"Falsehood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... knew how to stop when suspicion was likely to be aroused, and though always planning either to deceive or to hurt, he was never taken by surprise. Like the spider which spreads the threads of her web all round her, he concealed himself in a net of falsehood which one had to traverse before arriving at his real nature. The evil destiny of this poor woman, mother of four children, caused her to engage him as her shopman in the year 1767, thereby signing the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... this, he at once pronounced it impossible, and nothing but one of Aaron's lies. On reflection, however, I am not so sure that it is impossible, nor can I see any reason why the old poacher should invent a falsehood of the kind. It was just a time of the year when hares are beginning to go 'mad,' and, as they were not feeding but playing together, they might have strayed up the line just as they do along roads. Most persons must have observed how quietly ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... longer cared to be beguiled by long walks in the shrubbery, to hear nothing but praises of "my brother," and the oft-told tale of his love for her. Association with refined, honorable, high-minded people was doing its work with her; anything approaching deceit, falsehood or ...
— Marion Arleigh's Penance - Everyday Life Library No. 5 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... ironical indulgence. He will not be heard among the dogmatists. He will have a great and cool allowance for all sorts of people and opinions. If he finds no out-of-the-way truths, he will identify himself with no very burning falsehood. His way took him along a by-road, not much frequented, but very even and pleasant, which is called Commonplace Lane, and leads to the Belvedere of Commonsense.[16] Thence he shall command an agreeable, if no very noble prospect; and while others behold the East and West, the Devil and ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an undisciplined man who speaks falsehood become a Samana; can a man be a Samana who is still held captive by ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown
... Calhoun may have forgotten his speech of 1816. Alas! no. He had that speech before him at the time. Vigilant opponents had unearthed it, and kindly presented a copy to the author. We do not believe that, in all the debates of the American Congress, there is another instance of flat falsehood as bad as this. It happens that the speech of 1816 and that of 1833 are both published in the same volume of the Works of Mr. Calhoun (Vol. II. pp. 163 and 197). We advise our readers who have the time and opportunity to read both, if they ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... at rest, is irregular, as above; but lie, to utter falsehood, is regular, as follows: ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Deemas and all the ladies of the Eagle stamp did not think so. They did not believe that a strong mind means a mind strong enough to exercise its own powers to the ascertainment and reception of truth and the rejection of falsehood and fallacy; strong enough, under the influence of God's love, to perceive the paths of duty in all their ramifications, and to resolve to follow them. They did not believe that a high spirit, in the true sense of the word, meant a spirit broken down altogether ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... its various attributes and characteristics, rather than attributed to various classes, the end sought,—the exposure, namely, of the evil,—would have been better attained. The snobbishness of flattery, of falsehood, of cowardice, lying, time-serving, money-worship, would have been perhaps attacked to a better purpose than that of kings, priests, soldiers, merchants, or men of letters. The assault as made by Thackeray seems to have been made on ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... which time she began to feel better. Her gratitude to Gladys for the perfectly unobtrusive nature of her attention was so great that she felt as if she could never do enough for her, and she frequently assured her that she knew she had been unjust towards her in accusing her of falsehood. She never, however, again mentioned Colonel ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... suburban train to a racing-car could not be listed as a sacrifice. He had not earned the money, Jirnmie argued; he had only avoided paying it to the railroad. If he did not walk he would be obtaining the gratitude of Sadie by a falsehood. Therefore, he ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... Chieftains world-famed! I hear the ancient blood That leaps against your hearts! What? Warriors ye! Danger your birthright, and your pastime death! Behold your foes! They stand before you plain: Ill passions, base ambitions, falsehood, hate: Wage war on these! A King is in your host! His hands no roses plucked but on the Cross: He came not hand of man in woman's tasks To mesh. In woman's hand, in childhood's hand, Much more in man's, ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... understand the Second Commandment, or what is meant by taking in vain, or misusing God's name? answer briefly thus: It is misusing God's name when we call upon the Lord God no matter in what way, for purposes of falsehood or wrong of any kind. Therefore this commandment enjoins this much, that God's name must not be appealed to falsely, or taken upon the lips while the heart knows well enough, or should know, differently; ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... I shall say that I'm looking at the river," she thought, for in her slavery to her family traditions, she was ready to pay for her transgression with some plausible falsehood. She pushed aside the blind and looked at the river. But it was a dark night and the water was barely visible. Cabs were passing, and couples were loitering slowly along the road, keeping as close to the railings as possible, though the trees had as ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... subjected them to his sceptre). With him the wife of Proetus, noble Antea,[242] passionately longed to be united in secret love; but by no means could she persuade just-minded, wise-reflecting Bellerophon. She, therefore, telling a falsehood, thus addressed king Proetus: 'Mayest thou be dead, O Proetus! or do thou slay Bellerophon, who desired to be united in love with me against my will.' Thus she said: but rage possessed the king at what he heard. He was unwilling, indeed, to slay him, for he scrupled this in his mind; but he sent ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... judgment as well as of sentiment common to all mankind, no hold could possibly be taken either on their reason or their passions, sufficient to maintain the ordinary correspondence of life. It appears, indeed, to be generally acknowledged, that with regard to truth and falsehood there is something fixed. We find people in their disputes continually appealing to certain tests and standards, which are allowed on all sides, and are supposed to be established in our common nature. But there is not the same obvious concurrence in any uniform or settled principles which relate ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... learnt anything, or if I find myself a pin the worse for not having learnt anything. I was one day at the table of the minister of the King of——, who has brains enough for four, and he showed as plain as one and one make two, that nothing was more useful to people than falsehood, nothing more mischievous than truth. I don't remember his proofs very clearly, but it evidently followed from them that men of genius are detestable, and that if a child at its birth bore on its brow the mark of that dangerous gift of nature, it ought ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... it may be added that "Zeus deceives both gods and men; the other gods deceive Zeus; in fact, the whole Homeric society is full of guile and falsehood. There is still, however, an expectation that if the gods are called to witness a transaction by means of an oath, they will punish deceit. The poets clearly held that the gods, if they were under no restraint or fear of punishment from Zeus, were at liberty ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... be made only of the bearers of the name in the New Testament. (1) A member of the first Christian community, who, with his wife Sapphira, was miraculously punished by Peter with sudden death for hypocrisy and falsehood (Acts v. 1-10; cf. Josh. vii. 1 ff.). (2) A disciple at Damascus who figures in the story of the conversion and baptism of Paul (Acts ix. 10-17, xxh. 12-16.) (3) Son of Nedebaios (Jos. Ant. xx. 5. 2), a high ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... will find that it has been sifted, and in the most full and satisfactory manner, by persons of no less distinction than Archbishop Secker and Bishop Halifax. The strong language employed by the archbishop, when refuting what he terms {573} a "gross and scandalous falsehood," and when asserting the bishops "abhorrence of popery," need not here be quoted, as "N.& Q." is not the most proper channel for the discussion of theological subjects; but it is alleged that every man of sense and candour was convinced at the time that the charge should be retracted; ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... die!;' and the other addeth, 'Extolled be the perfection of the Living who dieth not!'[FN89] Moreover by reason of his justice and ordinance and intelligence, there is no Kazi in his city, and all his lieges distinguish between Truth and Falsehood." Quoth the Caliph, "How great is this King! His letter hath shown me this; and as for the mightiness of his dominion thou hast told us what thou hast eye-witnessed. By Allah, he hath been endowed with wisdom as with wide rule." Then I related to the Commander of the Faithful ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Hare!" cried Afy, agitated in her turn, and shaking like an aspen-leaf, partly with discomfiture, partly with unknown dread. "How dare that cruel falsehood be brought up again, to my face? I never saw Richard Hare after the night of the murder. I swear it. I swear that I never saw him since. Visit him! I'd sooner visit Calcraft, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... to make an end of the villain then and there; for I smelt falsehood and devilry in every word he spoke. But I waited to let him say his say out first. There was little fear in the dark night, and the unsteady flare of the torches, of his guessing to whom ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... those subordinate characters, who, in every service, are too often remiss and unprincipled. This reflection assures me that you will acquiesce in the mode proposed for ascertaining the truth and detecting delinquency on one side, or falsehood on the other. The discussions and asperities which have had too much place on the subject of prisoners are so irksome in themselves, and have had so many ill consequences, that it is infinitely to be wished that there may be no room given for reviving them. The mode I have suggested ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... and an action at law for the duel —even for the political duel—in the Roman life of this period. The usual form of settling questions of personal honour was this: a wager was laid between the offender and the party offended as to the truth or falsehood of the offensive assertion, and under the shape of an action for the stake the question of fact was submitted in due form of law to a jury; the acceptance of such a wager when offered by the offended or offending party was, just ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... thought flashes upon her fevered brain. Am I not the subject of slander! Am I not contaminated by associations? Has not society sought to clothe me with shame? Truth bends before falsehood, and virtue withers under the rust of slandering tongues. Again a storm rises up before her, and she feels the poisoned arrow piercing deep into her heart. Am I not living under the very roof that will confirm the slanders of mine enemies? she asks herself. And the answer rings back in ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... under a cloud? He was only a little wild, and signed his father-in-law's name. Many a man has done worse, and come to no wrong, and holds his head up. Clavering does. No, he don't hold his head up: he never did in his best days." And Strong, perhaps, repented him of the falsehood which he had told to the free-handed Colonel, that he was not in want of money; but it was a falsehood on the side of honesty, and the Chevalier could not bring down his stomach to borrow a second time from his outlawed friend. Besides, he could get ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul, producing holy witness, Is like a villain with a smiling cheek; A goodly apple rotten at the heart; O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath! ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... on returning to the house of Lord Tchang, Ming-Y told the first falsehood which had ever passed his lips. He averred that his mother had requested him thenceforward to pass his nights at home, now that the weather had become so pleasant; for, though the way was somewhat long, he was strong and active, and ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... of the most effective of the formulae in a private asylum. How can an inexperienced stranger know for certain that such a statement is a falsehood? And even the just do not love justice—to others—quite so well as they love their own skins. So Squire Tollett very naturally declined a private interview with Alfred; and even drew back a step, and felt uneasy at being so near him. Alfred implored him ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... to hate and loathe, is among the saddest evidences of human weakness and folly. The crimes of heroes seem lost in the vastness of the field they occupy. A lively idea of the mischief they do, of the misery they create, seldom penetrates the mind through the delusions with which thoughtlessness and falsehood have surrounded their names and deeds. Is it that the magnitude of the evil is too gigantic for entrance? We read of twenty thousand men killed in a battle, with no other feeling than that 'it was a glorious victory.' Twenty thousand, or ten thousand, what reck we of their sufferings? The hosts ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... mischievous falsehood that the way to a man's heart was through his stomach? How many a silly woman, taking it for truth, has let love slip out of the parlour, while she was busy in the kitchen. Of course, if you were foolish enough ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... of a merchant. In the Colonel's house, as in most American homes of 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, as "unpatriotic," aimed ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... two books of satire it is the business of Horace to instruct us how to combat our vices, to regulate our passions, to follow nature, to give bounds to our desires, to distinguish betwixt truth and falsehood, and betwixt our conceptions of things and things themselves; to come back from our prejudicate opinions, to understand exactly the principles and motives of all our actions; and to avoid the ridicule into which all men necessarily fall who are intoxicated with those ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... his call and enter upon those services. I would come to him, though from the most remote regions, and even should death menace me at every step. A true man does not shrink from danger or death, but from hypocrisy and falsehood, whether it concerns himself or others; he will not stoop to the tricks of diplomacy and dally with that which ought to be either forcibly removed from his path or carefully avoided, but with which he never ought to enter into ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... proudly know it, And in the open to each other show it! We meet as equals once for all the year! The wise and foolish shout with kindred laughter; No greater and no smaller fools appear, And Folly flouts the dullard calling after! No tryant reigns! No hoary falsehood waves Imperial ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... falsehood Dickson started, and the man observed his surprise. The eyes were turned on him like a searchlight. They roused antagonism in his peaceful soul, and with that antagonism came an impulse to back up the Poet. "Ay," he said, "she's my auntie Phemie, my ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... snow-flake Lay in the trusty guard of wickers woven in withies. Always a-carding the wool, with clear-toned voices resounding 320 Told they such lots as these in song divinely directed, Chaunts which none after-time shall 'stablish falsehood-convicted. ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... personal and business relations with them, in the field of consorted social work, I came face to face with the Jewish "problem" every single day,—and every single day of my life I felt with intolerable keenness all the falsehood and wretched ambiguity of my situation, that of an oppressor against one's will. In the doctor's office, at my desk, in the editorial room, in the street, finally in jail, where together with the Jew I fulfilled the all-Russian prison ...
— The Shield • Various
... on what she had told me as to the virtue of the females of her race. How singular that virtue must be which was kept pure and immaculate by the possessor, whilst indulging in habits of falsehood and dishonesty. I had always thought the gypsy females extraordinary beings. I had often wondered at them, their dress, their manner of speaking, and, not least, at their names; but, until the present day, I had been unacquainted ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... jealous also? Nay, keep back the falsehood I see rising to thy lips. Leo Vincey, answer thou me. Yet, I will not ask thee to lay bare the secrets of a woman who has offered thee her love. Thou, Holly, speak, and let ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... sentence in it is founded on fact. You've only had the management of affairs in your hands for a couple of days, and already greed and ambition have so beclouded your mind that you've come to look upon Chu-tzu as full of fraud and falsehood. But when you by and bye go out into the world and see all those mighty concerns reeking with greed and corruption, you'll even go so far as to treat Confucius himself ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... this it was carried into my own 'next-door' neighbourhood. Next-door neighbourhood? But that surely must be the very best direction these libellers could give to their malice; for there, at least, the falsehood of their malice must be notorious. Why, yes: and in that which was my neighbourhood, according to the most literal interpretation of the term, a greater favour could not have been done me, nor a more laughable ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... employ all your malicious spite (and you have great capabilities that way) in trying to degrade the character of the corps de ballet. When you imply that the majority of ballet-girls have villas taken for them in the Regent's Park, I SAY YOU TELL A DELIBERATE FALSEHOOD. ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at each other; they did not know if it was a comedy Monte Cristo was playing, but every word he uttered had such an air of simplicity, that it was impossible to suppose what he said was false—besides, why should he tell a falsehood? "We must content ourselves, then," said Beauchamp, "with rendering the count all the little services in our power. I, in my quality of journalist, open ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... he held some wrong ideas about education, was a highly honourable man, and as every honourable man must do, he hated a falsehood, or any approach to a falsehood. He considered that what some people call white lies are black notwithstanding, and he knew in his ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... to him, hee would not so set me at libertie, but fed mee vp still with faire wordes, and promised mee that hee would first bring mee vnto his gouernment, which abutted vpon a piece of the famous riuer of Euphrates, and dismisse me. The which malice and falsehood of his I perceiuing, determined with my selfe to giue him the slip, [Footnote: Necessitie oft times sharpeneth mens wits, and causeth boldnes.] and to flie: so I waiting my time, and repairing often to the Citie, at length met with a small Fisher boate, of the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... is the Frank's perfidy as blameable as ours? Is the Alman's drunkenness, or the Alan's rapacity, as damnable as a Christian's? If a Hun or a Gepid deceives you, what wonder? He is utterly ignorant that there is any sin in falsehood. But what of the Christian who does the same? The Barbarians,' he says, 'are better men than the Christians. The Goths,' he says, 'are perfidious, but chaste. The Alans unchaste, but less perfidious. The Franks are liars, but hospitable; the Saxons ferociously cruel, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... She was unconscious of its falsehood: She knew not the nature of her sentiments for Lorenzo; and never having seen him since his first visit to Elvira, with every day his Image grew less feebly impressed upon her bosom. Besides, She thought of an Husband with all a Virgin's terror, ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... will to make their meanness or malignity efficient, its unfruitful force is absolutely hateful. It has done good work for the cause of truth and right; but it has also done bad work for the cause of falsehood and wrong: for evil has its grit as well as virtue. As it lacks, suppresses, or subordinates imagination, it is shorn of an important portion of a complete manhood; for it not only loses the perception of beauty, but the power of passing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... buried him in Rath-Cunga, in 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) of Ui-Ailella, ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... was sure Asaph Khan would deal truly in this, as he was to help himself, and durst not betray me, lest he should miss the pearl, neither could I suspect him afterwards, as he could not betray my secret without discovering his own falsehood to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... 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 time ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... him? Then, in the rattle of the hansom, passing through streets for which the girl had no eyes, 'She has lied, she has lied, she has lied!' kept repeating itself. Why had she written and signed that wanton falsehood about her going down to Lady Watermouth? How could she have gone to Lady Watermouth's when she was making so very different and so extraordinary a use of the hours she had announced her intention of spending there? What had been the need of that misrepresentation and why did she ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... of me, my own beloved, Whatever cares beset thee! And when thou hast the falsehood proved, Of those with smiles who met thee— While o'er the sea, think, love, of me, Who never can forget thee; Let memory trace the trysting-place, Where I with ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... Mrs. Parlin were both afraid that, if they spoke in this manner, their children might infer that carelessness is just as sinful as falsehood and ill temper; they wished them to know there is a vast difference. So ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May
... that the conduct of the other was founded on principles of honour, justice, and moderation; that the vague imputations contained in the king of England's declaration, had in reality no foundation; and the very manner in which they were set forth would prove their futility and falsehood; that the mention made of the works at Dunkirk, and the troop assembled on the coasts of the ocean, implied the most gross attempt to deceive mankind into a belief that these were the points which determined the king of England to issue orders for ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... to sense a falsehood. "You can't convince me," he said. "You've known the truth all along—ever since she went away. And you know why she went.—Don't you? Don't you?" Again his voice rose. He ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... how dangerous a thing it was so to speak; for had not Caius approved of it, it had tended to no less than the loss of his life. So Caius, who was mightily taken with Agrippa's obliging behavior, and on other accounts thinking it a dishonorable thing to be guilty of falsehood before so many witnesses, in points wherein he had with such alacrity forced Agrippa to become a petitioner, and that it would look as if he had already repented of what he had said, and because he ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... himself which alone gave him power in the heart of this woman,—that spotless, glorified image of a hero without fear, without reproach,—would he have felt a moment's shame and abasement at its utter falsehood? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... a plain and safe path that of falsehood a perplexing maze. Heaven is the region of gentleness and friendship hell of fierceness and animosity. As there is a worldly happiness which God perceives to be no other than disguised misery as there are worldly honors which in his estimation are reproach so there is a worldly wisdom ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... told the poor slave, Nola, to choose her own life. But I, the humble freedwoman, will speak in my turn to thee, O Dea Flavia of the imperial house of immortal Caesar, and looking into thine eyes I tell thee that thy pity is but falsehood and thine eloquence naught but cruelty. By thy words thou didst take my child from me as effectually as if thou already hadst bought and paid for her. Look at the child now! She hangs her head and dares ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... dewdrop in my bosom, Be thy guileless language, youth; Falsehood buyeth falsehood ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... was sure to do exactly what he was wound up to do, at all times and in all circumstances. Perhaps it is better to be a machine that does its duty than a flesh-and-blood person who will not, for a dead truth is better than a live falsehood. ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... English for their stomachs, because he hath married an English wife and she hath coaxed him to give back their old laws to our Saxons. (Better ride a horse on the bit he knows, I say.) But that is only a cloak to their falsehood." He cracked his finger on the table where the wine was spilt, and thus ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... of Wales practically ended any attempt at public inquiry, and almost broke the heart of Mrs. Fitzherbert. To her the Prince of course promptly disavowed Fox, with whom she immediately broke off all friendship. Fox himself, indignant at the Prince's falsehood and at the base use which had been made of his voice, shunned the Prince's society for a long time, which might very well have been longer. The scandal slowly ebbed; a compromise was arrived at between the King and his son; the King made ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... version given by Farmer and Moore is as follows, viz.:[A] "It is reported of Major Rogers, that while in London, after the French war, being in company with several persons, it was agreed, that the one who told the most improbable story, or the greatest falsehood, should have his fare paid by the others. When it came to his turn, he told the company that his father was shot in the woods of America by a person who supposed him to be a bear; and that his mother was followed several miles through the snow by hunters, who mistook her track for that of the same ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... be gainsaid. People who broke or evaded these commands did so willfully, and without excusing themselves, or being excused by others. I think most of us expected the fate of Ananias and Sapphira, if we told what we knew was a falsehood. ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... settled upon, for such evidence as there was pointed that way. The gossips set about to recall all that had happened when Philip was in Jersey last. Here one came forward with a tittle of truth, and there another with tattle of falsehood, and at last as wild a story was fabricated as might be heard ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... secure against interruption. It is not so in a house, not by any means; there is not the same protection in a house, even in the best-contrived house. The servant is bound to answer the door; he must appear and give some excuse: he may betray, by hesitation and confusion, that he utters a falsehood; he must expose himself to be questioned; he must open the door and violate your privacy in some degree; besides there are other doors, there are windows at least, through which a prying eye can detect some indication that betrays the mystery. How different is it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... forty-eight is just as wrong as one who says they make a thousand, and a sailor one inch below the surface of the water drowns just as surely as one who is a furlong deep. Just so in human life, wrong is wrong, falsehood is falsehood, and to talk of degrees is childish. Epicureanism had an easy and natural answer to these arguments, since pleasure and pain obviously ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... untroubled slumber. Raising himself, unassisted, to his elbow, he began gazing about him, though with too dreamy a look for any clear perception of his surroundings. "I am going," said he, talking as dreamily as he looked, and beginning with the falsehood which he had sent back to his mother as he was running away from home—"I am going to our best spring, down there in the edge of the woods, to fetch dear Meg of the Hills a good, cool drink of water. Then I am going to grandpap's house with Nick of the Woods. But where is ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... to put me in my uncle's place, I answer, that whoever asserted that he called you a drunkard, told a lie !" "My brother said so," replied Bruc, "and he is a child." "Horsewhip him, then, for his falsehood," returned De Bussy. "I will not have my brother called a liar," returned Bruc, determined to quarrel with him; "so draw, and defend yourself!" They both drew their swords in the public street, but were separated by the spectators. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... of a superior man as they are blended in his character with the softness and simplicity of a child. Perhaps no human being was ever more perfectly exempted from the taint of malevolence, vanity, and falsehood.' ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... reason was Christ's only harsh and threatening reproof directed against hypocrites and hypocrisy. It is not theft nor robbery nor murder nor fornication, but falsehood, the special falsehood of hypocrisy, which corrupts men, brutalizes them and makes them vindictive, destroys all distinction between right and wrong in their conscience, deprives them of what is the ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... concierge, without quite leaving the passage clear for him, ceased to bar it completely. D'Artagnan understood that orders of the most positive character had been given. He decided, therefore, to tell a falsehood,—a circumstance, moreover, which did not seriously affect his peace of mind, when he saw that beyond the falsehood the safety of the state itself, or even purely and simply his own individual personal interest, might ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... That the sun will not rise to-morrow, is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise. We should in vain, therefore, attempt to demonstrate its falsehood. Were it demonstratively false, it would imply a contradiction, and could never be distinctly conceived by the mind."—(IV. pp. ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... Nash would devote at least three hours every day to her music. The falsehood was so audacious that he shuddered as he uttered it. He made ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... horse for the great Leamington handicap, he would be sure to tell even his intimate friends that he was almost determined to take the "baronet's" offer of a mount. This he would do even where there was no possible turn in the betting to be affected by such falsehood. So that his companions were apt to complain that there was no knowing where to have Tifto. And then, they who were old enough in the world to have had some experience in men, had perceived that peculiar quality of his eyes, which ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... abridgment of it.1 A few of the incidents may be noted. The chief object of the Patriarch was to induce him to say, that his faith was like that of the Romish Church. This he declined doing, as it would be a falsehood. The Patriarch offered to absolve him from the sin of falsehood, to which Asaad replied, "What the law of nature condemns, no man can make lawful." Accompanied by a priest, he visited his own college of Ain Warka, but gained no light; and the same was true of his visit to the superior ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... those who served the Commonwealth, were places of "hard work and short rations." Milton never received for his Defensio a sixpence beyond his official salary. It has indeed been asserted that he was paid 1000 l.. for it by order of Parliament, and this falsehood having been adopted by Johnson—himself a pensioner—has passed into all the biographies, and will no doubt continue to be repeated to the end of time. This is a just nemesis upon Milton, who on his part had twitted Salmasius with having been complimented by the exiled King with ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... I can say is that you have told a falsehood. You are the man, I suppose, who entered our cabin at night and stole money out ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger
... I'll let you collect the interest for yourself at six per cent. Oh, Deacon Rowley, all you need to do is hand over the money, and say you prefer not to talk about it. You're a smart business man; you'll know what to say without speaking a falsehood. You'll break my heart if you refuse. Think! You're only helping me to help my own father. He has foolish notions about this. You can say you'll let them have it for a year, and you'll get three hundred ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... found at last what he was looking for, one of those stamped papers, riddled with memoranda and words erased and interlined, into which the unfeeling law sometimes crowds so much cowardice and falsehood. Madame Jenkins was on the point of saying: "But I was here. I would have done whatever he wished, carried out all his orders," when she suddenly realized, from the visitor's lack of constraint, his self-assured, almost insolent manner, that she too was involved in that general overturn, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... place, the letters were erased and the lesson was resumed. I was greatly perplexed; I had acquiesced in a cowardly falsehood. Carrots was a great friend of mine, and I could not bear to feel that he was humbugged, so when we were outside I went up to Carpenter and told him he was an infernal sneak, and we had a desperate ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... men or all soldiers are thieves. And what inferences might not one draw, discreditable to all traders and manufacturers, from the universal adulteration of articles of food! These people, it is said, are disposed to falsehood in order to get rations and small benefits,—a natural vice which comes with slavery, and too often attends on poverty without slavery. Those of most demonstrative piety are rarely better than the rest, not, indeed, hypocritical, but satisfying their consciences by self-depreciation and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 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 such a silence ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... indiscriminately practised, as well towards the stranger as the brother. The natives are cautious as to the accuracy of the stories which they promulgate, and seldom make a stronger asseveration than "I tink he be true!" Yet their consciences do not shrink from the use of falsehood and artifice, ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... will, "are reflected sun and heavens and earth and man," anything and everything. Never did a statement so false, so wrong-headed, contain so much suggestion of truth—truth which, by the help of analysing ritual, we may perhaps be able to disentangle. But first its falsehood must be grasped, and this is the more important as Plato's misconception in modified form lives on to-day. A painter not long ago thus defined his own art: "The art of painting is the art of imitating solid objects upon a flat surface by means of pigments." A sorry life-work! ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... for Rosario to see the Rector's face, she would doubtless have obeyed, frightened. His right foot was kicking at the sand, as though the falsehood were a loathsome worm to be ground under his heel. His arm was doubled up and his fist was clenched. Words seemed to come choking ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... impartialists - wolves in sheep's clothing - simpering honesty as they suppress documents. After all, what one wants to know is not what people did, but why they did it - or rather, why they THOUGHT they did it; and to learn that, you should go to the men themselves. Their very falsehood is often more than ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... He was a popular hero for the very reason that he was a rebel. He had done what his admirers had accused Jesus of doing, and for which they pretended that they had submitted Him to Pilate's judgment. The choice of Barabbas convicts the charges against Jesus of falsehood and unreality. The choice of Barabbas reveals the national ideal. They did not want a Messiah like Jesus, and had no eyes for the beauty of His character, nor ears for the words of grace poured into His lips. They ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the king's daughter, make altogether an interesting story, and is almost the first touch of sentiment with which the historian has refreshed us; a pleasant change from the continued accounts of corruption, violence, lust, war and petty falsehood, that have thus far marked the history of this people. The only value of these records to us is to show the character of the Jewish nation, and make it easy for us to reject their ideas as to the true status of woman, and their pretension of being guided by the hand of God, in all ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... possible for kings and queens to have faithful friends, but there are so many motives and inducements to falsehood and treachery in court, that it is not possible, generally, for them to distinguish false friends from true. The Lady Carlisle was a confederate with some of the very men whom Charles had gone to arrest. On receiving this intimation ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... didn't need comforting! She was smoothing her hair before the glass, and seemed perfectly calm. He had expected tears, and violent reproaches, which he was prepared to meet with either good-natured ridicule or quiet falsehood, as the occasion might demand. But nothing was demanded. She continued to brush her hair; so he found it quite easy to come up behind her and lay a hand on her shoulder, and say, "Nelly, dear, that wasn't a ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... was in the firmest contemplation of never more returning here. There had indeed been suggestions in the public papers, that I was looking towards a succession to the President's chair, but feeling a consciousness of their falsehood, and observing that the suggestions came from hostile quarters, I considered them as intended merely to excite public odium against me. I never in my life exchanged a word with any person on the subject, till I found my name brought forward generally, in competition with that of ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... resign thee, Once having felt thy gen'rous flame? Can dungeons, bolts, and bars confine thee, Or whips thy noble spirit tame? Too long the world has wept, bewailing That falsehood's dagger tyrants wield; But freedom is our sword and shield, And all their arts are unavailing. ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... Orr here 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
... to designate foreigners in this region except by those in the mandarin offices. Besides the absurdity of charging foreigners with distributing poison, the whole confession bears the evidence not only of falsehood, but, if ever made, of having been put into the man's mouth by those inside the mandarin offices and forced from him by torture, for the express purpose of exciting the intensest hatred ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... ignorant in its enlightenment. Necessarily all this is the effect of a cause, but such a pitiful cause! The total wreck of man's best element. The once individual corruption has spread its fearful contagion until it has become universal; falsehood is disguised in truth, vice in virtue, and fraud and diplomacy in honesty. If women are expected to live in blissful ignorance of this movement, that expectation is a crowning audacity, for woman's life is destined to be ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... in literature as it is in conduct, in fiction as it is in the report of an actual occurrence. Falsehood vitiates a poem, a painting, exactly as it does a life. Truthfulness is a quality like simplicity. Simplicity in literature is mainly a matter of clear vision and lucid expression, however complex the subject-matter ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... far in her speculation. Her candour was allied with clear insight into the possibilities of falsehood; she was not readily the victim of illusion; thinking much, and speaking little, she had not come to her twenty-third year without perceiving what a distance lay between a girl's dream of life as it might be and life as it is. Had she invariably disclosed ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... mustered strong, and hearty were their demonstrations of enthusiasm. The shops were shut in many of the streets, while barricades were prepared at the street ends leading out of town, ready to be put up at any moment. Information was then so slow in its journeyings that falsehood became as strong-looking as truth, and it was easy to keep up a ferment for some time. Any atom of news became a mountain, until the fresh air of truth melted it away. We were therefore kept for days in a state of great excitement, and it certainly ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... ambition, or what not. He is no longer a confused youth, but a man with a clear aim, and an idea possesses him. It may be either the fixed idea of the madman, or the fixed idea which makes the hero or the saint; but in any case he is possessed by the idea. The quality of the idea, its truth or falsehood, makes the difference between the maniac and ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... recognizes as divine; it feels for it, gropes for it, and the Devil, as usual, is the first to seize for his purposes whatever noble impulse comes over men, and this search for the divine of the mass becomes a sham, a fashionable craze. Hence the rage, the boom. This is the inevitable stage of falsehood through which every noble aspiration must pass. By and by the stage of truth must come, and come it shall, in due time. Russian authors will then be read not because it is the fashion and the craze, but because they have a message from the very heavens to deliver unto him that ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... 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 those working for a genuine reform ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... a Jewish mind—His holiness and His omnipotence. The one is God as He is in Himself, turned inwards, so to speak. He is absolutely holy, unapproachable, a consuming fire scorching away impurity, falsehood, and sin of every kind. The other is God as He is in the world, turned outwards, so to speak; the world's fulness—suns and systems, mountains and oceans, earthquake and storm, summer's abundance and winter's terror—all this is His glory, the garment by which ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... didn't all depend on me; if there was any one else to decide the destinies of Europe; if I wasn't bound to vindicate the Truth on all occasions, and shout down every falsehood, standing alone in arms against a sea of error, and holding desperately in place the hook from which Truth and Righteousness and Good Taste hang as by a thread and tremble over the unspeakable abyss; if but for a day or two;—it cannot be, I cannot let Art and Civilisation go crashing into ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... at the anguish which now Convulses thy bosom and darkens thy brow; The period may come, in thy journey through life, When sick of its falsehood, corruption, and strife, Thou vainly shall seek in thy desolate track To bring those sweet feelings and sympathies back; And thy spirit will murmur, when vexed and reviled, Oh would I could weep—as ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... studio without abusing modern art, or meets a doctor without sneering at the medical profession, or loses an opportunity of telling Elizabeth, who loves truth for its own sake, that he enjoys trickery and falsehood, and thinks ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant |
