Gray-haired Foradden, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... we wince at our reflexions and still go on in the same courses! how we resolve and break our resolutions! It is a common error to wish we could recall the past and be young again, and swear what things we would do if another opportunity was offered us. All vanity, folly, and falsehood. We should do just the same as before, because we do actually do the same; we linger over and regret the past instead of setting manfully to work to improve the future; we waste present time in vague ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... more devoted adherent of it than I am. You have suffered in one way and I in another from the falsehood and rottenness of present-day Society, but you do not hate it more utterly than I do, and you would not go to greater lengths than I would to destroy it. Yours is a hatred of emotion, and mine is a hatred ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... also of the return of Musa, after leaving him, without any story of his murder; also, at Mapunda, they came on traces of the boy Wikatani, and learned his story, though they did not see himself. The most ample proof of the falsehood of Musa's story was thus obtained, and by the end of 1867, Mr. Young, after a most active, gallant, and successful campaign, was approaching the shores of England[68]. No enterprise could have brought more satisfactory results, and all in the incredibly ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... embarrassed; he sat in silence. But Beaumaroy seemed quite at his ease. He began with a statement which was, in its literal form, no falsehood; but that was about all that could be said for it on the score of veracity. "Before you came in, sir, we were just speaking of uniforms. Do you remember seeing our blue Air Force uniform when we were in town last week? I remember that ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony

... Rembrandt, by being lovely; from the Botticelli, by being simple and calm. The painter does not desire the excitement of rapid movement, nor even the passion of beautiful light. But he hates darkness as he does death; and falsehood more than either. He has painted a noble human creature simply in clear daylight; not in rapture, nor yet in agony. He is dressed neither in a rainbow, nor bedraggled with blood. You are neither to be alarmed nor entertained by anything that is likely to happen to him. You are ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin

... solution of the most urgent part of the housing-question will still be an affair of decades. For the sake of the last remnant of our self-respect we must finally tear asunder that web of economic falsehood, woven out of ignorance, mental lethargy, concealment and illusion, which has taken the place of the political. Let us see any one attempt to prove that Germany can carry on, I do not say a well-off, but even a petty ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... Cayley had been hiding the truth about the keys, why should he not be hiding the truth about Mark's entry into the office? Obviously all Cayley's evidence went for nothing. Some of it no doubt was true; but he was giving it, both truth and falsehood, with a purpose. What the purpose was Antony did not know as yet; to shield Mark, to shield himself, even to betray Mark it might be any of these. But since his evidence was given for his own ends, it was impossible that it could be treated as the ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne

... eternal and immutable Principle, or whether he be, as say the doctors beyond the Rhine, the ideal objectivation of our Me, is not the question for the heroes of humanity. The soldier in the thick of battle does not philosophize as to how much truth or falsehood there is in the patriotic sentiment; he takes his arms and fights at the peril of his life. So the soldiers of spiritual conflicts seek for strength in prayer, in reflection, contemplation, inspiration; all, poets, artists, teachers, saints, ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... such a prohibition would infallibly be infringed, unless it were sanctioned by an argument far more powerful than the fear of punishment. He therefore caused it to be announced that he had received information that the Spaniards had poisoned all their wine. This dexterous falsehood produced the desired effect, and for the first time the freebooters ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... my wife, how did I know that you were weaving a hideous conspiracy against me? Even when so young, you were a monster of dissimulation and hypocrisy. Guilt never overshadowed your brow, nor did falsehood dim the frankness of your eyes. On the day of our marriage I mentally reproached myself for any unworthiness. Wretched fool that I was, I was happy beyond all power of expression, when you, madame, completed the measure of your guilt by adding ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau

... we, content and poor, Might build a cottage in the shade, A shepherd thou, and I to aid Thy task on dale and moor? - That reddening brow!—too well I know, Not even thy Clare can peace bestow, While falsehood stains thy name: Go, then, to fight! Clare bids thee go! Clare can a warrior's feelings know, And weep a warrior's shame; Can Red Earl Gilbert's spirit feel, Buckle the spurs upon thy heel, And belt thee with thy brand of steel, And send thee ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... chief priests and communicated the astounding intelligence. [30:3] But these infatuated men, instead of yielding to the force of this overwhelming evidence, endeavoured to conceal their infamy by the base arts of bribery and falsehood. "They gave large money unto the soldiers, saying—Say ye—His disciples came by night and stole him away while we slept...so they took the money, and did as they ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... of sympathy among the boys as I departed; and finding Mrs. Gray, I told her, with sobs of terror, my doom. The good woman listened kindly; and then, with the tenderness of a mother, she pointed out to me the meanness of the theft and of the falsehood, and we both sat and cried together. Then she said, "Joe, I am sure that you see that you have done wrong, and that you are very sorry, and don't mean ...
— Harper's Young People, November 4, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... Squire burst out violently—"speak! truth or falsehood, whichever you like. Speak out, and don't go round ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... never offered to show. If old manuscripts should now be mentioned, I should, unless there were more evidence than can be easily had, suppose them another proof of Scotch conspiracy in national falsehood. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... offset her disappointment in the matter of the sale by deceiving her husband as to the real amount of the returns. It was easy to lie to McTeague, who took everything for granted; and since the occasion of her trickery with the money that was to have been sent to her mother, Trina had found falsehood easier ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... angry passions were, and I think I never shall understand you. What I had hoped would do so much good has led to all this; but that is not my fault, it is your own doing, believe me; I have little more to say, but one thing you must hear: I have told no falsehood. Proofs I have none to give, beyond my word, but I will swear to the truth of it. I heard it from him who decoyed Bertalda from her parents into the water, and then laid her down in the meadow where the ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... little of thought or of cultivation. The most untutored is not insensible to the claim made on our respect by acts of courage, self-sacrifice, generosity, truth; or to the call upon us for reprobation at the sight of acts of falsehood, of meanness, of cruelty, of profligacy. Even in the most untutored there is a sense that these sentiments of respect and reprobation are quite different in kind from the other sentiments which stir the ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter

... understanding is the spirit of persecution, that these unfortunate people (conspired against by their fellow-subjects of every complexion), if they did not emigrate to countries where hair of another colour was persecuted, would be driven to the falsehood of perukes, or the ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... royal threat still sounds along these halls: Hardly his foot hath passed them, and he flees From his own treachery; all his pride, his hopes, Are scattered at a breath; even courage fails Now falsehood sinks from under him. Behold, Again art thou where reigned thy ancestors; Behold the chapel of thy earliest prayers, Where I, whose chains are sundered at thy sight Ere they could close around these aged limbs, Received and blest thee, when thy mother's arm ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor

... against thy life, [Half-Chorus II. Whispered words with falsehood rife, Wise Odysseus bringing near Shrewdly gaineth many an ear: Since invention against thee Findeth hearing speedily, Tallying with the moment's birth; And with loudly waxing mirth Heaping insult on thy grief, Each who hears it glories more Than the tongue that ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... you suspect they are dishonest or untruthful. Be very slow to accuse and suspect them of falsehood or theft. Tell them over and over again they are the best boys and girls in the world; that they are going to make the noblest of men and women; that they love honesty and truth. Even when you discover them in minor faults do not make the mistake of unduly magnifying and emphasizing the error. As ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... of striving to rouse the Austrian monarchy to make war upon France, and to deluge Paris with the blood of its citizens. Most inflammatory placards were posted in the streets. Speeches full of rancor and falsehood were made to exasperate the populace. And when the fish-women wished to cast upon the queen some epithet of peculiar bitterness, ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... Willie's hospitality must have burst all bounds if it had lured him, who never deviated from the truth, into uttering a falsehood monstrous as this. One glance, however, at his placid face, his unflinching eye, convinced her that swept away by the interest of the moment the little old man had lost all memory of whether ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... Father of our spirits, of the ill expressed and worse understood experiences, the crude conjectures, the vulgar imaginations of would-be teachers of the multitude. Containing truth enough to save those of sufficiently low development to receive such teaching without disgust, it contains falsehood enough, but for the Spirit of God, to ruin all nobler—I mean all childlike natures, utterly; and many such it has gone far to ruin, driving them even to a madness in which they have died. Jesus alone knows the Father, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... with truth, returning inward thanks that to that question she could reply without falsehood. "Why ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln

... is so framed that the jurors must by their verdict tell an apparent falsehood, or commit a great injustice. When it was a capital offence in England to steal forty shillings, and evidence made it plain that the accused had actually stolen eight or ten times that value, you all know how often the jurors brought in a verdict of "stealing thirty-nine shillings."[166] ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... Alfred: "still we have a chance that their own witnesses may cross each other, or contradict themselves. Falsehood, with all its caution, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... alarming and lively, the parish priest had it taken down, sealed and signed by witnesses, copied out, and scattered broadcast through the land. In vain John Lezek confessed soon after, when brought by the Brethren before a Magistrate, that his whole story was a vile invention. If a man tells a falsehood and then denies it, he does not thereby prevent the falsehood ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... Bowen, broke and otherwise disgraced by acquainting me and all the company belonging to the vessel that he was a notorious thief and embezzler of King's stores, I, upon the fullest and clearest investigation of the matter, finding it to be a most diabolical falsehood put Warren in double irons intending to deliver him up to the rigour of the civil law on our arrival at Sydney should a speedier way of sending him not occur during the cruise. A.M. Sent the first mate to ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee

... to contemplate some of the attestations to God's truth, and then some of the playings into the hands of the devil's falsehood, which lurk in words. And first, the attestations to God's truth, the fallings in of our words with his unchangeable Word; for these, as the true uses of the word, while the other are only its abuses, have a prior claim ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... seemed to me that I must fight for our faith, for truth against falsehood, darkness against light. And I was confident, knowing this, that the death of one for the faith is often the greatest ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler

... rose and said that if Robertson referred to him he told a malicious falsehood, and that he would get his pay ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... into the palace to attend to his duty; explaining, by way of reply to Arima's agitated representations, that the Inca had left the palace during the early hours of the morning, with a party of companions, to hunt the vicuna. The Indian at once knew this to be a falsehood, for the hunting grounds lay many miles down the valley, and hunting parties never dreamed of proceeding thither otherwise than on horseback, and Arima was prepared to swear that none of the party had been mounted. Moreover he was convinced that his master would never have dreamed of leaving ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... true—and I appeal to your knowledge of history that they are so—what has the success of Christianity to do with the truth or falsehood ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley

... receiving—it was all there upon the canvas, as the artist had seen it that night. The picture cried aloud the intellectual degradation and the spiritual depravity of that class who, arrogating to themselves the authority of leaders in culture and art, by their approval and patronage of dangerous falsehood and sham in picture or story, make possible ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... us not forget that the aim of the true satirist is not to be severe upon persons, but only upon falsehood: and, as Truth and Falsehood start from the same point, and sometimes even go along together for a little way, his business is to follow the path of the latter after it diverges, and to show her floundering in the bog at the end of it. ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... falsehood, sir. Know that, were we criminals, we should not descend to justifying ourselves; we should never pray nor ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau

... especially when he failed to find his bill-fold at the first sweep. The bottom dropped out of the market for confidence in the integrity of Mr. Iff and conceit in the perspicacity of Mr. Staff. He saw instantly how flimsy had been the tissue of falsehood wherewith the soi-disant Mr. Iff had sought to cloak his duplicity, how egregiously stupid had been his readiness to swallow that extraordinary yarn. The more he considered, the more he marvelled. It surpassed belief—his asininity ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance

... Whitstable, a young squire in the neighbourhood, who had been asked to Caversham because as Sophia was now reputed to be twenty-eight,—they who decided the question might have said thirty-one without falsehood.— it was considered that Mr Whitstable was good enough, or at least as good as could be expected. Sophia was handsome, but with a big, cold, unalluring handsomeness, and had not quite succeeded in London. Georgiana had been more admired, ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... The palpable falsehood was enough to excite the young man's worst fears. General Quiroga, it was well known, had left his infantry at Queretaro. Moreover, it was quite impossible for troops to enter the closely besieged place without being heard and recognized ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson

... utmost to put a stop to swearing or to the use of bad language. They at once and with the exertion of their utmost energy put down all indecent conversation; and if they found any boy employing it, they held him up to the reprobation and contempt of their companions. Falsehood of every description, either black lying or white lying, they exhibited in its true colours, as they did all dishonest or mean practices; indeed, they did their very utmost to show the faults and the weak points of what is too generally looked on as ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... whose name stands high on the scroll of fame,—a statesman whose views are as broad as his judgment is sound,—an orator who holds all hearts in his hand,—a man who is always found on the side of the feeble truth against the strong falsehood,—whose sympathy for all that is good, whose hostility to all that is bad, and whose boldness in every righteous cause make him alike the terror and abhorrence of the oppressor, and the hope and joy and staff of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... judge, who can easily discover the objective truth in the one-sided observation of an event. But let us not deceive ourselves, let us take things as they are. Subjective attitude may become objective falsehood in spite of the best endeavor of the witness, and the examiner may fail altogether to distinguish between what is truth and what poetry. Further, in many instances the witness must be questioned with regard to the impression the event made on her. Particularly, if the event can not ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... want a thing, human or material, meant to have it.... And in his time he had told a good many lies. The right lie, big and daring, at the right moment had won more than one victory. With John Prather out of the way, he had decided on an outright falsehood to his son. Why had he not compromised with Dr. Bennington's advice and tried part falsehood and part contrition? But no matter, no matter. He would go on; he was made ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... falsehood hath!" How many there are like Carlton at that moment! While they smile, they but hide a raging passion within. A smile may cover up the wildest storm of the spirit, as well as show ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray

... illustration of this he adduced his own education. He demanded before every thing else that the true spirit of the nation should be recognized, and that it should be looked up to with that humility without which no courage is possible, not even that wherewith to oppose falsehood. Finally he did not attempt to make any defence against what he considered a deserved reproach, that of giving way to a wasteful and inconsiderate expenditure of both ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... plenteously with means To gratify the hunger of His wish, And doth He reprobate and will He damn The use of His own bounty? making first So frail a kind, and then enacting laws So strict, that less than perfect must despair? Falsehood! which whoso but suspects of truth, Dishonours God, and makes a slave of man. Do they themselves, who undertake for hire The teacher's office, and dispense at large Their weekly dole of edifying strains, Attend to their own music? have they faith In ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... two blades of grass theory has been exploded, the increased production cry has been tried out, carried to its logical conclusion, and found wanting, and the inefficiency explanation has been proved a falsehood on its face. It is, therefore, obvious that with a proper system of distribution, the entire question of production will take care of itself; but just so long as the producers find it unprofitable to produce food, just so long will they have to figure carefully not to grow ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... unlucky rhyming bards, For you cannot judge between truth and falsehood. If you be primary bards formed by heaven, Tell your king what his fate will be. It is I who am a diviner and a leading bard, And know every passage in the country of your king; I shall liberate Elphin from the belly of the stony tower; ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest

... love him?" For a moment or two Bessy remained silent, striving to arrange her words so that they should contain no falsehood, and yet betray no truth. "Ah, I see you do," continued Miss Holmes. "But of course you do. Why else ...
— The Mistletoe Bough • Anthony Trollope

... people, and she succeeded even beyond her own expectations. Deerslayer did her full justice in the translation, and this so much the more readily, since the girl carefully abstained from uttering any direct untruth; a homage she paid to the young man's known aversion to falsehood, which he deemed a meanness altogether unworthy of a white man's gifts. The offering of the two remaining elephants, and of the pistols already mentioned, one of which was all the worse for the recent accident, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... Brown was not the name of the people who had called on Azalea, and Patty could not imagine what reason there could be for the girl to tell such a falsehood. ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells

... correspondent who posted him as a Radical: "While he was writing the first word, the middle, dotting his i's, crossing his t's, and punching his period, he knew he was concocting a sentence that was saturated with infamy and reeking with falsehood."—Exchange. ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain

... was no less obstinate in the contrary opinion. Taking philosophy such as he found it, he like his neighbours too hastily concluded there were duties and affairs for which men were fitted, but of which women were incapable. Blending much truth with some falsehood, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... friend? Is it a long or a short one?" asked the captain, eyeing the man steadily, to judge whether he was speaking with sincerity or uttering a falsehood. "What ship did ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston

... awake to it welcome, and the evening like a soft garment as it wraps us about; it nerves our arm with boldness against oppression and injustice, and strengthens our voice with deeper accents against falsehood, while we are yet in the full noon of our days—yes, and perhaps it will shed some ray of consolation, when our eyes are growing dim to it all, and we go down into the Valley of the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 1: On Popular Culture • John Morley

... house of "Mr. Sergeant," and that I was smoking a cigarette on the Sabbath. "May I see myself enjoying all that is good!" he cried. "If it is not as I say, may I never get to the place where I am going," he said. "And if I am uttering the least word of falsehood, may my mouth be twisted to one side, and may my two eyes drop out of ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich

... sez I with emotions of or—or to think I had a pardner that would tell such a gigantic falsehood, and instinctively I thought of a story I'd hearn Thomas Jefferson tell the ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley

... of events has been exactly that which he predicted. I know, too, that whatever causes may have led him to unite himself to those known as the Terrorists, he is an English nobleman, and a man to whom falsehood or bad faith is absolutely impossible. In your marvellous aerial fleet I know also that he wields the only power capable of being successfully opposed to those terrible machines which had wrought such havoc upon ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... Seirthe. And the king of that county gave to him, and to his monks after his death, the pasture of one hundred cows with their calves, and twenty oxen, as a perpetual offering; for he said that he would not again go to Magh-Ai, on account of the falsehood which had been said there of him. His remains are in Rath-Cunga, and to Patrick belongs the church, upon which the people of Colum-Cilleand of Ard-Sratha have encroached. Patrick went from Elphin to Dumacha (the mounds) ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various

... coolness streams From moon-rays: thus the poets sing; But to the lovelorn, falsehood seems To lurk in such imagining; The moon darts fire from frosty beams; Thy flowery arrows cut ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa

... (25)Wherefore, having put away falsehood, speak truth each one with his neighbor; because we are members one of another. (26)Be angry and sin not; let not the sun go down upon your wrath, (27)neither give place to ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various

... Flies false over all the seas; A pan-Scandinavian Sweden Can never our nation please. From "knightly duty" the smaller Must say: I am not a part; The mark of my freedom and honor Is whole for my mind and heart. From "knightly duty" the greater Must say: A falsehood's fair sign Can give me no special honor, No longer shall it be mine. For both it is "knightly duty," With flags that are pure, to be A warring world's bright example Of peoples at ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... who loves and serves others? A man who never speaks falsehood—whom you would believe in a matter that involved your dearest friends? Would believe him if he told you that I was a briber and ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair

... I'll go down the street first. Save a place for me. I want to see Dr. Hemingway next to you of all Springvale." Which was my second falsehood for that ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter

... to his arm. "Father Corraine," said Shon, "it is my duty to arrest this man; but I cannot do it, would not do it, if he came and offered his arms for the steel. I'll take the wrong of this now, sir, and such shame as there is in that falsehood on my shoulders. And she here and I, and this man too, I doubt not, will carry your sin—as you call it—to our ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... ill-qualified to assign its true value to the sneer of this world. He knows not that such stuff as this is of the abortive and monstrous births which time consumes as fast as it produces. He sees the truth and falsehood, the merits and demerits, of his case, inextricably entangled.... No personal offence should have drawn from me this public comment ...
— Adonais • Shelley

... a courteous taste. Then he strangled a little, not so much, though, at the tea as at the coming falsehood. ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... done so. Catiline, we believe, has found no formal defender, but the Catilinarian Conspiracy is now generally admitted to have been the Popish Plot of antiquity, with an ounce of truth to a pound of falsehood in the narratives of it that have come down to us from Rome's revolutionary age, in political pamphlets and party orations. Cicero's craze on the subject, and that tendency which all men have to overrate the value of their own actions, have made of the business in his lively pages ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... head, but she pushed him away with her hands against his chest. A horror of his beauty, his deliberate fascination, the falseness of him, came over her. For the first time she had been brought face to face with sin and falsehood, and hers was the unpardoning white condemnation of an angel to whom sin is unknown and falsehood impossible. That such knowledge should have come through him of all men made the thing more unbearable. Surprised and irritated by the pale tragedy of her ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... were aware of the defects, and desired their amendment. But the renunciation of so much that he had sanctioned, so much that he had solemnly and repeatedly approved, exposed him to the reproach of duplicity and falsehood. He not only underwent the ignominy of capture and exposure; he was regarded henceforth as a detected perjurer. If the king could never be trusted again, the prospects of monarchy were hopeless. The Orleans party offered no substitute, for their ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... into the moral world. There is no greater moralist than he. He is stern in his demands for right, and truth, and sincerity in life and in work. This has been the keynote of his teachings throughout life. He hates a falsehood or a sham as much as Browning or Carlyle. He has taught his countrymen many things. No people love Nature better than the English of the present day, and John Ruskin has opened the eyes of many of them to the beauties that lie everywhere about ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... legends of a world-embracing conflagration represent a race-remembrance of a great fact, or that they are a colossal falsehood—an invention ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... cunnin' varmint takes advantage of me bein' without my weepons, an' chases me up a tree. I ensconces myse'f in the crotch, an' when the b'ar starts to climb I hurls down ontrooth after ontrooth on top of him ontill, beneath a avalanche of falsehood, he's crushed dead at the base of the tree. Could I lie, you asks? Even folks who don't like me concedes that I'm the most irresist'ble liar south ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis

... spiders?' (alluding, perhaps, more particularly to the Jesuit associated with him in this charge). 'Do you think I am a Jack Cade or a Robin Hood?' he said. But though the evidence on this trial is not only in itself illegal, and by confession perjured, but the report of it comes to us with a falsehood on the face of it, and is therefore not to be taken without criticism; that there was a movement of some kind meditated about that time, by persons occupying chief places of trust and responsibility in the nation—a movement not favourable to the continuance of 'the ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... assured herself a trifle uncomfortably, she had in no way told a direct falsehood. They had assumed too much and she had not corrected their assumptions. She said fiercely, in her heart, that she was not to blame if they insisted upon taking things ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster

... the momentary glooms: paints also partially, tenderly, never with half his strength; content with uncertain visions, insecure delights; the truth not precious nor significant to him, only pleasing; falsehood also pleasurable, even useful on occasion—must, however, be discreetly touched, just enough to make all men noble, all women lovely: "we do not need this flattery often, most of those we know being such; and it is a pleasant world, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin



Words linked to "Falsehood" :   untruth, truth, prevarication, dishonesty, scheme, frame-up, statement, contradiction, dodge, setup, falsification, falsity, contradiction in terms



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