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Untrue   Listen
adjective
Untrue  adj.  
1.
Not true; false; contrary to the fact; as, the story is untrue.
2.
Not faithful; inconstant; false; disloyal.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Untrue" Quotes from Famous Books



... after Thomas had been an idle and a popular boy at school, for some happy years. One Christmas-time, he was stimulated by the evil example of a companion, whom he had always trusted and liked, to be untrue to himself, and to try for a prize at the ensuing half-yearly examination. He did try, and he got a prize—how, he did not distinctly know at the moment, and cannot remember now. No sooner, however, had the book—Moral ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens

... made the matter quite plain where I ought, before the judges; besides, if it was untrue, why ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence

... cathedral proper escaped with but small damage. Professor Freeman, in discussing the alleged desecrations suffered by St. Mary and St. Peter, after the entrance of Fairfax and his army into the city, writes thus: "The account in Mercurius Rusticus, which has given vogue to the common story is wholly untrue." He further adds: "Some fanatic soldier may, indeed, according to the story, have broken off the head of Queen Elizabeth, mistaking her for our Lady. But no general mutilation or desecration took place ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw

... "what have you heard? Why have you come home like this? I have not been untrue? Who said so? I have not! I have lied to you sometimes about ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman

... untrue; he had never spoken to his mother on the subject, thinking she might urge him to go to the front. His plea that he must look after the plantation was entirely ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield

... Bonaparte herewith presented, if judged from the viewpoint of the historian or the biographer, are absurdly and grotesquely untrue; but to the anthropologist and the student of human nature they are extremely valuable as self-revelations of national character; and even to the historian and the biographer they have some interest as evidences of the profoundly deep impression made by Napoleon's ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof

... Sullivan plead. "We have the interest of the man who donned the khaki and the blue and when the ships bring the boys from over there, they must take back these alien slackers. We would be derelict in our duty to the boys who gave their all when they went over the top; we would be untrue to ourselves and the institutions and principles for which we fought if we did not see to it that these people ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat

... was leading," said the Minor Poet. "Woman has been appointed by Nature the trustee of the children. It is her duty to think of them, to plan for them. If in marriage she does not take the future into consideration, she is untrue to her trust." ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome

... to the vigour of man. Difficulty seems essential even to the vigour of nations. The old theory, that luxury is the ruin of a state, was obviously untrue; for in no condition of the earth could luxury ever go down to the multitude. But the true evil of states is, the decay of the national activity, the chill of the national ardour, the adoption of a trifling, indolent, vegetative style of being. Into this life France had sunk, from the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... with his bow, I felt that had he known of it, to have made difficulties before would have been a work of supererogation. He seemed to think I should certainly turn back, and assured me there was no other crossing (a statement I afterwards found to be untrue); so, comforting myself with the hope that if the danger were imminent, Meepo would forcibly stop me, I took off my shoes, and walked steadily over: the tremor of the planks was like that felt when standing ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... not much care what she said of others, but dearly liked to have mischief spoken of herself. Some one once had said—or very likely no one had said it, but a soupcon of a hint had in some way reached her own ears—that she had left Torquay without paying her bills. It was at any rate untrue, but she had sedulously spread the report; and now wherever she ordered goods, she would mysteriously tell the tradesman that he had better inquire about her in Devonshire. She had been seen walking one moonlight night with a young lad at Bangor: the lad was her nephew; but some one had ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... "that letter was untrue, false; it was penned under compulsion. I wrote you again, later, but you had gone, disappeared utterly. I wanted to explain, but your own people even did not know where ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish

... the event of the base not being at right angles with the side, a true horizontal must be made from the corner which is higher than the other (the one therefore which has the obtuse angle) and marked within the untrue line; and all measurements, whether of feet, bars, or squaring-out lines, or levels for canopies, bases, or any other divisions of the light, must be made upwards ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall

... dearest friends wrote to me on one of my later travels abroad, may serve as an introduction to what I have here to relate. He wrote in his own peculiar style:—"It is your vivid imagination which creates the idea of your being despised in Denmark; it is utterly untrue. You and Denmark agree admirably, and you would agree still better, if there were in Denmark no theatre—Hinc illae lacrymae! This cursed theatre. Is this, then, Denmark? and are you, then, nothing but a ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen

... desponding sleep, Nor by the wayside lingering weep, Nor fear to seek Him farther in the wild, Whose love can turn earth's worst and least Into a conqueror's royal feast; Thou will not be untrue, ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... and then he turned white. What the old man said was very untrue; and he knew it. For, besides the young Queen's dowry, a large sum of money had been taken over in the ship, to pay for the expenses of her attendants, and of ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... "I do not need any excuse. What I have done I did after due consideration and in the realisation that it was absolutely necessary to do it. Never for one moment did I believe that my mistress was untrue to her husband. Never for one moment could I believe such an evil thing of her, for I knew her to be an angel of goodness. A woman who is deceiving her husband is not as unhappy as this poor lady has been for months. A woman does not write to a successful ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner

... if I were to say that I did not give the blind man pennies that winter because I believed it better to deprive him of his means of livelihood and force him out of life than to help him to remain in life and suffer, I should be saying what was certainly untrue, yet the idea was in my mind, and I experienced more than one twinge of conscience when I passed through the passage. I experienced remorse when I hurried past him, too selfish to unbutton my coat, for every time I happened to pass him it was raining or blowing very hard, and every time I hurried ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore

... This is well, for they learn through curiosity. The questions should be answered honestly, or not at all. It is common to give untrue answers. This is poor policy, for the answers are a part of the child's education and untruths make the young people ignorant and superstitious. It takes considerable patience to raise a child and he who is unwilling to exercise a little patience has ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... its performer's rank incompetence. That he had failed was, therefore, easily understood; in no way did it indicate that all he said about the chances of a real musician in the land of skyscrapers and mighty distances (which he also told about at length) was of necessity untrue. It had been the talk of this man which had fascinated Kreutzer; it was the city of this man's wild fancy which the flute-player expected to encounter ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... to expect something of the kind. All at once, upon the Boulevard, I was aware of a violent altercation going on between a respectable-looking man and a number of infuriated bystanders. He seemed to be insisting that the whole story of the victory was untrue, and that despatches had been received announcing heavy disasters. I saw that unlucky citizen hustled about, and finally collared and led off by a policeman, the people pursuing him with cries of 'Prussian!' But some time later in the day some persons in a cab drove down the Boulevards with a ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... speaker with perfidy. "Why, you little untrue, lyin', deceitful story," she said. "To think you should say ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... to assert, my lord, that you intend to be untrue to your promise, and to throw over your own engagement because my cousin has expressed her wish to retain property which she believes to be her own!" This was said in a tone which made Lord Fawn surer than ever that Greystock was his enemy to the knife. Personally, he was not a coward; ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... to me: All the money in the world couldn't make me be untrue to my salt. And if you have any lingering notion that I'm not going to collect a million dollars' worth of satisfaction for the way you've acted aboard my ship, I can only say that as a fortune-teller you'll never earn enough money to keep yourself in cigarettes. You say you have been trained ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... attempted it three times but failed; yet at last accomplished it, and then said, "Well, Sir Joshua, I think it is now time to go to bed."' Ib. ii. 161. One part of this story however is wanting in accuracy, and therefore all may be untrue. Reynolds at this time was not knighted. Johnson said (post, April 7, 1778): 'I did not leave off wine because I could not bear it; I have drunk three bottles of port without being the worse for it. University College has witnessed this.' See ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... luck—not a witch, however ugly, who stayed behind; for when it is a question of beauty, no scullion-wench will acknowledge herself surpassed; every one piques herself on being the handsomest; and if the looking-glass tells her the truth she blames the glass for being untrue, and the quicksilver for being put ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... trial. The resistance opposed by friction to the oscillation of the cylinder is so small, that a man is capable of moving a large cylinder with one hand; whereas in the side lever engine, if the parallel motion be in the least untrue, which is, at some time or other, an almost inevitable condition, the piston is pushed with great force against the side of the cylinder, whereby a large amount of wear and friction is occasioned. The trunnion bearings, instead of being liable to heat like other journals, are kept down ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... be untrue," Ste. Marie remarked, "and as you grow older you will know it. Leaving my honesty out of the question if you like, I have the honor to tell you that I am, perhaps not quite formally, engaged to your sister, and it is on her account, for her sake, that I am here. You will hardly ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... Church confidences. Not that I expect it to be wholly credited—not that I doubt but it will be denied on all sides—but because it is so characteristic of Church gossip and so typical (even if it were untrue) of the ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins

... young persons to adopt this way of life with an eye set singly on the livelihood, we must expect them in their works to follow profit only, and we must expect in consequence, if he will pardon me the epithets, a slovenly, base, untrue, and empty literature. Of that writer himself I am not speaking: he is diligent, clean, and pleasing; we all owe him periods of entertainment, and he has achieved an amiable popularity which he has adequately deserved. But the truth is, he does not, or did not when he first embraced it, regard ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson

... emerged dripping on the other side. A bridge was covered with spectators come out from Washington to see the victory, many of them bringing with them baskets of lunch. Some were Members of Congress, but all joined in the panic and flight, carrying to the capital many untrue stories of disaster. ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler

... anti-slavery sentiment, it was read all over the world, it was dramatized and gave countless thousands their first visualization of the slave traffic. That her presentation of it was in many respects untrue has long since been admitted, but she was writing a tract and naturally made her case as strong as she could. From a literary standpoint, too, the book is full of faults; but it is alive with an emotional sincerity which sweeps everything ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... brought about without any conference with the Korean people, is that the Japanese, indifferent to us, use every kind of partiality for their own, and by a false set of figures show a profit and loss account between us two peoples most untrue, digging a trench of everlasting resentment deeper and deeper ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie

... with a big drum placed before him. Now, under the treatment recommended by MR. G. SHADBOLT, both sides of the ass would be visible; both the boy's legs; and the drum would have two heads. This would be untrue, absurd, ridiculous, and quite as wonderful as Mr. Fenton's twelve-feet span view from ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various

... so far as it went, that complaint was not very far from the truth?-It was perfectly untrue. The statement made in the complaint was that Messrs. Hay only gave 1s. per 100, and that that was paid in goods, while the men could get 2s. 6d. elsewhere. I found ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... [Pitt] on political topics, finding him very open and kind." Such is Wilberforce's account of his last interviews with Pitt; and he certainly could not have remained on friendly terms with one who was deliberately untrue to the cause. He knew better than recent critics the difficulties resulting from the compromise with Addington and from the ceaseless friction with the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... the theoretic completeness of their idea and system of law. The fact is important as a reminder that what is one real aspect, or, perhaps, the most complete and consistent representation of a system on paper, may be inadequate and untrue as an exhibition of its real working and appearance in ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... letters in his breast, he took his hat and hastened in the direction of Marietta's dwelling. She received him in her usual impassioned manner; she told him how she had suffered in their long separation; how the thought that he might be untrue to her, that he loved another had filled ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... often," and he knocked the spear of ash from the cigar, "have confessions proven false, in your own experience? Look back over the last few years, and you'll find at least six clear cases of confessions which were untrue. On the records of the district attorney's office is written a case, years ago, of a man who confessed to a murder and was hanged. Afterward it was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre

... child who reads this account take warning from it? If you have done wrong, you had better confess it at once. Falsehood will but increase your sin, and aggravate your sorrow. Whenever you are tempted to say that which is untrue, look forward to the consequences. Think how much sorrow, and shame, and sin, you will bring upon yourself. Think of the reproaches of conscience; for you may depend upon it, that those reproaches are ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott

... of the stockade from the pouring rain, weary yet so strangely excited—it was here, out of this confusion of voices and explanations, that—very stealthily—the ghost of something horrible slipped in and stood among us. It made all our explanations seem childish and untrue; the false relation was instantly exposed. Eyes exchanged quick, anxious glances, questioning, expressive of dismay. There was a sense of wonder, of poignant distress, and of trepidation. Alarm stood waiting ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... and untrue. Taking the people here as a guide, the insane in general appear to be people with very ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... the political government as absolutely necessary to maintain order, and to protect the good and honest and punish the wrong-doers; and no one can prove us to be untrue to the ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff

... nothing so obviously untrue is meant as that this is an account of Macaulay's own quality. What is empty pretension in the leading article, was often a warranted self-assertion in Macaulay; what in it is little more than testiness, is in him often a generous indignation. What became and ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley

... Venice than for the King of Spain. "We have but one desire," wrote the Doge Cicogna to Badoero, his ambassador at Rome, "and that is to keep the European peace. We cannot believe that Sixtus V., that great pontiff, is untrue to his charge, which is to ward off from the Christian world the dangers that threaten it; in imitation of Him whom he represents on earth, he will show mercy, and not proceed to acts which would drive the King of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... Mr. Prohack," she said calmly, "don't talk in that strain. I distinctly told you I was talking confidentially, and I'm sure I can rely on you—unless all that I've heard about you is untrue; which it can't be. I only want matters to be settled quietly, and when Mr. Quire returns he will pay anything that has to be paid—if it isn't ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... a pledge of true love she gave it to me, Full seven years ago as I sail'd o'er the sea; But now that the diamonds are chang'd in their hue, I know that my love has to me proved untrue.'" ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... How do you answer such excuses? A. (1) To say that we should remain in a false religion because we were born in it is as untrue as to say we should not heal our bodily diseases because we were born with them; (2) To say there are too many poor and ignorant in the Catholic Church is to declare that it is Christ's Church; for He always taught ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 3 (of 4) • Anonymous

... his bitter disillusionment and of her own unmerited and eternal disgrace was intolerably real in spite of the fact that she knew it to be untrue, for our imaginations are far more ancient and more irresistible than our late and faltering reliance on the truth; the heavens and hells we fancy have more weight with our credulities than any facts we encounter. We can dodge ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... solemn strain Of ancient Sternhold, which from ours amain Comes flying forth from aisle to aisle about, Sweet links of harmony and long drawn out." These were to him essentials; all things new He deemed superfluous, useless, or untrue: To all beside indifferent, easy, cold, Here the fire kindled, and the woe was told. Habit with him was all the test of truth: "It must be right: I've done it from my youth." Questions he answer'd in as brief a way: "It must be wrong—it was ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... it dreadful!" she cried. "To think of that old witch of Endor saying all those horrible untrue things about poor lovely Marcia, and worse, spreading ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... reconstruct; and when older people attempt to reconstruct it, they remember the emotions which underlay it, and the eager interests out of which it all sprang; and they make it something picturesque, epigrammatic, and vernacular which is wholly untrue to life. The fact is that the talk of schoolboys is very trivial and almost wholly symbolical; emotion reveals itself in glance and gesture, not in word at all. I suppose that most of us remember our boyish friendships, ardent and eager personal admirations, extraordinary deifications ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... on the authority of authentic documents, we understand how untrue is the tradition, or rather the popular idea, that the Secret Tribunal was an assembly of bloodthirsty judges, secretly perpetrating acts of mere cruelty, without any but arbitrary laws. It is clear, on the ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... immitigable misery, she lay in darkness tempered only by the dim skyshine that filtered through the window draperies; hating life, that had no mercy; hating the duplicity that had led Karslake into making untrue love to her, but inexplicably not hating Karslake himself, or the enshrined image that wore his name; hating herself for her facile readiness to give love where all but the guise of love was lacking, and for knowing this ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... untrue that Sharp concealed a letter from the king commanding that no blood should be shed (Charles detested hanging people). If any one concealed his letter, it was Burnet, Archbishop of Glasgow. Dalziel now sent Ballantyne to supersede ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang

... True or untrue as these stories were, any amount of glory accompanied the beginning of the strike, and there was sufficient sense of common danger to unite the youngsters in very close bonds. You rarely caught a Guinea-pig or a Tadpole alone now; they walked about in ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... and—yes, and for my own sake also, I know you will—to be a good man and an upright judge. But"—he faltered, his voice could barely support itself—"but if it should ever appear that your confidence has been misplaced—if in the time to come I should seem to be unworthy of this honour, untrue to the oath I took to-day to do God's justice between man and man, a wrongdoer, not a righter of the wronged, a whited sepulchre where you looked for a tower of refuge—remember, I pray of you, my countrymen, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... circumambient air, such may present themselves to us as are propitious, and that we may rather meet with those that are agreeable to our natures and are good, than the evil and unfortunate; which is simply introducing into philosophy a doctrine untrue in itself, and leading to endless superstitions. My method, on the contrary, is, by the study of history, and by the familiarity acquired in writing, to habituate my memory to receive and retain images of the best and worthiest ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... very strange, it was very painful, for me to trust that child with such a message. But you know us of old; you know we do not forsake our friends for considerations of self-interest or outward semblance. We act as we deem right; we do not heed untrue constructions. There are many things I ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... temptation. If I had been quite sure that all my people saw that and felt that, I would not have introduced here to-night what some of them, judging too hastily, will certainly call this so secular and unseemly subject. But I am so afraid that many not untrue, and in other things most earnest men amongst us, do not yet know sufficiently the weakness and the evil of their own hearts, that I wish much, if they will allow me, to put them on their guard. ''Tis hard,' said Contrite, who was a householder and had a vote in the ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... which untrue statements have been accepted at their face value has surprised and deeply disturbed me. I have conversed with three college presidents, each of whom believed that the current expenses of the Philippine government were paid from the ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... "This is all untrue, Judas. Just consider: if we had all died, who would have told the story of Jesus? Who would have conveyed His teaching to mankind if we had all died, Peter and John ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev

... legislature, the majority of the members of which are men of very moderate income, and when originally fixed in the older States it was often by men not altogether friendly to the judiciary. It was a saying of Aaron Burr, which was not wholly untrue in his day, that "every legislature in their treatment of the judiciary is a damned Jacobin club."[Footnote: "Memoir of Jeremiah Mason," 186.] Only the influence of the bar has carried through the successive increases ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD

... fix the precise standing of the evidence in favour of the theory of Theism, when the latter is viewed in all the flood of light which the progress of modern science—physical and speculative—has shed upon it. And forasmuch as it is impossible that demonstrated truth can ever be shown untrue, and forasmuch as the demonstrated truths on which the present examination rests are the most fundamental which it is possible for the human mind to reach, I do not think it presumptuous to assert what appears to me a necessary deduction ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... twenty-fifth degree, will have a small, sharp, weak chin, curved up towards Gemini, the two vertical lines on the upper lip."(4) The time was when science went out of its way to prove that such statements were untrue; but that time is past, and such writers are usually classed among those energetic but misguided persons who are unable to distinguish between logic ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... I'd rather sing than fight. I'll go from court to court and sing in each How Tristram was untrue to Queen Iseult! I will avenge thy wrongs in songs instead Of with the sword, and every one who hears My words shall weep as thou, my queen, has wept. I like the lay about that page's heart Thou ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... thee, my present purpose. War awaits thee, and we must part a while!" At these words her brow darkened and her lip quivered. "Oh, that I should have lived to mourn the day when Lord Warwick, untrue to Salisbury and to York, joined his arms with Lancaster and Margaret,—the day when Katherine could blush for the brother she had deemed the glory of her House! No, no" (she continued, as Hastings interrupted ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... beginning to wish herself well out of the matter—"it is not a pretty story. You and Nick may possibly have heard of it. Quite possibly you know it to be untrue. Major Hunt-Goring told me it was sheer gossip, and he would not vouch for the truth of it. It concerned the death ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... that, therefore, unless some form be superadded to the natural power, inclining it to the act of love, this same act would be less perfect than the natural acts and the acts of the other powers; nor would it be easy and pleasurable to perform. And this is evidently untrue, since no virtue has such a strong inclination to its act as charity has, nor does any virtue perform its act with so great pleasure. Therefore it is most necessary that, for us to perform the act of charity, there should be in us some habitual form superadded ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... other department of teaching. He will tell you that it is one of the inevitable infelicities of his vocation, that to nothing are men such unwilling listeners as to religious truth; than which nothing can be more untrue; for to nothing are men so prepared to listen as to religious truth, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... the worst phases of social life; an extreme analysis of persons and motives; the sacrifice of action to psychological study; the substitution of studies of character for anything like a story; a notion that it is not artistic, and that it is untrue to nature, to bring any novel to a definite consummation, and especially to end it happily; and a despondent tone about society, politics, and the whole drift of modern life. Judged by our fiction, we are in an ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner

... cruel; the world's untrue; Our foes are many; our friends are few; No work, no bread, however we sue! What is there left for us to do— But fly—fly, From the cruel sky, And hide in the deepest ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... the ladies at Manor Cross, as having ways of his own which were not their ways. He did not go to church as often as they thought he ought to do; and, being a bachelor, stories were told about him which were probably very untrue. A bachelor may live in town without any inquiries as to any of the doings of his life; but if a man live forlorn and unmarried in a country house, he will certainly become the victim of calumny should any woman under sixty ever be seen about ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... further to becloud the status of the Rams. Rumours were spread that the vessels were in fact intended for France, and when this was disproved that they were being built for the Viceroy of Egypt. This also proved to be untrue. Finally it was declared that the real owners were certain French merchants whose purpose in contracting for such clearly warlike vessels was left in mystery, but with the intimation that Egypt was to be the ultimate purchaser. Captain Bullock had indeed made such a contract ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... can not, therefore, but be present to our minds whenever that object is contemplated, and must therefore make a part of the mental picture or idea of that object which we may on any occasion summon before our imagination.... All propositions, therefore, become not only untrue but inconceivable, if ... axioms ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... I do not wish to be sorrowful, and it would be untrue to life to yield oneself to foolish pity. My own little company is broken up long ago; I wonder if they remember the old days and the old stories. They are good citizens most of them, standing firmly and sturdily, finding out the meaning of life in ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... not mean anything so untrue as that Shelley was wanting either in deep humanity or in active benevolence, or that social injustice was a thing indifferent to him. We do not forget the energetic political propagandism of his youth in Ireland and elsewhere. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley

... under the obligation of keeping up his reputation. So it exaggerated. Richard, exaggerating those exaggerations in his turn, had some details, as interesting and unsavoury as they were in the main untrue, to ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini

... whether Huysum, the great flower-painter, who was consumed by jealousy in the midst of riches and glory for a wife who was neither young nor beautiful, had real grounds for his doubts, or whether he was not induced by the reports of his envious rivals to believe what was untrue? In conclusion, I must mention with due honor the three wives of Eglon Van der Neer, who crowned him with twenty-five children—a family which, however, did not keep him from painting a large number of pictures in every style, from ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis

... result from our ideas may properly be so treated, because it is only by patient thought and work that new ideas, if good and true, become adopted and utilized; while, if untrue or if not adequately presented to the world, they are ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd

... thinks that the moral sense is entirely absent in the lower animals. This, however, is absurdly untrue; so much so, indeed, that we shall not trouble to refute it Good and noble, he avers, are epithets inapplicable to animals, even to the horse or dog. What vain creatures men are to talk thus! Does his lordship remember Byron's epitaph on his ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote

... "That is untrue," said Mr Willows, "and, if any of your fellow-workers like to go into the office, the clerk will show them that a liberal payment, to show my satisfaction over the way the work was done, has been added as a ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn

... Helene to me; and the artist had caught the strength of her soul in her clear-cut face, in the eyes that flashed with wit and courage,—eyes that seemed to look with scorn upon what was mean in the world and untrue, with pity on the weak. Here was one who might have governed a province and still have been a woman, one who had taken into exile the best of safeguards against misfortune,—humor and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... 'But gin this ring shoud fade or fail, Or the stone shoud change its hue, Be sure your love is dead and gone, Or she has proved untrue.' ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick

... be untrue to say that these investments have all been wisely made. One wonders, indeed, at what the purchasing agents were aiming in some cases. I know of small blocks in insignificant railroad towns bought for sixty thousand dollars, for ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... ears. And for him you will die in this horrible place unless you consent. For him you have thrown away everything,—name, fame, and happiness,—unless you will take all these from me. Oh, I know you will cry out that it is untrue; but my eyes are good, though you call me old! For this treacherous boy, with his curly hair, you have lost the only thing that makes woman human,—your reputation!" And Benoni laughed that horrid laugh of his, till the court rang again, as though there ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... test of an actress worth remembering—is the art of acting scenes essentially melodramatic in an unmelodramatic manner. After all, what is melodrama? Life itself is melodrama, and life put upon the stage only seems untrue when it is acted melodramatically—that ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... can serve two masters: either he will hate one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to one and untrue to the other. You cannot worship both God ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman

... Lord, we have been untrue to our promises; but never again will we neglect His Book, nor forget ...
— The Bible in its Making - The most Wonderful Book in the World • Mildred Duff

... I know not to what extent, that I introduced my friends or partisans into the tale; this is utterly untrue. Only two cases of this misconception have come to my knowledge, and I at once denied each of them outright; and I take this opportunity of denying generally the truth of all other similar charges. No friend of mine, no one connected ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... almost always the second plane—the plane of uncharacteristic circumstance—that we have in mind. To plausibility of the third order we give a more imposing name—we call it truth. We say that Nora's action is true—or untrue—to nature. We speak of the truth with which the madness of Lear, the malignity of Iago, the race hatred of Shylock, is portrayed. Truth, in fact, is the term which we use in cases where the tests to be applied are those of introspection, intuition, or knowledge ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... tender, too sacred, to be bruised by a wanton confidence. You are hers. She is yours. The future lies with both of you. It is wiser to leave the past alone. The couples who boast that they have never had a secret are sometimes happy because the boast is sometimes untrue. ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle

... quite unfit for, and untrue of, people who live in the ordinary relations of life. I don't think I like the book quite so much as I did. There is a hot-house, egotistical air about much of its piety. Other persons are, ordinarily, the appointed means of learning ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... of empirical reality. The rest of things invades and overflows both it and you together, and defeats your rash attempt. Any partial view whatever of the world tears the part out of its relations, leaves out some truth concerning it, is untrue of it, falsifies it. The full truth about anything involves more than that thing. In the end nothing less than the whole of everything can be the truth of anything ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... and he called her a weed, that looked so fair, and smelled so sweet, that the sense ached at it; and wished she had never been born. And when he had left her, this innocent lady was so stupefied with wonder at her lord's untrue suspicion of her, that a weight-like sleep came over her, and she only desired her attendant to make her bed, and to lay her wedding-sheets upon it, saying, that when people teach their babes, they do it by gentle means and easy tasks, and ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... It would be quite untrue to give the impression that there is no fun, no harking, no chaff, in Germany, although I am bound to say that there is little of this last. I can bear witness to a healthy love of fun, and to an exuberant exploitation of youthful vitality in many directions among the students ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... shooting, hanging and burning of men, women and children in America, the Women's Christian Temperance Union never suggested one plan or made one move to prevent those awful crimes. If this statement is untrue the records of that organization would disprove it before the ink is dry. It is clearly an issue of fact and in all fairness this charge of misrepresentation should either be substantiated ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett

... a letter recently addressed by Mr. ——'s direction to the Editor of the ——, in contradiction of statements, equally untrue, which appeared in that periodical, and (a) (9) which the editor has undertaken to insert in the next number.... I am sure that all must regret that statements so (b) (51) utterly erroneous should have ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott

... been hiding, Betty?" but she only sobbed on. "Betty, if you do not tell me now and here, you will be taken into court and made to tell all you know before all the world! You will be proven to have been untrue to the man you were to marry and who loved you, and to have been ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... said Welton, earnestly. "You don't know the harm you may do. Your father's reelection comes this fall, you know, and even if it's untrue, a suit of this character—" He in his ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... peoples, but is liable to be powerfully manifested at special seasons. It is perfectly true that among savages, as Sutherland states, "there is no ideal which makes chastity a thing beautiful in itself"; but when the same writer goes on to state that "it is untrue that in sexual license the savage has everything to learn," we must demand greater precision of statement.[196] Travelers, and too often would-be scientific writers, have been so much impressed by the absence among savages of the civilized ideal of chastity, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... more of her father than herself, as she arranged her hair before the glass, and removed the traces of sorrow from her face; and yet I should be untrue if I said that she was not anxious to appear well before her lover: why else was she so sedulous with that stubborn curl that would rebel against her hand, and smooth so eagerly her ruffled ribands? why else ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... has been my chief incitement in the preparation of the following pages, but I should be untrue to my own devotion to Lake Tahoe, which has extended over a period of more than thirty years, were I to ignore the influence the Lake's beauty has had over me, and the urge it has placed within me. Realizing and feeling these emotions I have ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... The Jacobins, with the mob at their back, accused them not only of lack of works, but of lack of faith, and when such an accusation against a party becomes the expression of a popular conviction, that party has nothing to do except to die. To prove this charge untrue, the Gironde united with their enemies in abolishing the monarchy and establishing a republic. Madame Roland drew up a plan for a republic, but it was too late for such a one as she desired. Her scheme was federative, like our own, in which the provinces ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... entered his head. His subjects were his own, to deal with as he pleased. Revolting as this theory may seem now, it was held by most people then, and there was not a man in England, not Sir Thomas More himself, who would have told the King that it was untrue. ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... his conduct was; but she was met with smiling denials; Herr Sung did not know what she was talking about, he was not paying any attention to Fraulein Cacilie, he never walked with her; it was all untrue, every word ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... graver still, the Girondists, apart from all these defections, are untrue to themselves. Not only are they ignorant of how to draw a line, of how to form themselves into a compact body: not only "is the very idea of a collective proceeding repulsive, each member desiring to keep himself independent. and act as he thinks best,"[3458] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... general society," yet "in the company of two or three intimate friends, he was talkative, and when a little excited was sometimes fluent and even eloquent" "The story so often repeated of his never laughing," Madison said, was "wholly untrue; no man seemed more to enjoy gay conversation, though he took little part in it himself. He was particularly pleased with the jokes, good humor, and hilarity of ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... could not help coloring at that benign pleasantry. It was all the more painful to him because it was at once true and untrue. How should he explain the sort of literary alchemy, thanks to which he was enabled to affirm that he never drew portraits, although not a line of his fifteen volumes was traced without a living model? He replied, therefore, with a touch ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... sun with his beams hot Scorched the fruits in vale and mountain, Philon the shepherd, late forgot, Sitting beside a crystal fountain, In shadow of a green oak tree Upon his pipe this song play'd he: Adieu Love, adieu Love, untrue Love, Untrue Love, untrue Love, adieu Love; Your mind is light, soon lost ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various

... obstinate recusant to what I viewed as unjust pretensions of authority; and, having been the first to raise the standard of revolt, had been taxed by my guardians with having seduced Pink by my example. But that was untrue; Pink acted for himself. However, he could know little of all this; and he traversed England twice, without making an overture towards any communication with his friends. Two circumstances of these journeys he used to mention; both were from the port of London (for he never contemplated London ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... universe. Eight or ten years of study had led Adams to think he might use the century 1150-1250, expressed in Amiens Cathedral and the Works of Thomas Aquinas, as the unit from which he might measure motion down to his own time, without assuming anything as true or untrue, except relation. The movement might be studied at once in philosophy and mechanics. Setting himself to the task, he began a volume which he mentally knew as 'Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres: a Study of Thirteenth-Century Unity.' From that point he proposed ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... sense alone bestows, And sensual bliss is all the nation knows. In florid beauty groves and fields appear, Man seems the only growth that dwindles here. Contrasted faults thro' all his manners rein; Though poor, luxurious; though submissive, vain; Though grave, yet trifling; zealous, yet untrue; And e'en in penance planning sins anew. All evils here contaminate the mind, That opulence departed leaves behind: For wealth was theirs, not far remov'd the date, When commerce proudly flourish'd thro' the state; At her command the palace learn'd to rise, Again ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... madness or melancholy, is generally untrue; that is, the object is a mistaken fact. As when a patient is persuaded he has the itch, or venereal disease, of which he has no symptom, and becomes mad from the pain this idea occasions. So that the object of madness is generally a delirious idea, and thence ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... should appear in it or no, and so home to bed, having spent two hours, I and my boy, at Mr. Glanvill's removing of faggots to make room to remove our goods to, but when done I thought it not fit to use it. The newes of the killing of the [King of] France is wholly untrue, and they say ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... happy. The spirit of the reformer had somehow got into his system and he thought only of the work before him. He tried to estimate the happiness it would bring to the worn-out clerk, the booze-fighting clerk, the forced-to-be-untrue lover clerk, the poor parents who spent their savings in fitting out juniors for the "glory of the bank," and the girls waiting in home towns.... His imagination came to a halt, for a space, and he very unimaginatively sighed over by-gone illusions. Then ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... said, in some surprise, that surely we hear to-day on every side the same story of the destitute proletariat and the social problem, of the sweating in the unskilled trades or the overcrowding in the slums. It is granted; but I said the true story. Untrue stories there are in plenty, on all sides of the discussion. There is the interesting story of the Class Conscious Proletarian of All Lands, the chap who has "solidarity," and is always just going to abolish war. The Marxian Socialists will tell you all about him; only ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton

... the "Protector of Studies in Portugal," did not believe that rhyme, and determined to show how foolish and untrue it was. His first step was to establish an observatory and a school for navigation at Cape St. Vincent, the most westerly point of Europe and the most southwesterly point of Portugal. To this observatory the prince invited the most learned astronomers, geographers, and instrument-makers then living, ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley

... of Taaoa. For months he had poured at her feet all his earnings, and faithfully he had labored at copra-making to gain money for her. He had lavished upon her all his material wealth and the fierce passion of his Malay heart, only to find her disdainful, untrue, and, at last, a runaway. While he was in the forest, he said, climbing cocoanut-trees to provide her with luxuries, she had fled his hut, carrying with her a certain "Singaire" and a trunk. He was in court ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... I was wrong to presume that you were untrue to me, and such as my false suspicions imagined. Nevertheless, I am so obstinate in my opinions, that it would be impossible for me to live comfortably with you henceforth. And therefore I hope you will agree that a separation should be made between us, and that we ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various

... comfortably off when Mrs. Bell died, and she often reflected with satisfaction that this money, as she enjoyed it, need trouble her with no qualms of conscience—it was all the result of hard work, of patient industry. In her position she could have been dishonest, and it would be untrue to deny that the temptation to be dishonest when no one would be the wiser, when not a soul could possibly ever know, had come to her more than once. But she had never yet yielded to the temptation. "No, no," she had said to her own ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade

... Brahman, as, for instance, the reference to what is most beneficial for man. The assertion that the passage, 'Having laid hold of this body it makes it rise up,' contains a characteristic mark of the chief vital air, is untrue; for as the function of the vital air also ultimately rests on Brahman it can figuratively be ascribed to the latter. So Scripture also declares, 'No mortal lives by the breath that goes up and by the breath that goes down. We live by another in whom these two repose' (Ka. Up. ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... character of this wonderful Being has indeed been generally recognised as a bright spot amidst the world's darkness; as the only perfect model of goodness ever seen on earth—yea, as moral beauty itself! But unless the history we possess of Jesus is untrue, and He was, therefore, no historical but a mere ideal person,—or if He was a real person, as represented in the gospel, yet not divine,—we cannot defend His character without losing our own. For we have seen how He certainly represented Himself as one with God,—as one ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod

... more. Both would probably be wasting the lives of other human beings—the golfer must employ his caddie. It is entirely the matter of births, and a further consideration to be presently discussed, that makes this analogy untrue. It does not, however, make it so untrue as to do away with the probability that in many cases the emergent men of the new time will consider sterile gratification a moral and legitimate thing. St. Paul tells us that ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... he merely changes the deposit from the bank vault, or his strong box, to his victim, and requires from him such an ample security that it is as safe in his hands as remaining in the vault. That he has bought the service of the borrower as another bought the service of the horse or chattel slave is untrue. He has given no equivalent. He retains every farthing of his wealth safely deposited with his victim. The service he receives does not diminish the value of his property nor discharge ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott

... to go into the larger question of forming habits; and as a general rule it may be said that Pater's dictum is entirely untrue, and that success in life depends more upon forming habits than upon anything else, except good health. Indeed, Pater himself is an excellent instance in point. He achieved his large output of beautiful literary work, the amazing amount of perfectly finished and exquisitely expressed writing ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... really his duty; but now his eyes were opened, and that very affection, the strength of which he had now only begun to recognize, he would bring as a peace-offering for his shortcoming, and for having so nearly been untrue to ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland

... you might have the kiss, and I might have the—; I was going to say disappointment, only that would be untrue. Let me assure you that I am not so demonstrative in my tokens ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... I find in one of the leading Nationalist journals here letters from Mr. Davitt, Mr. O'Leary, and Mr. Taylor himself, which convict that journal of making last week a statement about Mr. Taylor absolutely untrue, and, so far as appears, absolutely without the shadow of a foundation. These letters throw such a curious light on passing events here at this moment that I shall preserve them.[28] The statement to which they refer was thus put in the journal which made it: "We have absolute reason to know ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert

... lived a long, laborious, and useful life. The world is better for his having lived. For the sake of truth he accepted hatred and reproach for his portion. He ate the bitter bread of neglect and sorrow. His friends were untrue to him because he was true to himself and true to them. He lost the respect of what is called society, but kept his own. His life is what the world calls failure, and what ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... water which we drink is no longer our beverage if we consider it under the point of view of chemistry as a combination of hydrogen and oxygen. Hence we have not two statements one of which is true and the other ultimately untrue; on the contrary, both are true. We have a perfect right to give the value of truth to our experience with water as a refreshing drink, and also to the formula of the chemist. With a still better right we may ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg

... them in his Correspondance Litteraire, as 'l'ebauche d'un long roman.' Mrs. Macdonald eagerly lays emphasis upon this discovery, because she is, of course, anxious to prove that the most damning of all the accounts of Rousseau's conduct is an untrue one. But she has proved too much. The Memoires, she says, are a fiction; therefore the writers of them were liars. The answer is obvious: why should we not suppose that the writers were not liars at all, but simply ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... discussion. The tenor of this is that the father of the bridegroom is not as well provided with goods[9] as he had desired to be, owing, let us say, to a failure to obtain certain effects he had ordered from so-and-so, together with numerous other pretexts and excuses that on the face of them are untrue. Pointing out his slaves, he descants on them; and goes on to explain how much trouble he had to get them; he could not value them for less than P80 apiece. Or, if they are captives, he describes the fatigues ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... can he take any comfort in that which the scripture telleth him? A man must needs take little fruit of scripture, if he either believe not that it be the word of God, or else think that, though it were, it might yet for all that be untrue! As this faith is more strong or more faint, so shall the comforting words of holy scripture stand the man in more ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... Arthur Conan Doyle: "Hatred steels the mind and sets the resolution as no other emotion can do." The enlightened conscience of humanity (to say nothing of Christianity) repudiates this sentiment as ethically unsound and historically untrue; and yet, erroneous as it is, it is worth pondering for the sake of a truth which ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... again given; she turned and twisted much, but said that on this subject she had said all she possibly could; if she said anything else, it would be untrue." ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... am very sure, would like to see me away," I replied to the Marshal, "but he has never formally expressed himself, and it is untrue that any such wish has been intimated or insinuated ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... gift, is said to have especially prized them; and they are noteworthy also as perhaps the fullest expression of the almost womanly softness of Coleridge's nature. To describe their tone as effeminate would be unfair and untrue, for effeminacy in the work of a male hand would necessarily imply something of falsity of sentiment, and from this they are entirely free. But it must certainly be admitted that for a man's description ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... Christmas Willy wrote word that he had accepted an invitation to go home with a brother-clerk; the second Christmas he said he could not obtain leave of absence—which Mrs. Gum afterwards found was untrue; so that Willy Gum had not been at Calne since he left it. And whenever his mother thought of him—and that was every hour of the day and night—it was always as the fair, young, light-haired boy, who seemed to her ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... cooking and we learn that Saltus does not care for food prepared in the German style ... nor yet in the American. He forbids us champagne: "Champagne is not a wine. It is a beverage, lighter indeed than brandy and soda, but, like cologne, fit only for demi-reps." But he seems untrue to himself in an essay condemning the use of perfumes. His own books are heavily scented. With the rare prescience and clairvoyance of an artist he includes the German Kaiser in a chapter on hyenas (in 1906!); therein stalk the blood-stained shadows of Caligula, Caracalla, Atilla, Tamerlane, ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... a kind-hearted fellow at times—generous to a fault, always most abstemious; but he had a tongue, and one he did not try to control. He used to say stinging things of people, knowing them to be untrue. ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton

... point of fact, untrue that an act passed by Congress is conclusive evidence that it is an emanation of the popular will. A majority of the whole number elected to each House of Congress constitutes a quorum, and a majority of that quorum is competent ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... that this report was untrue. Our telephone lines and telephone station had been blown up by a "coal box," so we had to depend upon runners to get messages through. One of these, Pte. M.R. Kerr, later on sent me a message from the hospital to the ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie

... long, heated hours of the day he hummed her airs and repeated her verses, longing for the twilight hour which would bring the angel voice from out the vineyard. Eventually the girl began to sing of love, and Joseph echoed the songs in solitude, his voice as rasping and untrue as that of ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... found the ground soft as velvet, while a cool breeze blowing through the trees refreshed my aching forehead and eyes. I still held the book—'The Secret of Life'—and in a dull, aimless way thought how useless it was! What does Life matter if Love be untrue? The sun was shining somewhere above me, for I saw glinting reflections of it through the close boughs, and there were birds singing. But both beauty of sight and beauty of sound were lost to me—I had no real consciousness left save that the lover who ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... two classes of men as would affect the expediency of the applying the same laws to both. What is good for one must therefore be good for another. Now, in the first place, as Fitzjames urges, there is no presumption in favour of this hypothesis; and, in the next place, it is obviously untrue in some cases. Differences of age, for example, must be taken into account unless we accept the most monstrous conclusions. How does this apply to the case of sex? Mill held that the difference in the law was due simply to the superiority of men to women in physical strength. ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... to ask, How much does this inconceivability signify? In most cases, when we say that a statement is inconceivable, we practically declare it to be untrue; when we say that a statement is without warrant in experience, we plainly indicate that we consider it unworthy of our acceptance. This is legitimate in the majority of cases with which we have to deal in the course of life, because experience, and the capacities ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... Vishnu in Southern India, in company with two other famous writers, Bhavabhuti and Dandin. Yet another pictures Bhavabhuti as a contemporary of Kalidasa, and jealous of the less austere poet's reputation. These stories must be untrue, for it is certain that the three authors were not contemporary, yet they show a true instinct in the belief that genius seeks genius, ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa

... and in themselves, because they are mere conceits; the analogies in them are fortuitous, depending not on the nature of the things themselves, but on the private fancy of the writer, having no more real and logical coherence than a conundrum or a pun; in plain English, untrue, only allowable to Juliets or Othellos; while their self-possession, almost their reason, is in temporary abeyance under the influence of joy or sorrow. Every one must feel the exquisite fitness of Juliet's "Gallop apace, ye fiery-footed steeds," etc., for one of her character, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... what hast heard?" And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: "I heard the water lapping on the crag, And the long ripple washing in the reeds." To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath: "Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue, Unknightly, traitor-hearted! Woe is me! Authority forgets a dying king, Laid widow'd of the power in his eye That bow'd the will. I see thee what thou art, For thou, the latest-left of all my knights, In whom should meet ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... has told you bad tales about me," said the placid old gentleman to George. "Very likely we are all sinners, and some evil may be truly said of all of us, with a great deal more that is untrue. Did he tell you that my son was unhappy with me? I told you so too. Did he bring you wicked stories about my family? He liked it so well that he wanted to marry my Lyddy to his brother. Heaven bless her! I have had a many offers for her. And you are the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... word of it. It's false; it's untrue. It's all a blind. I'll see whether there is not justice in the land for an unfortunate widow robbed of ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott

... he walked out far away, into the Regent's Park, and there, wandering among the uninteresting paths, he devised triumphs of oratory for himself. Let him resolve as he would to forget Mr. Bonteen, and that charge of having been untrue to his companions, he could not restrain himself from efforts to fit the matter after some fashion into his speech. Dim ideas of a definition of political honesty crossed his brain, bringing with him, however, a conviction that his thought must be much more clearly worked ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... Johnston had retreated further south, he assumed, and ever after declared, that this was to anticipate his design upon Urbana, which, he said, must have reached the enemy's ears through the loose chattering of the Administration. As has been seen, this was quite untrue. His project of going to Urbana was now changed, by himself or the Government, upon the unanimous advice of his chief subordinate generals, into a movement to Fort Monroe, which he had even before regarded as preferable to a direct advance southwards. ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood



Words linked to "Untrue" :   unfaithful, uneven, false, inconstant, out of true



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