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Falsity   /fˈɔlsəti/   Listen
Falsity

noun
(pl. falsities)
1.
The state of being false or untrue.  Synonym: falseness.
2.
A false statement.  Synonyms: falsehood, untruth.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Falsity" Quotes from Famous Books



... handkerchief and mopped his face. His manner was that of a man who, having heard bad news, has just been assured of its falsity. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... brooding over the emptiness of his great triumph. His son the Black Prince had died, cursing the falsity of Frenchmen. England also had gone through the great tragedy of the Black Death and her people, like those of France, had been driven to the point of rebellion—though with them this meant no more than ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... unequivocally absurd, is a certain notion which I hinted would be found to be inevitably consequent on the foregoing premisses, and whose self-evident falsity carries with it condemnation of the premisses. To say that the creative agency denominated Nature, or by whatever other name known, neither had any ends in view when originally adopting certain sequences of ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... the tone which seemed undue, and Mr. Hilton again took mental note. Presently he asked a question, but in such a tone that the Doctor pricked up his ears. There was a premeditated self-suppression, a gravity of restraint, which implied some falsity; some intention other than the ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... freer from bigotry or intolerance, though not many can hate falsity and lies more earnestly. The Church of England, he tells me, should be a national church, a church expressing the highest reach of English temperament, with room for all shades of thought. He quotes Dollinger, "No church is so national, so deeply ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie

... its appropriate form. Here are two eminent examples of "arranged" architecture. Before organic architecture can come into being our inchoate national life must itself become organic. Arranged architecture, of the sort we see everywhere, despite its falsity, is a true expression of the ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... category of persecutions, because she treated potential anarchism or treason as implying overt anarchism or treason, though unless and until she discovered such implication in a given opinion, any one was at liberty to hold it or not as he chose; its truth or falsity was a matter of entire indifference. To punish the implied intention of committing a wrong act is sufficiently dangerous in principle; but it is to be distinguished from punishment for holding an opinion because it is accounted a ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... second relation from a gentleman of Martinico, and one of my friends not capable of a falsity. He assured me that in his neighborhood an infant of four months old unfortunately lost his nurse, and its parents not being able to put it to another, resolved, through necessity, to feed it with chocolate. The success was very ...
— Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes and Home Made Candy Recipes • Miss Parloa

... Etheridge, Fossiologist of the British Museum, says: "Nine-tenths of the talk of Evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by facts. This museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan

... confused with the physical. The constructive use of intelligence in foresight, and contriving, is then discounted; we are just to get out of the way and allow nature to do the work. Since no one has stated in the doctrine both its truth and falsity better than Rousseau, we shall turn ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... in order that he himself might have his grip of me more securely, but at that time I was unsuspicious, and believed the best of every one. Yes! I honestly thought people were honest,—I trusted their good faith, with the result that I found out the utter falsity of their pretensions. And here I am,—old and nearing the end of my tether—more friendless than when I first began to make my fortune, with the certain knowledge that not a soul has ever cared or cares for me except for what can be got out of me in the way of hard ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... it like coals, her lips were set. But it was her expression, at once defiant and agonized, which impressed me so much that I never shall forget it. I confess I could not read it in the least, but it left upon my mind the belief that she was a false woman, and yet ashamed of her own falsity. There was the greatest triumph of her art, that in those terrible circumstances she should still have succeeded in conveying to me, and to the hundreds of others who watched, this ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... is a recurrent note in the history of democracies. The American democracy is no exception. With most of the charges of corruption, the historian has little concern; but the bargain and corruption cry of 1825 has a historical significance. The falsity of the charge against Clay has been proved as nearly as a negative can be. Adams may not have been above the uncongenial task of soliciting votes, but he kept safely within the moral domain which ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... Diagoras, superstitious as he was, and it was not well possible to be more so, it is said became an atheist, on seeing that the gods did not thunder their vengeance on a man who had taken them as evidence to a falsity. Upon this principle, how many atheists ought there to be? From the systems that have made invisible unknown beings the depositaries of man's engagements, we do not always see it result that they ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... the intelligence and wealth of the community withdraw the allegiance of the masses from tricksters and schemers, and transfer it to themselves by the inauguration of such methods of social amelioration as shall convince the multitude of the falsity of the demagogue's teaching, and satisfy them of the fact that the higher classes have really their welfare at heart, and are anxious for their comfort and happiness. When this is done, the ignorant population will no longer be leagued on the side of falsehood, no longer stand the steady ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... and antique phrase, Dearest, my lips wax all too wise; Nor have I known a love whose praise Our piping poets solemnize, Neither a love where may not be Ever so little falsity. ...
— Chamber Music • James Joyce

... among his countrymen, enemies who were in a position to discover the truth, his statements passed unchallenged and uncontradicted by them,—that the numerous adventurers and explorers who followed in his track, instead of exposing the falsity of his relations and descriptions, found their interest in embellishing the narrative,—that a similar drama was performed by other actors and on a different stage,—that the Peruvian civilization, so analogous to that of the Aztecs and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... report, came with uncertainty as to our belief of them; but as to those good things that to thee appertain, both such as thou thyself possessest, I mean wisdom and prudence, and the happiness thou hast from thy kingdom, certainly the same that came to us was no falsity; it was not only a true report, but it related thy happiness after a much lower manner than I now see it to be before my eyes. For as for the report, it only attempted to persuade our hearing, but did not so make known the dignity of the things themselves ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... the Nationalist patriots who know full well the falsity of these and such-like beliefs, are responsible for this invincible ignorance. Hatred and distrust of England are the staple of their teachings, which the credulous peasantry imbibe like mother's milk. The peripatetic patriots who invade the rural communities ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... line or word of this book can be accused of illustrating or justifying or inciting to or even attempting to palliate either form of this wholly abominable spirit of the pit. If such places there be, there assuredly is misdirection and falsity. This spirit is one of the great enemies of mankind. As aroused in women against men, it has done and is doing no little harm; as exhibited by men against the righteous claims of women, it is one of the supremely malign ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby

... innumerable little works, their whole life. He was the more indignantly in revolt against them as he recognized in them his adolescent soul and all the follies that he had vowed to pluck out of it. In truth, the candid Schumann could not be taxed with falsity: he hardly ever said anything that he had not felt. But that was just it: his example made Christophe understand that the worst falsity in German art came into it not when the artists tried to express something which they had not felt, but rather when they tried to ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... however, have proved the falsity of this doctrine and led to a divorce between art and popular feeling which a sensitive observer cannot fail to remark. It is glaringly apparent in the hitherto most vital of all Russian arts, the theatre. The artists have continued ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell

... acts minor evil, but "all of a piece," as he said), and made his way to the Ring. The bee-swarm was thick as ever on the golden bough. Algernon heard no curses, and began to nourish hope again, as he advanced. He began to hope wildly that this rumour about the horse was a falsity, for there was no commotion, no ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... was written under compulsion and expressed the reverse of her real desires.[620] In the spring of 1529 several English envoys, ending with Gardiner, were sent to Rome to obtain a papal declaration of the falsity of the brief. Clement, however, naturally refused to declare the brief a forgery, without hearing the arguments on the other side,[621] and more important developments soon supervened. Gardiner wrote from Rome, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... possess all the force, the reality, and other inherent properties, of instinct or intuition; whether, to proceed a step farther, profundity itself might not, in matters of a purely speculative nature, be detected as a legitimate source of falsity and error. In other words, I believed, and still do believe, that truth, is frequently of its own essence, superficial, and that, in many cases, the depth lies more in the abysses where we seek her, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... animate and inanimate, were made for man alone—that woman was not part of the original plan of creation but was an after-thought for man's special use and benefit. So that a science which proves the falsity of any of these theological conceptions aids in the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... Falsity consists in privation of knowledge, involved in confusion and mutilation of ideas. For instance, because they think themselves to be free, and the sole reason for this opinion is that they are conscious of their own actions, and ignorant of the causes determining those actions. Nobody ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... kept up, in a low voice, a running commentary on the falsity of men and the foolishness of women. But, at times, her natural kindness of heart asserted itself, to the confusion of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... oft-quoted lines go to show is, that a falsity in verse will travel faster and endure longer than a falsity in prose. The man who would sneer or stare at a silly proposition nakedly put, will admit that "there is a good deal in that" when "that" is ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... visible beyond them, all the noblest men who ever lived would choose, as without hesitation they always have chosen, the latter destiny. It is not that they like failure, but they prefer failure to falsity; it is not that they love persecution, but they prefer persecution to meanness; it is not that they relish opposition, but they welcome opposition rather than guilty acquiescence; it is not that they do not shrink from agony, but they would not escape ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... reward, the critical relish of the essence, all adequate; a fact that seems in a sort to point a moral of large application. Everything but the "interpretation," the personal, in the French theatre of those days, had kinds and degrees of weakness and futility, say even falsity, of which our modern habit is wholly impatient—let alone other conditions still that were detestable even at the time, and some of which, forms of discomfort and annoyance, linger on to this day. The playhouse, in short, was almost a place of ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... yards I had gone, I suppose, and my brain had been very active the while, when something occurred to me which placed a new complexion upon this second summons. I thought of the falsity of the first, of the improbability of even the most hardened practical joker practising his wiles at one o'clock in the morning. I thought of our recent conversation; above all I thought of the girl who had delivered ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... fictitious news, should have occupied the wheel of the luckless barber, who had spread bad but true news; for the barber had no intention of deception, but Stratocles had; and the question here to be tried, was not the truth or the falsity of the reports, but whether the reporters intended to deceive their fellow-citizens? The "Chronicle" and the "Post" must be challenged on such a jury, and all the race of news-scribes, whom Patin characterises as hominum ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... territory.[106] These laws also permitted any parish minister to lodge with the society clerk a certificate charging that a man had entered his parish and had preached there without first obtaining permission. Furthermore, there was no provision for confirming the truth or proving the falsity of such a statement. In connection with the certificate clause, it was also enacted that no assistant, or justice of the peace, should sign a warrant for collecting a minister's rates until he was sure that nowhere in the colony was there such a certificate ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... is not so. God, in baptism, places Himself in a relation to the subject, receives the subject until it become a part of the organism of grace in its subjective and objective force, and is recognized as a member of the church of Christ. Now the falsity of the position assumed by the enemies of infant baptism lies just here, that only the subjective side of baptism is held up, while its objective, sacramental character is left altogether out of view. It reverses the ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... write of it no more. The open wickedness of the world we live in is preferable to hypocrisy and cringing. I will rather laugh with others than be a laughing-stock. I sicken at this complication of folly and falsity. I go to the Bath shortly, and look for change and pleasure there, though Mr Wortley speaks of passing through on his way to Bristol, I know not for what. Lord Hervey is resolved to come there, though I fear it will not please ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington

... If my charges are true, the identity of their author with the editor of the Evening Journal could not detract from their truth; if false, a more obvious as well as conclusive mode of establishing their falsity ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various

... be made with sincerity. In the light of the facts it is preposterous. Flipper, while at West Point, demonstrated beyond controversy the fallacy of such a position as the first; and there is hardly a college commencement in which some negro in some way does not continue to show its falsity by distinguishing himself by his extraordinary attainments. Even while I write, a letter lies before me from a young colored student, a graduate of Brown University, who is now taking a post-graduate course at the American School for Classical Studies, at Athens, Greece. From all reports, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... the cardinal points of Coxeter's carefully thought-out philosophy of life was that in this world no woman can touch pitch without being defiled. And yet on one occasion, at least, the woman who now sat opposite to him had proved the falsity of this view. Nan Archdale, apparently indifferent to the opinion of those who wished her well, had allowed herself to be closely associated with one of those unfortunate members of her own sex who, at certain intervals in the history of the civilized world, become heroines of ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... thank you for your silence—I would not have heard your tongue avow such falsity; be't your punishment to remember that I have ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan

... the relieved unit, which had lost many men two months before through inattention to precautionary measures. The first night that the Battalion went into the line there was an alarm, but as the wind at the moment was in a safe quarter its falsity was immediately recognised. The men at this time had only the then out-of-date P.H. helmet. These helmets were changed in the course of a week or two for the more efficacious box respirators, which remained with slight modifications ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts

... will, I think, deny that the question is important. Writers of the "anti-theological" school still continue to insist on the falsity of the Mosaic narrative, as if the error was not yet sufficiently slain, and was important enough to be attacked again and again. And theological writers, down to the most modern, continue to explain ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell

... the day, a rumor was started that a large American ship was signalized, and that she was loaded to her scuppers with grain; but I quickly proved the falsity of the report, and then made my appearance in the store of the largest grain dealers in Melbourne, Messrs. Hennetit & Co., since failed, and didn't pay their English creditors but sixpence on the pound, and I strongly suspect that American firms ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... a sort of second sight, that they added to each other, "Oh, what a bore it has been; nobody worth meeting," and "how thankful I am it's over!" which was indeed what Miss Minnie and Miss Edith said. If Lucy had seen a little deeper she would have known that this too was a sort of conventional falsity which the young ladies said to each other, according to the fashion of the day, without any meaning to speak of; but one must have learned a great many lessons before ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... child," said Mrs. Beecher. "Why, it is so accurate in its absolute falsity that neither I nor the boys can find one fact or date given correctly, although we have studied it for two days. Even the year of Mr. Beecher's birth is wrong, and that ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... pleasure. With me it was a difficult and anxious time till my facts were found, selected, and properly jointed; nor could I rest from research and effort till I was satisfied of correct anatomy; the strength of my inward repugnance to the idea of flaw or falsity sometimes enabled me to shun egregious blunders; but the knowledge was not there in my head, ready and mellow; it had not been sown in Spring, grown in Summer, harvested in Autumn, and garnered through Winter; whatever I wanted I must go out and gather ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... wages, shorter hours, and less output—reasonable desires in our state before the war, unreasonable now because the cost of the war has put them beyond human possibility. He wants low prices with high wages and less work. It is false arithmetic and its falsity will be proved ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... morally accessory to murder before the fact. The anarchist is a criminal whose perverted instincts lead him to prefer confusion and chaos to the most beneficent form of social order. His protest of concern for workingmen is outrageous in its impudent falsity; for if the political institutions of this country do not afford opportunity to every honest and intelligent son of toil, then the door of hope is forever closed against him. The anarchist is everywhere not merely the enemy of system and of progress, but the deadly foe of liberty. If ever anarchy ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... he replied, laying down the volume which he was apparently reading when he interrupted himself. "I have leisure enough to perceive at once the falsity of that observation which the honest Psalmist recorded for our amusement. The real liars, conscious, malicious, wilful falsifiers, must always be a minority in the world, because their habits tend to bring them to an early grave or a reformatory. It is the ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... sufficient to explain the senile changes, and this has been frequently expressed in the remark that age is determined not by years, but by the condition of the arteries. Comparative studies show the falsity of this view, for animals which are but little or not at all subject to arterial disease show senile changes of much the same character as ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... already promoted the general good, I will here mention the fruits that may be gathered from my Principles. The first is the satisfaction which the mind will experience on finding in the work many truths before unknown; for although frequently truth does not so greatly affect our imagination as falsity and fiction, because it seems less wonderful and is more simple, yet the gratification it affords is always more durable and solid. The second fruit is, that in studying these principles we will become ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes

... learning remarkably well; so that her lessons are discernible as a second nature intertwined with all their thoughts, words, and deeds from very childhood almost." I had been looking awhile on the falsity of every part of the edifice when a funeral came by with many weeping and sighing, and many men and horses in mourning trappings; and shortly the poor widow, veiled so as not to see this cruel world any more, came along with ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... that life of double treachery which he had avowed to his friend. As the world went, Marcian was an honest man: he kept before him an ideal of personal rectitude; he believed himself, and hitherto with reason, incapable of falsity to those who trusted him in the relations of private life. Moreover, he had a sense of religion, which at times, taking the form of an overpowering sense of sin, plunged him into gloom. Though burdened in conscience with no crime, he was subject in a ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... human hearts: even as from the very first Sofia had instinctively yet unconsciously recognized the intrinsic falsity of Victor's pretensions, so now she perceived the integral honesty that informed Lanyard's every word and nuance of expression, and ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... own, why give him a command? This freedom of man's will is a logical necessity. Reason demands it. Now, let us look at this a little. If man is not free to choose between good and evil; between right and wrong; between truth and falsity; wherein lies the reasonableness of instructing him? of exhorting him to do what is right, and to shun what is wrong? of commanding him to do good, with promises of reward for his obedience, and threatenings ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... sentences obviously intended to convey to his readers the impression that our trade in the building of ships for foreign purchasers was a declining trade. That impression is false, and it is a little hard to understand how Mr. Williams could fail to see its falsity. The following figures show—what to most persons would be sufficiently obvious on reflection—that the tonnage of ships launched at our great yards varies largely from year to year. To pick out the year 1889, as Mr. Williams does, and declare that since that year there has been a decline in our ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox

... a week when she began to exhibit herself in all these lights,—not too manifestly it is true, for one of the qualities of which she was most vain was her falsity and power of concealment, but sufficiently to make an impression on those around her. People soon perceived how annoyed she was to be the daughter of an illegitimate mother, and to have lived under her restraint ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... has charged me with departing from my former ground in regard to an ecclesiastical establishment in Upper Canada. My editorials and correspondence with Her Majesty's Government will be considered conclusive evidence of the falsity of the charge, and will again defeat the attempts of the enemies of Methodism to destroy me and overthrow the Conference. Another cause of attack by Mr. Perry is, that amongst several other suggestions which I took the liberty to offer to Lord Glenelg, Colonial Secretary, was the appointment of ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... have power to dare, I mean to dare to do whatever they may approve of; and this good insight and this power they have always had, for whenever a great painter (which very seldom happens) does a work which appears to be false and lying, that falsity is very true, and if he were to put more truth into it it would be a lie, as he will never do a thing which cannot be in itself, nor make a man's hand with ten fingers, nor paint on a horse the ears of a bull or the hump of a camel, ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd

... satisfied, by this time, he never would make one—but I could not explain all his obliquities by referring them to ignorance. The manner, moreover, in which he represented himself as the principal actor, on all occasions, denoted so much address, that, while I felt the falsity of the impressions he left, I did not exactly see the means necessary to counteract them. So ingenious, indeed, was his manner of stringing facts and inferences together, or what seemed to be facts and inferences, that I more than once caught myself actually believing that which, in ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... that his natural rights inhere in his person, go with him in his movement, subject always to be exercised under the conditions and limitations before recited. After all, to demonstrate the utter falsity and pernicious consequence of the idea that the right to share in the common Government (which is only a synonym for the right of franchise) is a privilege to be farmed out by Government at discretion and to whom it chooses, it is only necessary to ask, if that be so, whence comes the right to representation? ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... being, forbear to produce fruit in effects? Are the laws of psychologic sequence less rigid and certain than those laws of physical sequence which determine in material nature every phenomenon, from planet-paths in space to the gathering of dew-drops on a leaf? If it were so, falsity or confusion in intellectual method might be pronounced a thing of trifling import, or wholly indifferent. But such suppositions are the seemings only of postulates floating through the brains of Ignorance or Un-heed, who really postulate nothing at all. If, on the contrary, we admit this ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... subscribe the declaration appointed by this act, and to conform to the religious worship in this province according to the Church of England, and to receive the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the rites and usage of the said church, &c. is founded on falsity in matter of fact, is repugnant to the laws of England, contrary to the charter of the Proprietors, is an encouragement to atheism and irreligion, destructive to trade, and tends to the depopulation and ruin ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... so much attention is indeed the proof of the falsity of these hard names. Opposition to Home Rule in Ulster proceeds not from "bigots" or "deadheads," not from "Tories," or "aristocrats," or "landlords" exclusively. It is neither party question, nor class question. It has destroyed all differences between parties and classes. I doubt if there are ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... advanced spiritual understanding. The highest prayer 16:3 is not one of faith merely; it is demonstra- tion. Such prayer heals sickness, and must destroy sin and death. It distinguishes between Truth 16:6 that is sinless and the falsity ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... inexact to identify art in the Middle Age with philosophy and theology. Its pleasing falsity could be adapted to useful ends, much in the same way as matrimony excuses love and sexual union. This, however, implies that for the Middle Age the ideal state was celibacy; that is, pure knowledge, divorced ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... disinterred, and, also, a call for an inquest the following day. He had become very indignant at the idea of connecting his friend, Pattmore, with such a hideous crime: he, therefore, hurried over to tell Pattmore of the rumors, and of the prompt measures he had taken to prove their falsity. He drew Pattmore into a private room and told him all that he had heard and done. He expected that Pattmore would thank him heartily for his friendly action; but, instead, Pattmore's face turned very white, and he asked who it was that had ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton

... figure, which aimed at grace and is become a caricature? Affectation is in the arts the equivalant of sophistry in logic, of the false in morals, of hypocrisy in religion. It is not extravagant to assume that affectation, being a falsity, an active lie, is a torture to the spirit which perceives it, and a wrong to the honest souls who endure it. It should be, therefore, for twofold cause, banished without pity from the realm of aesthetics. Why should the natural, which is the expression of truth, have so great an attraction if ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... at the morning parade that promised trouble for the show. A countryman, who had heard that the hide of an elephant could not be punctured, was struck by the happy thought of finding out for himself the truth or falsity of this theory. He had had an argument with some of his friends, he taking the ground that an elephant's hide was no different from the hide of any other animal. And he promised to show them that it ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... their shoulders to the required degree, hence the truth or falsity of a sentiment may ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... beam from which the man was swinging was then lowered and he was untied. Again I looked very carefully at the hooks in the back. The people say that no blood is shed by their introduction, and consider this to be a miracle. The falsity of this assertion was shown by the blood which I saw on the side of one of ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder

... present day; and this, notwithstanding the preservation of the true reading, clog, in the texts of Talfourd and Carew Hazlitt. Here then is the case of a palpable misprint surviving, despite positive external evidence of its falsity, over a period of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... Drake's frankness, outspoken to the point of cruelty, sprang from an indifference to her? Clarice had seen a good deal of Drake lately. She caught herself almost smiling at the idea, softening at its palpable falsity. In a last effort at resistance she fixed her thoughts on the cruelty, the callousness, in his method of narration, and began to feel herself on solid ground. She was consequently inspired to run over ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason

... grace which his humiliation had won for them, made it a title of honor to him and to his race. It has, however, been proved[18] that the surname was borne by the ancestors of Francesco Dandolo long before; and the falsity of this seal of the legend renders also its circumstances doubtful. But the main fact of grievous humiliation having been undergone, admits of no dispute; the existence of such a tradition at all is in itself a proof of its truth; it was not one likely to be either invented or ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... monarch they had already twice deceived." Mr. Bain must refer to the charges (invented at St Petersburg) that Pitt had egged Gustavus on to war against Russia, and then deserted him. In the former volume (chapters xxi-iii) I proved the falsity of those charges. It would be more correct to ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... it is good to have a physician of tact, who shall not doom them regularly every day. Plato said that physicians were the only men who might lie at pleasure, since our health depends upon the vanity and falsity of their promises. And yet one is not usually deceived by this flattery; but it is vastly more comfortable to hear pleasant things instead of gloomy, and the sick would rather prefer a dance to a dirge. Of this amiable sort must have been the attendant who caused ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... letter, which the man actually had the nerve to show me when I was helpless, proving her falsity. I would not believe, and went back seeking her. But she had departed—no one knew where—but had first convinced herself that my name had been erased from my uncle's will. Two months later I heard that she married ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish

... with Mr. Henry; he gave what was asked of him in a kind of noble rage. Perhaps because he knew he was by nature inclining to the parsimonious, he took a backforemost pleasure in the recklessness with which he supplied his brother's exigence. Perhaps the falsity of the position would have spurred a humbler man into the same excess. But the estate (if I may say so) groaned under it; our daily expenses were shorn lower and lower; the stables were emptied, all but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... he will be sure to see or hear, that he may not be taken unawares, puzzled and tempted by things which to him will seem not to have come within the experience of his parents if they said nothing to him about them. The boy warned by his parents of the falsity of the strange doctrines he may hear preached by these unguided youths will not readily be deluded. The pure but ignorant boy going for the first time into the new life of the school, looking up to the older boys with that peculiar veneration ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley

... regarding the many changes in the disposition of their forces rendered necessary by the progress of the battle. The firm resistance made by the force under his command is sufficient refutation of the falsity of the charges made against him. Misunderstanding of orders, want of co-operation of subordinates as well as superiors, and rawness of recruits were said to have been responsible for the terrible slaughter of the Union forces on the first day of ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore

... passage, he first eliminated the causa sine qua non and substituted ad vitam aeternam for ad salutem, and afterwards changed this phrase into ad veram pietatem. (Frank 2, 218. 169.) However, as soon as the controversy began, the Lutherans, notably Flacius, clearly saw the utter falsity of Major's statements. ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... Hobbes's theory of Predication, according to the well-known remark of Leibnitz, and the avowal of Hobbes himself,(32) renders truth and falsity completely arbitrary, with no standard but the will of men, it must not be concluded that either Hobbes, or any of the other thinkers who have in the main agreed with him, did in fact consider the distinction between ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... Saint Augustine preferred to deny the creation of souls and to derive them from the soul of Adam, through a successive progeny of human vehicles, rather than to allow God to be charged with injustice. We are not called upon to demonstrate the falsity of his hypothesis, which the Church has been forced to condemn, though without replacing it with a better theory; all the same, if human souls suffer from a sin in which they have not individually and consciously participated—and such is the case, for even granting that ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... History, he believed, showed that the direct way of exposing the slaves to acts of insubordination was to leave them in ignorance and superstition to the care of their own religion.[2] To disprove the falsity of the charge that literary instruction given in Neau's school in New York was the cause of a rising of slaves in 1709, he produced evidence that it was due to their opposition to becoming Christians. The rebellions in South Carolina from ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson

... not stop this side the farthest line Of Truth, you said, nor hide one little falsity From my sweet faith that was too kind to see. You said a keener vision would divine All failings later, bare each hid design, Each poor disguise of loving's treachery That screened its weaknesses from even me. How oft you said those cherry lips were mine Alone. The cherries came ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various

... The truth or falsity of these stories of the peones I must leave to the inclination of the reader. On one occasion I observed a phenomenon of this nature, however. It was a damp, misty night, and I was sitting in ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... of our frivolity," Mrs. Featherbrain gayly exclaims; "the wickedness of New York and the falsity of mankind, are new to her as yet. You saved Charley's life, didn't you, my love? Trixy told me all about it,—and remained with him all night in the snow, at the risk of your own life. Quite a romance, upon my word. Now why not end it, like all romances ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... thousand. How easily the worldly-wise face, puckered over a stiff brief, relaxes into the lines of laughter. He sees many an evil side of human nature, he is familiar with slanders and injustice, all kinds of human bitterness and falsity; but neither his hand nor his heart becomes "imbued with that it works in," and the little admixture of acid, inevitable from his circumstances and mode of life, but heightens the flavour of his humour. But of all humourists of the professional ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... been in the five changes since Sir Nicholas Bacon's time";[43] and this on the plea that his intentions had always been pure, and had never been affected by the presents he received. His justification has been set aside by modern critics, not on the ground that the evidence demonstrates its falsity,[44] but because it is inconceivable or unnatural that any man should receive a present from another, and not suffer his judgment to be swayed thereby. It need hardly be said that such an a priori conviction is not a sufficient basis on which to found a sweeping condemnation of Bacon's ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... statements of the same points he had made in the confessional and in his sermon. They contained no assault upon the Church, no arraignment of the pope, no personal attack on any one. Neither were they given as necessarily true, but as what Luther believed to be true, and the real truth or falsity of which he desired to have decided in the only way questions of faith and salvation ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss

... persuade Sir Winterton to give Mr. Quisante a private assurance that the scandal is entirely baseless, would Mr. Quisante state publicly that he was convinced of its falsity and did not wish it to influence ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... fearing to get into trouble with the government. He then pushed on to confer with the Pottawatomi, who had a village at Sycamore Creek about forty miles farther on. Here he found similar conditions; also he learned the falsity of the story that he could ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... business-like adjustment of effort to result, the vagueness and desultoriness of Coleridge look looser and, in the literary sense, more disreputable than ever. Here was a man who could not only criticise but create; who, though he may sometimes, like others, have convicted his preaching of falsity by his practice, and his practice of sin by his preaching, yet could in the main make practice and preaching fit together. Here was a critic against whom the foolish charge, "You can break, but you cannot make," was confessedly impossible—a poet who knew not only the rule of ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... Spencer and Bradlaugh who brought me back to Orthodox theology." His supernaturalism, which he identifies with orthodox Christianity, I should prefer to call the Romance of Christianity—Romance implying not falsity, but the desirable and the ideal. He deliberately takes that which he and other people admire or want as the standard of truth. "I want to love my neighbour not because he is I, but precisely because he is not ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... in his heart he was a Mussulman, or that he had extinguished the light of Christianity within his soul. No—oh! no; the more he read on the subject of the Mohammedan system of theology, the more he became convinced not only of its utter falsity, but also of its incompatibility with the progress of civilization. Nevertheless, he dared not pray to the True God whom he had renounced with his lips; but there was a secret adoration, an interior worship of the Saviour, which he could not and ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... will, if we are silent and acquiescent, be halfway to reality again in the course of a generation. To our children they are not evidently shams; they are powerful working suggestions. Human institutions are things of life, and whatever weed of falsity lies still rooted in the ground has the promise and potency of growth. It will tend perpetually, according to its nature, to recover its old influence over the imagination, the thoughts, and acts of ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... to encrease the Animosities and Aversion, which those under their Care have against their Enemies, whom to blacken and render odious, they leave no Art untried, no Stone unturn'd; and no Calumny can be more malicious, no Story more incredible, nor Falsity more notorious, than have been made Use of knowingly for that Purpose by Christian Divines, both Protestants, ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville

... alone, Sylvia," he said. "I know no more of the truth or falsity of it than you. I have seen just what you have ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... but mark how luxury unmans us. I was already demoralised. I crossed the threshold of the timbered portal, took a few steps, and retreated. It smelt badly! So I marched back, counting the lamps in their fine falsity. But the other, the crooked and covered way, smelt very badly indeed; and no good American is without a fund of accumulated sensibility to ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... this moment and all moments. It needs only to be recognized and trusted to begin its transforming work in your consciousness. Even life is only consciousness, Sylvia, and you cannot be conscious without thinking. Then what it means to guard the thought,—to think truth, and not falsity!" ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... when angels visited the earth, and God himself even spoke with man. The Jews represent the Semitic principle; all that is spiritual in our nature. They are the trustees of tradition and the conservators of the religious element. They are a living and the most striking evidence of the falsity of that pernicious doctrine of modern times—the natural equality of man. The political equality of a particular race is a matter of municipal arrangement, and depends entirely on political considerations and circumstances; but the natural equality ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli

... necessary to prove the falsity of the phrenological statement. It is only necessary to show that its truth is not proved, and cannot be, by the common course of argument. The walls of the head are double, with a great air-chamber between them, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... The problem of inductive logic is to determine the actual truth or falsity of propositions: the problem of deductive logic is to determine their relative truth or falsity, that is to say, given such and such propositions as true, what ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock

... up to 1837 had been too abnormal to permit the constitutional radicals to show themselves in their true character. Mackenzie himself, in the rather abject letter with which he sought reinstatement in 1848, admitted the falsity of his old position: "Had I seen things in 1837 as I do in 1848, I would have shuddered at the very idea of revolt, no matter what our wrongs might have been. I ought, as a Scotsman, to have stood ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison

... of War, to send government arms into the South in view of the approaching need for them. Even General Scott—whose position must have given him the means of knowing better—reiterates these calumnies, the falsity of which the least investigation ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... Adams had means of proving there were no negroes. When he found that these falsified figures had been used with the English embassador as reasons for admitting Texas as a slave State, the old man called on Calhoun, and showed him the industriously collected proofs of the falsity of this census. He says: 'He writhed like a trodden rattlesnake, but said the census was full of mistakes; but one part balanced another,—it was not worth while to correct them.' His whole life was an incessant warfare with the rapidly advancing spirit of slavery, that was coiling ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... died tranquilly. He accounts for the insinuating style of Dr. Manly's letter by stating that that gentleman, just after its publication, joined a church. He informs us that he has openly proved the doctor for the falsity contained in the spirit of that letter, boldly declaring before Dr. Manly, who is still living, that nothing which he saw justified the insinuations. Mr. Woodsworth assures us that he neither heard nor saw anything to justify the belief of any mental change in the opinions of Mr. Paine ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... the room vibrated in the frequencies of a deep bass laugh. "You are trying to hold a completely untenable position, friend Hilton. Any attempt to convince a mind of real power that falsity is truth is illogical. My advice is for you ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... dignity. Scituate has a quaintness, a casualness, the indescribable air of a land's-end spot. The fine houses in Scituate are refreshingly free from pretension; the winds that have twisted the trees into Rackham-like grotesques have blown away falsity and formality. ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery

... meaning of this? Was Katie the bride? Was she about to marry Lopez? Was this the revenge which Lopez had planned? It was manifestly so; and yet why had Katie consented? He could not understand it. It seemed like a fresh proof of her frivolity and falsity; and at such an exhibition he felt bewildered. She had been false to him for the sake of Rivers; was she also false to Rivers for the sake ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... theatre especially, dances of character, that should express to the eye the sensations of the soul: without which, they considered it as nothing but an art that had left nature behind it; a mere corpse without the animating spirit; or at the best, carrying with it a character of falsity or tastelessness. A thorough master of dancing, should, in every motion of every limb, convey some meaning; or rather be all expression or pantomime, to his very ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini

... sharp outline, so that he could see certain streets, books, and situations wearing a halo almost perceptible to the physical eye. Did she smile? Did she put the paper down wearily, condemning it not only for its inadequacy but for its falsity? Was she going to protest once more that he only loved the vision of her? But it did not occur to her that this diagram had anything to do with her. She said simply, and in ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... fame so dear to thee, poor, youthful fool?" said he. "Aye me! doubt not her falsity shall break thy heart some day and ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol



Words linked to "Falsity" :   fable, lie, scheme, dodging, fiction, prevarication, contradiction in terms, contradiction, deceit, dodge, fabrication, spuriousness, falsify, deception, truth, statement, unreality, misrepresentation, false, irreality, falseness



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