Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Verity   /vˈɛrəti/  /vˈɛrɪti/   Listen
Verity

noun
(pl. verities)
1.
Conformity to reality or actuality.  Synonyms: the true, trueness, truth.  "The situation brought home to us the blunt truth of the military threat" , "He was famous for the truth of his portraits" , "He turned to religion in his search for eternal verities"
2.
An enduring or necessary ethical or religious or aesthetic truth.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Verity" Quotes from Famous Books



... remarkable events of the war, and passed some time in the ancient palace of the Alhambra, the once favorite abode of the Moorish monarchs. Everywhere I took notes, from the most advantageous points of view, of whatever could serve to give local verity and graphic effect to the scenes described. Having taken up my abode for a time at Seville, I then resumed my manuscript and rewrote it, benefited by my travelling notes and the fresh and vivid impressions of my recent tour. In constructing my chronicle I adopted the fiction of a Spanish monk as ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... for thy Naya nor thy pagan Crocodile-god," exclaimed the Mohammedan chief impatiently. "Bow unto my divan, or of a verity my slaves shall ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... into the storeroom. His lazy speech was cut short by the clangorous slamming of the iron door behind him. Conscientiously he pounded on the iron and yelled wrathful commands to Davy to open. Then when he thought he had made noise enough to add verity to his role and to free the conch from any onlooker's suspicion ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... although not a league of the coastline of Victoria is in strict verity to be attributed to Flinders as discoverer, he is habitually cited as if he were. Places are named after him, memorials are erected to him. The highest mountain in the vicinity of Port Phillip carries on its summit a tablet celebrating the ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... nature which remain substantially unaltered in the face of whatever changes of opinion, civilization, and religion. The truth that he brings to light is not the sensational fact of a fashion or a period, but a verity of the human heart, which may foretell, but can never be affected by, anything which that heart may conceive. In other words, Hawthorne belonged neither to this nor to any other generation of writers further than that his productions may ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... wilfully, and thereby to drive the said complainers to that strait that either they shall satisfy his unreasonable desire, or then to lose their lives, with the sober portion of goods made by them for the sustenance of themselves and their poor bairns: howbeit it be of verity that they are honest women of repute and holding these many years bygone, spotted at no time with any such ungodly practices, neither any ways having committed any offence, but by all their actions behaved themselves so discreetly and honestly as none justly could ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... streamed upon his beard, Wild rain, and gouts of hail amid the rain. Behold affliction, yea, afflictions twain From man and woman broken, now made one In downfall. All the riches yester sun Saw in this house were rich in verity. What call ye now our riches? Agony, Delusion, Death, Shame, all that eye or ear Hath ever ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles

... Lapland, docked in America, I heard a case of whose verity, owing to the source from which it came, I had no doubt. The refugee in question, according to my informant, was an English nurse, and lay with both wrists cut off at a well-known New York hospital on Madison Avenue. She had been in Brussels at the time of the German entry, and, being ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green

... first time during the two years that had sped so happily since she came back to Linden House from a Brussels pension, she found herself, even in her present trouble, wondering how it was possible that David Verity could be her mother's brother. This coarse-mannered hog of a man, brother to the sweet-voiced, tender-hearted gentlewoman whose gracious wraith was left undimmed in the girl's memory by the lapse of years—it would be unbelievable if ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... heritage is eternal Time, but oh! how surely. And yet there be those who doubt the end and the issue! Doubt—oh, never doubt! For this faith all martyrs have died, in this battle all men have, knowingly or unknowingly, lived—they who fought against it fought for it—for of a verity there was never yet on earth one active deed done which tended not towards the great advance, and to bring on ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... of human foolery in the native state, as almost the memorablest in that stupendous business. Stupendous indeed; with which all Germany has been in travail these sixteen months, on such terms! And in verity has got the thing called "German Kaiser" constituted, better or worse. Heavens, was a Nation ever so bespun by gossamer; enchanted into paralysis, by mountains of extinct tradition, and the want of power to annihilate rubbish! There are glittering ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... welcome to the full love of our childish hearts the great, strong, round-faced, simple- natured "David—Mason—Jeffries"! Long and long ago we had learned to love him as we loved the peasant hero of some fairy tale of Christian Andersen's; but now that he was with us in most wholesome and robust verity, our very souls seemed scampering from our bodies to run to him and be caught up and tossed and swung and dandled in his gentle ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley

... strong in its very weakness. It is the only thing, after all, that can break the prison bars and set the heart free from itself. The pride that hinders it, enslaves it. Love's first duty is to be true to itself, in word and deed. Then, having spoken truth and acted verity, it may call on honour to keep it ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke

... letter which I wrote home from my cell (which I shared with three other second-lieutenants, Gilbert Verity, Bernard Priestley and H. A. Barker) in the Prison, dated June 6, 1917, ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd

... ordinary voices of men than to the perfect accents of sweet singing? yet do you not instantly declare the song to be loveliest? Examine well the channels of your admiration, and you will find that they are, in verity, as unchangeable as the channels of your heart's blood; that just as by the pressure of a bandage, or by unwholesome and perpetual action of some part of the body, that blood may be wasted or arrested, and ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin

... that Acapulco was more than a portent in a book and held only by an act of faith. Yet that astonishing revelation, enough to make any youthful messenger forget where he himself was bound, through turning to follow with his eyes that acceptance by a carrier's cart of the verity of the fable, is nowhere mentioned, I have found since, in any guide to London, though you may learn how Cornhill ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... news, "we shall all of us have less cause to tremble." After his actual return, however, lean and beggared, with neither money nor credit, a mere threatening shadow without substance or power, he seemed to justify the sarcasm of Granvelle. "Vana sine viribus ira," quoted the Cardinal, and of a verity it seemed that not a man was likely to stir in Germany in his behalf, now that so deep a gloom had descended upon his cause. The obscure and the oppressed throughout the provinces and Germany still freely contributed out of their weakness and their poverty, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... verity and illusion, strangely imposed upon the familiar, homely street of Calvinton, the machine ran smoothly, faintly humming, as the Frenchman drove it with master-skill—itself a dream of embodied power and speed. Gliding by ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke

... Even in the devastated areas there has been a rapid financial recovery due to the hard work and perseverance of the returned inhabitants. The constant talk about the ruined North of France has been more a matter of propaganda than verity. Though war was not carried into Yorkshire and Lancashire, it is quite clear that England is to-day in a much more ruinous state than France. The French drove our sentimental politicians through carefully chosen ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... absolute rejection of authority, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the annihilation of the spirit of blind faith; and the most ardent votary of science holds his firmest convictions, not because the men he most venerates hold them; not because their verity is testified by portents and wonders; but because his experience teaches him that whenever he chooses to bring these convictions into contact with their primary source, Nature—whenever he thinks fit to test them by appealing to experiment and to observation—Nature will confirm them. The man of ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... Boleyn—and here that scene took place which Shakespeare records in his play of Henry VIII; and which he described truly, because he wrote it for Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, within fifty years of the event, and must himself have known living witnesses of its verity. Hence it becomes more than probable, that Sir Thomas Boleyn actually resided in the vicinity, and that his daughter was accidentally among the guests at that princely entertainment. I know it is contended, that this interview ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... said, "and do not perturb my inward meditations and the wrestlings wherewith I wrestle.—But of a verity the shooting of the foemen doth begin to increase! peradventure, some pellet may attain unto us even here. Lo! I will ensconce me behind the cairn, as behind a strong wall ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... twig is bent, the tree's inclined," Is an adage often recall'd to mind, Referring to juvenile bias: And never so well is the verity seen, As when to the weak, warp'd side we lean, While Life's tempests and ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... sufficed to transfer us from here—a representation of the extreme western portion of Europe to the most eastern country on the Eastern Hemisphere—Japan; which fact demonstrated the verity: Les extremes se touchent. Entering the Japanese bazaar, we observed Japanese ladies and gentlemen selling articles ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler

... again paused with agitation. I sat musing upon his last Frightful words, which proved to what excess the passions may be carried when escaped from all moral restraint. There was a horrible verity in this story that reminded me of some of the tragic ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... All. They rise up like obstructions and obscure their own background. But art gives our personality the disinterested freedom of the eternal, there to find it in its true perspective. To see our own home in flames is not to see fire in its verity. But the fire in the stars is the fire in the heart of the Infinite; there, it is ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore

... with swift awkwardness, again confounded by his unwonted flow of speech. Never in his life had he been stirred to such utterance, and never in his life had there been cause to be so stirred. For it was the Game that had been questioned, its verity and worth, the Game itself, the biggest thing in the world—or what had been the biggest thing in the world until that chance afternoon and that chance purchase in Silverstein's candy store, when Genevieve loomed suddenly colossal in his life, overshadowing all other things. He ...
— The Game • Jack London

... evident to me that the immense majority of men had no real belief in human immortality, all their pursuits and acquisitions being of a purely material character. My own convictions were ingrained and immovable, but a physical demonstration of their verity seemed to me an eminently desirable result, if attainable, and I entered into the investigation with earnestness and all my patience. Society was largely occupied by the table-tippings and the "rappings." ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... complaint Is quite beyond your counsel. Why, I tell you, I have examined, tried, experienced The passions and the aims of mortal life With the grave thoroughness and good intent That mark a doctor of philosophy Writing his thesis. And my careful search Of life has brought me one great verity: I do not like it! No, I do not like Anything in it: birth, death, all that lies Between—I find inadequate, incomplete, Offensive. So you see me sitting here, Instead of talking politics in the streets, Or weeping at the opera, ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke

... in the manner appointed by himself, according to the conditions prescribed in the prophet, "Thou shalt swear, the Lord liveth, in truth, in judgment, and in righteousness:" in truth, taking heed that our meaning be conformable to the sense of our words, and our words to the verity of things; in judgment, having with careful deliberation examined and weighed that which we assert or promise; in righteousness, being satisfied in conscience that we do not therein infringe any rule of piety toward God, of equity ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... have been given over to a strong delusion to believe this lie. Above the State is the Eternal Rule of Right and Wrong: above the State is the Supreme Moral Governor of the Universe; yes, above the State is God. Let us proclaim this august verity though in France Atheism has been triumphant; in England Agnosticism is fashionable; in Lutheran Germany—worst of all—evil has been enthroned in the place of good, and "devils to adore for deities" ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... view of a natural landscape), and yet it may be so consistent in itself, so true to an idea or an aspiration or a hope, that it will have the element of truthfulness and subserve a very high purpose. It may actually be truer to our sense of verity to life than an array of undeniable, naked facts set down without art and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... reached the ears of the father and mother. They hurried into the chamber: James lay motionless and senseless on the floor: a man's nerve is not necessarily proportioned to the hardness of his heart! The verity of the thing ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald

... comedy, his success is complete. It may be a long time before Landsmaal can successfully render the mighty line of Marlowe, or the manifold music of Shakespeare, but we should expect it to give with perfect verity the language of the people. And when we read the scenes in which Lancelot Gobbo figures, there is no doubt that here Landsmaal is at home. Note, for example, Act ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud

... after the other, fifteen men, some of whom were sorely hurt in the encounter. Upon this, the other five of those champions, beholding the prowess and strength and skill of Sir Lamorack said to one another: "Why should we venture against this man? Of a verity, this knight is no mere man, but a demon of strength and skill. Wherefore no man may hope to stand against him in an assault of arms; for lo! if he doth but touch a man with his lance that man straightway falleth from his saddle." ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle

... Danby himself, or Shaftesbury, or a score of others. Or it may be some discontented fellow who will make his fortune over it; for all know that such a cry as this will be a popular one. But this I know for a verity—that there is not one word of truth in the tale from beginning to end; and it will appear so presently, no doubt. Yet meanwhile a great deal of mischief may be done; and my brother, may be, and even Her Majesty, ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... for the first time that hot evening in March, with the golden lambent light pouring down through the valley, making it in verity a "shell of gold," sitting in Indian chairs on the terrace, with the perfume of roses and jasmines all around us, the valley of the Oreto, Palermo, Sta. Catarina, Monreale,—all were but parts of a dreamy vision, like the heavenly city ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... thy husband gifts of price And titles fair beside; In verity, thou yeoman's dame, Thou wilt ...
— Ellen of Villenskov - and Other Ballads • Anonymous

... complacency with which we are able to state without fear of contradiction that the body of intelligent and thoughtful women do want suffrage must not obscure our perception of the equal truth of what we have just stated above. To accept this verity and turn our energies toward the emancipation of our own sex—toward their emancipation from frivolous aims, petty prejudices, and that attitude toward the other sex which is really the sycophancy born of vanity and weakness; to make them recognize the State as a multiplication ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... but the Convention was wise in its generation. Had it merely abolished the persecuting laws of the Church, Scotland might never have been Protestant. The old faith is infinitely more attractive to mankind than the new Presbyterian verity. A thing of slow and long evolution, the Church had assimilated and hallowed the world-old festivals of the year's changing seasons. She provided for the human love of recreation. Her Sundays were holidays, not composed of gloomy hours in stuffy ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... puzzle me,' said I. 'But it is an indubitable verity,' I continued, addressing myself to the commissary, changing only the form of my asseveration,' that I owe the King of France nothing but my good-will, for he is a very honest man, and I wish him all the health ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... Europe? The toiler of the world as he matures may be made to love Socrates or Buddha or Marcus Aurelius. It would seem often as though he could not be made to love Jesus! Is it the Nemesis that ultimately discovers and avenges the sublimest, the least conscious departure from simplicity and verity?—is it the last and most terrible illustration of a great axiom: ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Renaissance, inspired by golden visions of truth and knowledge close within man's grasp, inflamed with joy at escaping from out-worn wearying formula into what appeared to be the simple intuition of an everlasting verity, pulses through all his utterances. He has the same cherubic confidence in the renascent age, that charms us in the work of Rabelais. The slow, painful, often thwarted, ever more dubious elaboration of modern metaphysic in rapport with modern science—that process which, after completing ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... pertaining to himself. He saw only as his feelings dictated, without logic or reason of any sort. He was of that nature which leans for support upon prejudices absorbed in early youth. Principles inculcated through early environment and teaching. He was incapable of testing or questioning their verity. Robbed of them he was left floundering. And Effie, the woman whom he had married only out of hot, youthful human regard, had ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... the other end of the room three ladies were finishing their tea. Two of them were the wives of Liberal Ministers—by name, Mrs. Verity and Mrs. Frant. The third was already a well-known figure in London society and in the precincts of the House of Commons—the Ladies' Gallery, the Terrace, the dining-rooms—though she was but an unmarried girl of two-and- ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... each thought best. (46) Paul (2 Tim. i:11), "Whereunto I am appointed a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles;" and again (I Tim. ii:7), "Whereunto I am ordained a preacher and an apostle (I speak the truth in Christ and lie not), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity." (47) These passages, I say, show clearly the stamp both of the apostleship and the teachership: the authority for admonishing whomsoever and wheresoever he pleased is asserted by Paul in the Epistle to Philemon, v:8: "Wherefore, ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza

... is another career as marvellous as his own. I refer to the Venetian, Marco Polo, whose reports, once discredited as the fables of a traveller, are now recognized among the sources of history, and especially of geographical knowledge. Nobody can read them without feeling their verity. It was in the latter part of the far-away thirteenth century, that this enterprising Venetian, in company with his father and uncle, all of them merchants, journeyed from Venice, by the way of Constantinople, Trebizond, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... that, when you received the cross, when you suddenly and without reflection made this awful vow, you were weak, and, sooth to say, of a wandering mind, and that took away from your words the weight of verity and authority. Our lord the pope, who knoweth the necessities of your kingdom and your weakness of body, will gladly grant unto you a dispensation. Lo! we have the puissance of the schismatic Emperor Frederick, the snares of the wealthy King of the English, the treasons but lately stopped ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... little white coffin. A crowd of mourners were grouped beside the black one. I glanced at the inscription as I passed: "Jane Elliot, in the eighty-sixth year of her age." The officiant referred in the service to "our dear brother and sister, here departed." It was either an awful jest or an awful verity. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... chap, Dan," he remarked, as if he were deeply considering the verity of that statement. "One wouldn't pick you out as a blase individual who is tired of everything the world has to offer. You are as filled with energy and nervous force as any chap I ever knew; and you are ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman

... shook his head. Let the essence flow away!" he answered. "The verity of the Ueberhells, that is what each one thought to be true, was a thing of naught, and, if you consider it closely, a dangerous thing. Only the mind which is capable of comprehending the laws of Nature can escape the danger of mistaking the fortuitous, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... better off was Moulins when, instead of four spires, she gloried in two? Then, of a verity, the city would have presented as noble a view as those of La Charite ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... their partialities, or their imaginations; few, however, appear to have been very solicitous about the truth. Indeed, there are no inconsiderable number of writers, and of readers too, who would be rather mortified than pleased to discover any positive verity which might overthrow, or even oppose, their own preconceived notions, however unjust ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison

... interposition of His arm be necessary and decisive. In the day of final retribution, not one mouth shall be opened to complain of injustice. It will be seen that the Judge of all the earth has done right; that the works of His hands have been verity and judgment, and done, every one of them, in truth and uprightness. Let us then think not only respectfully but reverently of His dispensations, repress the voice of murmur, and rebuke the spirit of discontent; ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser

... becomes the meaning, and the essence and mystery of the song are in the singing. Beauty is harmony materialized; it is emotion ordered and made visible, audible, tangible. If in the arts of form we seek further a standard of truth, their truth is not found in their relation to any external verity, but is determined by ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes

... was usually shown to be the very source of that power: through her suffering not only she, but they who stood around and saw the anguish, were made perfect. That this theory of the outcome of suffering is an eternal verity I am not desirous to deny; but I do deplore that, in literature, women should be made so disproportionately its exemplars; and I deplore it not for feminist reasons alone. Once we regard suffering in this light of a supreme uplifting ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... been asserted that the Marquis de Boissy, the late husband of this Guiccioli lady, was in the habit of introducing her in fashionable circles as 'the Marquise de Boissy, my wife, formerly mistress to Lord Byron'! We do not give the story as a verity; yet, in the review of this whole history, we may be pardoned for thinking it ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... faith is a giving of substance to things hoped for, a demonstration of things not seen." And we may paraphrase this rendering somewhat thus: "Faith is that by which the hoped-for becomes to us as if visible and tangible, and by which the unseen is taken and treated as proven in its verity."[L] ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule

... ancient waste, between grass and sky, to measure its deep, full, steadily accelerated rhythm. The winter has an incontestable beauty, and is pre-eminently the time of colour—the time when it is no affectation, but homely verity, to talk about the "purple" tone of the atmosphere. As February comes and goes your purple is streaked with green and the rich, dark bloom of the distance begins to lose its intensity. But your loss is ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... in such a scene. The figure of a quiet slumber is no hyperbole, but a sober verity. As the gentle smile of a foretasted heaven is seen playing on the marble lips—the rays gilding the mountain tops after the golden sun has gone down—what more befitting reflection than this, "So ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff

... in tranquil irony, in polished disdain,[4116] in disguised sarcasm. His Persians judge France as Persians, and we smile at their errors; unfortunately the laugh is not against them but against ourselves, for their error is found to be a verity[4117]. This or that letter, in a sober vein, seems a comedy at their expense without reflecting upon us, full of Muslim prejudices and of oriental conceit;[4118] reflect a moment, and our conceit, in this relation, appears no less. Blows of extraordinary ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... sooth, in sincere verity, Under the allowance of your grand aspect, Whose influence, like the wreath of radiant fire On flickering ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... common prudence dictate courtesy among the members of the bar, but an exalted spirit of honor and well-bred politeness prevailed. The word of a counsel to his adversary was his inviolable bond. The suggestion of a lawyer as to the existence of a fact was accepted as verity by the court. To insinuate unprofessional conduct ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... creatures by the deathbed acknowledged that their patient was dying; the woman stood by her watchful and affectionate—the man held up before her that cross, not of wood or metal, but of truth and everlasting verity, which is the only hope of man. The spectators looked on, and did not interrupt—looked on, awed and wondering—unaware of how it was, but watching, as if it were a miracle wrought before their eyes. Perhaps all the years of his life had not taught the Rector so much as ...
— The Rector • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... the Jews it was disgraceful to David to have derived his birth from a Moabitess; and Shimei, in his revilings against him, is supposed by the Jews to have tauntingly reflected on his descent from Ruth. This book, therefore, contains an intrinsic proof of its own verity, inasmuch as it records a circumstance so little flattering to the sovereign of Israel [19]; and it is scarcely necessary to appeal to its admission into the canon of Scripture for a testimony of its authentic character; or to mention that the evangelists, in describing ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... work on the first development of Christianity in the Apostolic Age is marked by the same spirited characteristics, while his 'Life of Jesus' is an able defense of the historical verity of the sacred narrative against the ingenious ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various

... is in their hearts. A kind word, a touch, a kiss redeems them. Thus they, whom the tyrants of Italy have enslaved, are in truth the very marrow of Italy, without whom she would never have done anything in this world. And the sorrowful verity is that slaves they must remain if Italy is to live on. For prosperity, which fattens their bodies, chokes and poisons ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... Surnames, p. 197.] has in its favour the fact that many of our surnames are undoubtedly derived from characters assumed in dramatic performances and popular festivities. To this class belong many surnames which have the form of abstract nouns, e.g. Charity, Verity, Virtue, Vice. Of similar origin are perhaps Bliss, Chance, Luck, and Goodluck; cf. Bonaventure. Love, Luff, occurs generally as a personal name, hence the dim. Lufkins, but it is sometimes a nickname. Lovell, Lovett, more often mean little wolf. Both Louvet and Louveau are common ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... any cost, just as he pleases, by fair means or foul, no matter over what ruins. A despot by instinct and installation, his dogma has consecrated him King; he is King by natural and divine right, in the name of eternal verity, the same as Philip II., enthroned by his religious system and blessed by his Holy Office. Hence he can abandon no jot or title of his authority without a sacrifice of principle, nor treat with rebels, unless they surrender at discretion; ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... six foot two or three, with proportionate breadth of shoulders and depth of chest, his smooth-shaven face nipped by the cold to a gleaming pink, his long lashes and eyebrows white with ice, and the ear and neck flaps of his great wolfskin cap loosely raised, he seemed, of a verity, the Frost King, just stepped in out of ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London

... he up to answer the charges laid against him (whereof there were nine), but answer such as man looked for made he none. He passed all by as of no account, and went right to the heart and verity of the whole matter. I could not but think of a Prisoner before him who had answered nothing; and I crede he knew that in like case, "per invidiam tradidissent eum." [Note 5]. Moreover, he spake not to them that did the will of other, but ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... mankind, he did not admit the immediate importance of mankind. He did not care about himself as a human being. He did not attach any vital importance to his life in the drafting office, or his life among men. That was just merely the margin to the text. The verity was his connection with Anna and his connection with the Church, his real being lay in his dark emotional experience of the Infinite, of the Absolute. And the great mysterious, illuminated capitals to the text, were his feelings ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... be regarded as a great ass, if I think to make my readers, believe it; or for an idiot, if I have believed it myself. Nevertheless, such is the pure truth, to which I sacrifice all, in despite of what my readers may think of me. However incredible it may be, it is, as I say, the exact verity; and I do not hesitate to advance, that there are many such facts, unknown to history, which would much surprise if known; and which are unknown, only because scarcely any history has been ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... conscientiously believes, is truth, to him—these are the mortal enemies of that fanaticism which persecutes for opinion's sake, and initiates crusades against whatever it, in its imaginary holiness, deems to be contrary to the law of God or verity of dogma. And education, instruction, and enlightenment are the most certain means by which fanaticism and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... direct relationship with this ever-issuing fact, so far the impressions of originality are produced. That all his words were in the dictionary before he used them,—that all his thoughts, under some form of intimation, were in literature before he arrived at them,—matters not; it is the verity, the vital process, the depth of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... amiss, of a verity;" observed the contented bailiff, as the Fauns and Bacchantes moved off the sward, capering and cutting their classical antics with far more agility and zeal than grace. "This looks like the inspiration of good wine, Signior Genoese, and were the truth known, it would be found ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... verity and reality of the obsessions and possessions of the devil are indubitable, and proved by the Scripture and by the authority of the Church, the Fathers, the Jews, and the pagans. Jesus Christ and the apostles believed this truth, and taught it publicly. ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... against this objective rendering of the emotions—this thrusting into the region of fact and positive knowledge of conceptions essentially ideal and poetic—that science, consciously or unconsciously, wages war. Religious feeling is as much a verity as any other part of human consciousness; and against it, on its subjective side, the waves of science beat in vain. But when, manipulated by the constructive imagination, mixed with imperfect or inaccurate historic data, and moulded by misapplied ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... tune their mournfu' strains, To tell o' hame-made sorrow, And if they cheat you o' your tears, They 'll dry upon the morrow. Oh, some will sing their airy dreams, In verity they're sportin', My sang 's o' nae sic thieveless themes, But ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... to his people—the best he has from his hand or brain or spirit. That's the transaction—the most important in any life—to turn out instead of in.... Here I am repeating the old formula for the making of men, as if in the thrill of the absolutely new—the eternal verity of ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... that every living thing May have sensation, needful 'tis to assign Sense also to its elements, what then Of those fixed elements from which mankind Hath been, by their peculiar virtue, formed? Of verity, they'll laugh aloud, like men, Shaken asunder by a spasm of mirth, Or sprinkle with dewy tear-drops cheeks and chins, And have the cunning hardihood to say Much on the composition of the world, And in their turn inquire ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... Captain! My God—my God! so wet—so tired! Enter—enter in the name of heaven. It is good, in verity, to have My Lady back, but, Mr. the Captain, is it well for him to be here? And Madam is ill? She goes pale and red by turns. Madam has the fever for sure! And her arm is hurt, and she is as wet as the first time she came here. Ah, Lord God, what ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... of the ship, when her master puts her before the wind that he may rake one schooner's deck and hurl the majestic monster bodily upon the other, is unequalled by anything in nautical literature, and approached by nothing in verity, except it may be Admiral Dupont's waltz of fire around the two forts of Hilton Head. Another, who laughs at both of these amateur statements, has a Grub-Street one; but, except to a favored few, to ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... of each of the persons named in it, which he told my grandfather had passed between him and them severally, when none other was present. "By remembering them of these things," said he, "they will know that you are in verity sent from me." ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... expensive to him (for that very day he had paid the last dollar of the Gilson estate to Mr. Jo. Bentley, the last witness to the Gilson good character)—that it had become to him a sort of religious faith. It seemed to him the one great central and basic truth of life—the sole serene verity in ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... ridiculousness of the bourgeois, and the wild pride and egotism of the parvenus; and with more profound designs and a hardier hand unmasks the impostures of false pretenders in all professions. His scenes, such was their verity, seem but the reflections of his reminiscences. His fertile facility when touching on transient follies; his wide comprehension, and his moralising vein, in his more elevated comedy, display, in this painter of man, the poet and the philosopher, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... from her eyes the veil that had hidden the truth from her. What before had been mere blind instinct became an actual verity. Why had she at first rushed forth into the very streets to hail the possible deliverer of her country, and then why had she shrunk from him when he sought to honor her! It was all clear enough now. This bedside missive ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... them, reader. "Contentment is better than wealth." So the wordling proved, after a bitter experience—which may you be spared! It is far better to realize a truth perceptively, and thence make it a rule of action, than to prove its verity in a life of sharp agony. But how few are able to rise into such ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur

... that I am not now discussing the relation of these creeds to truth; but, for the present, solely their relation to health. Later in the argument I hope to attack the question of objective verity; here I speak only of a phenomenon of psychology. I do not for the present attempt to prove to Haeckel that materialism is untrue, any more than I attempted to prove to the man who thought he was Christ that he was labouring under an error. ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

... is not a waltz, but an obertass—the most popular of the rustic dances of Poland. Why should Boito have made his Rhinelanders dance a step which is characteristically that of the Poles? Sticklers for historical verity could easily convict him of a most unpardonable anachronism, if they were so disposed, by pointing out that even if German peasants were in the habit of dancing the obertass now (which they are not), they could not have done it in the sixteenth century, which is the period of the drama, ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... of her should come again. For many months I had not seen her form, Save phantom-like on dim hills of the past, Until I laid me down an hour ago; When twice through the dark chamber full of eyes, The memory passed, reclothed in verity: Once more I now behold it; the inward blaze Of the glad windows half quenched in the moon; The trees that, drooping, murmured to the wind, "Ah! wake me not," which left them to their sleep, All save the poplar: it was full of joy, So that it could not sleep, but trembled on. Sudden as Aphrodite ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald

... to investigate with candour, and freedom, and with a genuine desire of arriving at the truth, the subjects here discussed; and that whilst some, even of those who may have hitherto acquiesced in erroneous doctrines and practices, may be convinced of their departure from Christian verity; others, if tempted to desert the straight path of primitive worship, may be somewhat strengthened and armed by the views presented to them here, against the captivating allurements ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler

... were taught to love their own praise best, and after that the knight who was the best praiser of each, and most enabled her to think well of herself in spite of doubt. And the knight who would not speak save truly, they mockingly named Sir Verity, which name some of them did again miscall SEVERITY,—for the more he loved, the more it was to him ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... our Lord for those who came into the wilderness to hear Him. This is only one example out of many of His great love and mercy: and indeed "His mercy is over all His works." "Thou, O Lord," says David, "art full of compassion and mercy, long-suffering and truth." This is a verity of which we are so convinced that it is quite possible we may overlook the other truth, that His mercy, though unlimited in extent, is limited in its application. His mercy is extended for a definite purpose, and when it ceases to avail for this purpose, then it ceases to flow. ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould

... "till Lady Glenallan had communicated this fause tale, that she suspected ye had actually made a marriagenor even then did you avow it sae as to satisfy her whether the ceremony had in verity passed atween ye or noBut ye remember, O ye canna but remember weel, what ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... an eternal verity. The entire Cosmos is bi-sexual. Everything in the visible universe; in the manifest, is the result of this universal principle. "As above so below," is a safe rule, as far as the IDEA goes. This hypothesis does not ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad

... resist. Why have women such eyes of witchery? Gerty's were of the bluest Irish blue, set off by lustrous lashes and dark expressive brows. Time was when those brows were not so silkily seductive. It was Madame Vera Verity, directress of the Woman Beautiful page of the Princess Novelette, who had first advised her to try eyebrowleine which gave that haunting expression to the eyes, so becoming in leaders of fashion, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... Alpine elevation, and looked now on the gay distant river, and now at the dark granite-encircled lake close beside me in the lone solitude, and I thought of my brother and myself. I am no moraliser; but the gay and rapid river, and the dark and silent lake, were, of a verity, no had emblems of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... our way, and traversed all the country until coming out at the South Sea. Nor was the dread we had of the sharp hunger through which we should have to pass (as in verity we did, throughout the seventeen days' journey of which the natives spoke) sufficient to hinder us. During all that time, in ascending by the river, they gave us many coverings of cowhide; but we did not eat of the fruit. Our sustenance each ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various

... rapidly these materialistic theories may disappear in the scientific waste-basket of the future, there is one sublime verity that will stand the test of all time, and that is, that the moral universe of God is no less complete, in the Divine Intendment, than the physical universe, while the latter is so inter-correlated and inter-tissued with the former, in all its conceivable ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... which resulted in these cascades, which have been more sung and oftener painted than any other in the world. The beauty of Terni is so hackneyed that enthusiasm over it becomes cockney, yet the beauty of hackneyed things is as eternal as the verity of truisms, and no more loses its charm than the other its point. But one must not talk about it. The foaming torrent rages along between its rocky walls until spanned by the bridge of Augustus at Narni, a magnificent viaduct sixty feet high, thrown from ridge to ridge across the ravine for the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... said the doctor. "Let us make a distich of it," added he, with a chuckle; "for, of a verity, some of the K. C.'s of our times are but dunces. ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover

... like manner he goes through the names of the other Deities. He says that Jupiter is that immutable and eternal law which guides and directs us in our manners; and this he calls fatal necessity, the everlasting verity of future events. But none of these are of such a nature as to seem to carry any indication of divine virtue in them. These are the doctrines contained in his first book of the Nature of the Gods. In the ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... story by tradition of undoubted verity, "that in Sir Wm. Bradshaghe absence (beinge 10 years away in the holy wars), she married a Welsh knight. Sir William, returning from the wars, came in a palmer's habitt amongst the poor to Haghe, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... be. All rights and laws are still transmitted Like an eternal sickness of the race,— From generation unto generation fitted, And shifted round from place to place. Reason becomes a sham, Beneficence a worry: Thou art a grandchild, therefore woe to thee! The right born with us, ours in verity, This to consider, there's, alas! ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... existence. Secular education! What do you mean by it? Who shall sever one question from another, and call one secular and the other religious? Is not every relation and every truth in some way or other connected with religion?" &c. &c. Mr. Verity has been saying the same thing any ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... lady so speak, methought she would have swooned in verity; for she knew my lady's contempt for gossip. E'en for the first time in all her life, Marian could not find a word to ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives

... did "not controvert the charges that perjured evidence was used, and that favorable evidence was suppressed with the knowledge" of the authorities, the case was remanded in order that the prisoner might enjoy that to which he was entitled; namely, a determination of the verity of his allegations. Similarly, in White v. Ragen,[943] the Court declared that since a prisoner's petition to a State court for release on habeas corpus had been dismissed without requiring the State to answer allegations supporting the petition; namely, that ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... a science, Sir Barnard on many occasions would affect to treat it with that common-place contempt which always accompanies the supposition of the original and unconquerable depravity of man; of the verity of which the Baronet had a rooted conviction. In this hypothesis he was but confirmed by his burgage-tenure voters, by the conduct of the members he had himself returned, and by certain propensities which he felt in his own breast, and ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... Restoration. This evidence is presented in far greater detail than is here possible, in a curious document written by the Reverend Joseph Glanvill, a clergyman of the Church of England and an eye witness of some of the phenomena. His point of view is that of an ardent believer in the verity of witchcraft, and his narrative of the Tedworth affair finds place in a treatise designed to discomfit those irreligious persons who maintained the opposite.[B] It is therefore evident that his account of the case is to be regarded as a piece of special pleading, and as such ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce

... knowledge is conjecture does not simply mean that absolute and exact truth remains concealed from us; but is intended at the same time to encourage us to draw as near as possible to the eternal verity by ever truer conjectures. There are degrees of truth, and our surmises are neither absolutely true nor entirely false. Conjecture becomes error only when, forgetting the inadequacy of human knowledge, we rest content with it as a final solution; ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... the chief causes of this feeling resided in the fact that these furious sectaries, being apostles in possession of the absolute verity, were unable, like all believers, to tolerate the sight of infidels. A mystic or sentimental certitude is always accompanied by the need of forcing itself on others, is never convinced, and does not shrink from wholesale slaughter ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon

... Muscombe—the Marquis, don't you know. I dare say you knew before that I was Verity Stilton of the Vivacity. I was working my way up to quite important parts. You may have seen me ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... chapter, "Les Moines et la Nature." {209} All that learning and eloquence can say in favour of the theory is said there; and with a candour which demands from no man full belief of many beautiful but impossible stories, "travesties of historic verity," which have probably grown up from ever-varying tradition in the course of ages. M. de Montalembert himself points out a probable explanation of many of them:—An ingenious scholar of our times{210} (he says) has pointed out their true and legitimate origin—at least in Ancient Gaul. ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... you why I wished it, you would be surprised indeed, nor can I myself understand; but, of a verity, my greatest wish to be out of this life is due to the fact that I crave the association of those very enemies I have been taught to hate. But it is too late, Father, there can be but one end and that the lower end of ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... by step, the perplexed man of business had time enough to reflect, that if it be possible to put a fair gloss upon a true story, the verity always serves the purpose better than any substitute which ingenuity can devise. He therefore told his learned visitor, that although his son had been incommoded by the heat of the court, and the long train of hard study, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... member commands; and you must take the affirmative or the negative, just as suits his best convenience. This tends to the most perfect liberality. It is no good hearing the arguments of an opponent, for in good verity you rarely follow them; and even if you do take the trouble to listen, it is merely in a captious search for weaknesses. This is proved, I fear, in every debate; when you hear each speaker arguing out his own prepared specialite (he never intended speaking, of course, until ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... human life has seldom had anything more beautiful and more ennobling to show than these postmaster-generals, boards of revenue, able editors, and foreigners of distinction asking Truth, the Everlasting Verity, for a sign and then searching for it in a potato-field. In this glorious quest every circumstance demands our respectful attention. They search on their hands and knees in the attitude of passionate prayer; they search in the dark; they seize the dumb earth with delirious ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... affection that I tell thee this! If I am dear to thee, I should not be dissuaded from the observance of my vow! O thou that are possessed of the wealth of effulgence, the whole world knoweth this to be my vow that, of a verity, I am prepared to give away life itself unto superior Brahmanas! If, O best of all rangers of the sky, Sakra cometh to me, disguised as a Brahmana, to beg for the benefit of the sons of Pandu, I will, O chief of the celestials, give him the ear-rings and the excellent mail, so that my fame ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... "Of a verity. It could not be otherwise, being above the kitchen. Thee must not linger, Clifford. Some one is apt to come in at any moment. See the door up there? Well, thee will have to get on the table and I will hand thee a chair. Standing ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison

... surely have not seen the doctor—he beats me hollow—they have scarcely left so much hair on his head as would do for an Indian's scalp lock; and, of a verity, his aspect is awful this morning; he has just been here, and by-the-bye has told me all about your affair with Beamish. It appears that somewhere you met him at dinner, and gave a very flourishing account of a relative of his who you ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever

... Committee". The Contradiction appear'd so glaring even in Mr. Draper's eyes, as well as others, that after he had publish'd it to the World, he thought his own Reputation concern'd, as indeed it was, to enquire into the Foundation of the Report, which he ought to have done before. The Man of Verity his Author, makes a shift to tell him, that truly "it was a Vote that pass'd half an Hour after Nine o'Clock that he meant in his Note, when most of the Inhabitants had withdrawn"; but he does not now say what Vote he meant in his Note, though when he reported it "with some Confidence" ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... past two days drifted through his mind. Already they seemed indistinct, as a dream. He wondered dully that they could be true and yet seem so foreign to his life, now. He even began to doubt their verity, and opened his eyes slowly, half expecting to see the cool, green campus, and the big college buildings. The slanting sunlight met him full in the face, and the black pendant swung monotonously, from side to side, as before. He wearily closed ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... sympathy, instead of the dreary emptiness of silent pews. And as though in a dream the solitude was peopled, and I saw the listening faces and the eager eyes, and as the sentences flowed unbidden from my lips and my own tones echoed back to me from the pillars of the ancient church, I knew of a verity that the gift of speech was mine, and that if ever—and then it seemed so impossible!—if ever the chance came to me of public work, this power of melodious utterance should at least win hearing for any message I had ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... are compelled by the Christian verity: to acknowledge every Person by himself to be God ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England

... departed this life, there was hardly one of the hearers who thought Mr Pittle would ever be their placed minister, and it was as far at first from the unanimous mind of the magistrates, who are the patrons of the parish, as any thing could well be, for he was a man of no smeddum in discourse. In verity, as Mrs Pawkie, my wife, said, his sermons in the warm summer afternoons were just a perfect hushabaa, that no mortal could hearken to without sleeping. Moreover, he had a sorning way with him, that ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... Pittsburgh, made an address explaining the origin of the movement for woman suffrage, asserting its verity and necessity. She gave many reasons for woman's ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... no otherwise of this varnished rottenness than in truth and verity he is, I must define him to be a demure creature, full of oral sanctity and mental impiety; a fair object to the eye, but stark naught for the understanding, or else a violent thing much given to contradiction. He will be sure to be in opposition with the Papist, though it be sometimes accompanied ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various



Words linked to "Verity" :   falsity, true, truth, false, actuality, trueness, the true



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com