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More "Falsehood" Quotes from Famous Books



... conformable to reality. That the sun will not rise to-morrow, is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise. We should in vain, therefore, attempt to demonstrate its falsehood. Were it demonstratively false, it would imply a contradiction, and could never be distinctly conceived by ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley

... victual to my family and to the poor. Lord, pity! 21 Aug.—Sin and snare are inseparable from this haste to be rich. Lord, in this Thou punishest one sin with another, with unrighteousness, oppression, unevenness, uncharitableness, deceit, falsehood, rigour to tenants, straitenedness to the poor. 24 Sept.—Read 1 Cor. viii. 14, 15, which did reprove my straitenedness, my coldness, and my parsimony. 19 July.—Was taken up inordinately with trash ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte

... desire. He had given his word. That would not have meant much to him eight days ago when he lived in a sick atmosphere of lies and dodges and tricks and meannesses, where the lips were as ready to deceive as the fingers to filch, and where a successful falsehood was almost as much applauded as a successful theft. But now, as he had said, he had learned a thing called honour; the whole meaning of life had been changed for him in the sunshine of a fair girl's favour, and what was but yesterday possible, probable, even pleasant, was to-day surely impossible. ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... which has not got another proverb that flatly contradicts it, and between the two it would be very odd if there was not a great deal of sound sense somewhere. There is, however, one of the number which, as every candid critic must allow, is based on an egregious falsehood—the proverb, namely, which affirms, against all experience, that whatever is good for the goose is good for the gander. Viewing the goose as the type of woman, and the gander as the type of man, no adage could be more preposterous or untenable. Such a maxim flies dead in the very face ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... the stake. But he will not shrink from that last step, if he think the welfare of the church demands it; and there are others who bear a yet more cruel hatred towards all who would be free from the shackles of falsehood and superstition. And much power belongs to them. God alone knows what is coming upon ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green

... pale, and his aunt, thinking he was going to faint, began fumbling for her salts. But a moment later the blood suffused even his neck and brow, and he said passionately, "I don't believe a word of this; Miss Marsden is not capable of such falsehood." ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... and he reported to a Union Soldier that Colonel Boone was a rebel of the deepest dye, and further said that he had a company of Texas Rangers hidden, and intended to "clean out the country." The Lieutenant to whom this deliberate falsehood was told, sent fifteen soldiers to the home of A.G. Boone to confiscate his property and to burn him out if they found indications that the report ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus

... has, Maurice," interrupted Bertha. "I never knew Baptiste to utter even a white lie: he has as great a horror of falsehood ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... in which the Elector allowed himself to be duped by the Philippists who surrounded him,—men who gradually developed the art of dissimulation to premeditated deceit, falsehood, and perjury. Even the Reformed theologian Simon Stenius, a student at Wittenberg during the Crypto-Calvinistic period, charges the Wittenbergers with dishonesty and systematic dissimulation. The same accusation ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... You shall also submit unto and obey such good and wholesome laws, ordinances and officers as are or shall be established within the several limits thereof. So help you God, who is the God of truth and punisher of falsehood." ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... poesy worthy its loftiest strains. Painter! for you there are pictures fresh from the hand of God. Writer! there are stories still untold by the author-artist—legends of love and hate, of gratitude and revenge, of falsehood and devotion, of noble virtue and ignoble crime—legends redolent of romance, rich ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... if you found out who I was, you would expose me, and I should be cast adrift. And then it all came so suddenly I had no time for reflection. The instinct of self-preservation made me deny my identity before I considered what a falsehood I uttered. Ah, have you no pity for me, in considering the straits to which I was reduced?" she pleaded, clasping her hands before him and raising ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... there is hardly any reparation possible, and his forgiveness is much more difficult. Art, being the embodiment of the artist's ideal, is truly the corporeal substance of his spiritual self; and that there should be any falsehood in it, any deliberate failure to present him faithfully, it is as monstrous and unnatural as it would be for a man to disavow his own flesh and bones. Here we are every one of us going through life committed and attached to our bodies; for all ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various

... of, such prophets as Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, for four hundred years; a fact quite sufficient to account for her superiority to other heathen nations, as well as for the existence of some traces of true religion on her monuments. But the alleged fact is a falsehood. Some good moral precepts are found on the Egyptian monuments, but the ten commandments are not there. It may be charitably supposed that those who allege the contrary never learned the ten commandments, or have forgotten them, else they would have remembered ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... Southwell, and, says Sir James Turner, who was present, was commanded by Lothian to sign the Covenant, and "barbarously used." They took Charles to Newcastle, denying their assurance to him. "With unblushing falsehood," says Mr Gardiner, they in other respects lied to the English Parliament. On May 19 Charles bade Montrose leave the country, which he succeeded in doing, despite the treacherous endeavours of his enemies to detain him till his day of ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang

... There can be found no higher virtue than the love of truth. The man who deceives others must himself become the victim of morbid distrust. Knowing the deceit of his own heart, and the falsehood of his own tongue, his eyes must be always filled with suspicion, and he must lose the greatest of all happiness—confidence in those who ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... with excitement. Simply because a woman whom Maurice knew to be capable of any falsehood sat here in the darkness and pretended to see visions, these men and women were apparently carried out of themselves. It seemed to him at ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... in every age hypochondriacally regarded itself as under some fatal necessity of dwindling, much to have challenged public attention. As real paradoxes (spite of the idle meaning attached usually to the word paradox) have often no falsehood in them, so here, on the contrary, was a falsehood which had in it nothing paradoxical. It contradicted all the indications of history and experience, which uniformly had pointed in the very opposite direction; and ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... With that smooth falsehood, whose appearance charms, And reason of each wholesome doubt disarms; Which to the lowest depths of guilt descends, By vilest means pursues the vilest ends. Wears friendship's mask for purposes of spite, Fawns in the day and butchers ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... what was he thinking? Was there any truth in him? Had he, perhaps, behind the sham display and advertisement that he had been building felt something stirring? Was he conscious, against his own will, of his falsehood? Had he, while building only his own success, made a discovery? She looked at him. The dramatic mask hid him from her. She could not, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... the soul and the heart by erroneous doctrines is effected in many and diverse ways; the victims of falsehood are variously captured. There are the wisdom and sagacity of men, there are the conquests of science and the learning of the philosophers, the discoveries of our day, the strides of history, the breakdown and overthrow of many things held ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan

... line is quoted by Burke in the "Letters on a Regicide Peace," from a play written or adapted by Lewis Theobald, "The Double Falsehood" (1727). Waller-Glover. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... every thing else for the sake of adherence to righteousness. The highest glory of human nature is to love right better than life, and to obey the dictates of conscience at every conceivable hazard. Even falsehood, when sealed with blood, acquires not unfrequently, for a time, an irrepressible power. Truth, when uttered from the stake, or on the scaffold, becomes absolutely irresistible. We admire Plato, surrounded by listening princes, and vieing with them in oriental magnificence; but ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... down; she was one blush. "I maun have forgotten to change them," said she; and went into prayers in her turn with a troubled mind, between anxiety as to whether Dand should have observed her yellow stockings at church, and should thus detect her in a palpable falsehood, and shame that she had already made good his prophecy. She remembered the words of it, how it was to be when she had gotten a jo, and that that would be for good and evil. "Will I have gotten my jo now?" she thought with a ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... real truth always sounds improbable, do you know that? To make truth sound probable you must always mix in some falsehood with it. Men have always done so. Perhaps there's something in it that passes our understanding. What do you think: is there something we don't understand in that triumphant squeal? I should like to think there was. I should like ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... of a new frankness in our public statements and worldwide broadcasts. In the face of a climate of falsehood and misinformation, we've promised the world a season of truth—the truth of our great civilized ideas: individual liberty, representative government, the rule of law under God. We've never needed walls or minefields or barbed wire to keep our people in. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan

... the canvas, the code was equally simple. The husband might kill his wife's lover—that was in the game; but the young man's right to be was as good as his own. 'No human being can control love, and no one is to blame either for feeling it or for losing it. What alone degrades a woman is falsehood.' So says the husband in George Sand's 'Jacques' when he is just about to fling himself down an Alpine precipice that his wife and Octave may have their way undisturbed. And all the time, what poetry and passion in the presentation of these things! ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... little need be said by the Committee. Truth, however, is not to be sacrificed to the accommodation of either, and he who should pronounce that our edifice has received its final embellishment would be disseminating falsehood without incurring favour, and risking the disgrace of detection without participating the ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... Pamphlets,[20] one of the most unfeignedly coarse and virulent bits of invective in the language, points plumb in the same direction. It is grossly unjust, because it takes for granted that Loyola and all Jesuits were deliberately conscious of imposture and falsehood, knowingly embraced the cause of Beelzebub, and resolutely propagated it. It is one thing to judge a system in its corruption, and a quite other thing to measure the worth and true design of its first founders; one thing ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley

... mother, "we must only trust to God, who, in his own good time, will set everything right. As it is, there is no respectable person in the neighborhood who believes the falsehood, with the exception of some ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... mere ground of numerical amount, and as for that reason alone an uncontrollable mass, might not such a meeting have been liable to dispersion? Answer—this allegation of monstrous numbers was uniformly a falsehood; and a falsehood gross and childish. Was it for the dignity of Government to assume, as grounds of action, fables so absurd as these? Not to have assumed them, will never be made an argument of blame against the Executive; and, indeed, it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... with excitement. It is not a breathless courier who comes back with the report from an army we have lost sight of for a month, nor a single bulletin which tells us all we are to know for a week of some great engagement, but almost hourly paragraphs, laden with truth or falsehood as the case may be, making us restless always for the last fact or rumor they are telling. And so of the movements of our armies. To-night the stout lumbermen of Maine are encamped under their own fragrant pines. In a score or two of hours they are among the tobacco-fields and the slave-pens ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... grand party, I believe, and not exactly stupid—it was not, that; but I was disgusted with all I saw and all I heard. It seemed to me a mass of affectation, falsehood, and malignity." ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... be unreasonable, it would be wrong, for us to entertain the idea of marriage; and I have given up thinking of him as a lover. I am telling you the truth, and you have no right to disbelieve me; I have kept my word to you, and you have never detected me in a falsehood. I should not only not encourage, I should carefully avoid, any intercourse with Philip on any other footing than of quiet friendship. You may think that I am unable to keep my resolutions; but at least you ought not to treat me with hard contempt on the ground of faults that ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... her with astonishment, asking himself whether he could believe what she was saying, when he could recollect what seemed to him so many proofs to the contrary. Yet in what she said there was no hesitation, no incoherence, no false note. Pride, noble pride, upheld her to the end. The first falsehood of her ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon

... Charles Dryden was drowned, in an attempt to swim across the Thames, at Datchet, near Windsor. I have degraded into the Appendix, the romantic narrative of Corinna, concerning his father's prediction, already mentioned. It contains, like her account of the funeral of the poet, much positive falsehood, and gross improbability, with some slight scantling of foundation ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... your catspaw,—yes. Nothing you can relate truthfully will ever harm me in the estimation of a gentleman, and I shall certainly know how to combat falsehood." ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... knowledge, not only of the outward objects with which we are daily conversant, but of other minds than our own, *the education of the senses* is an obvious duty. There are few so prolific sources of social evil, injustice, and misery, as the falsehood of persons who mean to tell the truth, but who see or hear only in part, and supply the deficiencies of perception by the imagination. In the acquisition of knowledge of the highest interest and importance this same hindrance is one of the most frequent obstacles. ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... to you, Amine," said Philip, "that I have thousands of guilders: you know I would not tell you a falsehood." ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

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

... often expressed in an answer given at the door to an inquirer: "Is your master at home, or mistress?" as the case may be. The problem is to save the direct falsehood, and yet evade the visit; so the answer is—"Ay, he or she is at hame; but he's ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... Today we proudly know it, And in the open to each other show it! We meet as equals once for all the year! The wise and foolish shout with kindred laughter; No greater and no smaller fools appear, And Folly flouts the dullard calling after! No tryant reigns! No hoary falsehood waves Imperial scepters over ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller

... over the world you find something to imitate." To us imitation means prose, to him it meant poetry; science itself meant poetry, and illusion was the only ugliness. "Nature never breaks her own law." It is we who try to find freedom in lawlessness, which is ignorance, ugliness, illusion. "Falsehood is so utterly vile that, though it should praise the great works of God, it offends against His divinity." There is Leonardo's religion; and if still it is too cold for us, it is because we have not his ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock

... Falsehood and insincerity, unsuitable as they seem to the dignity of public transactions, offend us with a less degrading idea of meanness, than when they are found in the intercourse of private life. In the latter, they ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... a falsehood, that the old gentleman looked somewhat sternly in Oliver's face. It was impossible to doubt him; there was truth in every one of ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... of the absent, and allowing it in every instance where persons entitled to vote have not voted. To my thinking, a certificate given after the elimination of votes, in the manner indicated, certifying that the electors have been chosen by the people of the State, is a palpable falsehood. It should have certified that they had been chosen by the people of so many parishes or counties, out of ...
— The Electoral Votes of 1876 - Who Should Count Them, What Should Be Counted, and the Remedy for a Wrong Count • David Dudley Field

... declared that he would be telling a falsehood if he were to say that there was no food in his district. He possessed slaughter-cattle and corn, and could help other districts. One of his commandants had recently found a store of maize (consisting of one hundred and thirty sacks) ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet

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

... convicted by your own confession, extorted after deliberate falsehood, of having wished to drug the wine of a fellow-student for the purpose of entrapping him into a sin, to which you would otherwise have failed to tempt him. What fearful results may follow from your wickedness we cannot yet know, and you may have to answer for this crime before another ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... is the people's heart! They dote on alteration, and expect To reap advantage from a change of rulers. The bold assurance of the falsehood charms; The marvellous finds favor and belief. Therefore the Czar is anxious thou shouldst quell This mad delusion, as thou only canst. A word from thee annihilates the traitor That falsely claims the title of thy son. It joys me thus to see thee moved. I see The audacious juggle ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller

... person would have uttered a falsehood; but now such ideas are completely exploded, and such conduct would now be termed a bore. My Lord Portly remarks, 'It is a cold day.' 'Yes, my Lord, it is a very cold day,' replies Major Punt. In two minutes after, meeting Lord Lounge, who observes ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... it was here that a certain temptation entered. For it was easy to say (and no one could ever contradict him) that some man near him, that one perhaps who had fallen back with a grunt, had killed Hermann on the edge of the trench. Humanly speaking, there was no chance at all of that innocent falsehood being disproved. In the scurry and wild confusion of the attack none but he would remember exactly what had happened, and as he thought of that tossing and turning, it seemed to one part of his mind that the innocence of that falsehood would ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... discovery of that which has remained hidden, for over two centuries; still, to gratify that curiosity, many an ingrained idea must be laid aside. Difficult as it may seem to many, Cromwell at the outset must be regarded not as 'our heroic One,' but as a man who sold himself to falsehood, that he might 'ride in gilt coaches, escorted by the flunkeyisms, and most sweet voices.' Nor to appreciate the secret of our character-test, can the assertion of any historian, from Clarendon down to Carlyle's last imitator, ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... in vain. One, moreover, who holds himself so clever that he believes he has nothing left to learn, and in every flower of truth that is shown to him, however fair, smells only poison, and beneath, nurturing it, sees only the gross root of falsehood planted in corruption. Tell him these things, ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... mist of forgetfulness rises up and obscures the memory of vows and oaths. 2. The negligence of laziness breeds more falsehoods than the cunning of the sharper. 3. As poverty waits upon the steps of indolence, so upon such poverty brood equivocations, subterfuges, lying denials. 4. Falsehood becomes the instrument of every plan. 5. Negligence of truth, next occasional falsehood, then wanton mendacity—these three strides traverse the whole ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... generally believed to exaggerate most of the abuses they denounce; but we say deliberately, that no denunciation of the civil service of the United States which has ever appeared in print has come up as a picture, of selfishness, greed, fraud, corruption, falsehood, and cruelty, to the accounts which are given privately by those who have seen the real workings of ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith

... Squire had never yet quite abandoned the hope that Ralph who was not the heir might yet possess the place; and when he heard of his nephew's doings, heard falsehood as well as truth, from day to day he built up new hopes. He had not expected any such overture as that which had come from Sir Thomas; but if, as he did expect, Ralph the heir should go to the Jews, why should not the Squire purchase ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... read things in a book and have a hazy idea of them. We hear the preacher utter truths and we say with little feeling, "Yes, that is so." We hear the great truths of life over and over and we are not excited. Truth never excites—it is falsehood that excites—until we discover it in our lives. Until we see it with our own eyes. Then there is a thrill. Then the old truth becomes a new blessing. Then the oldest, driest platitude crystallizes into a flashing jewel to delight and enrich our consciousness. This joy of ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette

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

... our Jonathan's memory!—'as soon as I came into the Condemned Hole, I began to think of making a preparation for my soul. . . . To part with my wife, my dear Molly, is so great an Affliction to me, that it touches me to the Quick, and is like Daggers entering into my Heart.' How tame the Ordinary's falsehood to the brilliant invention of Fielding, who makes Jonathan kick his Tishy in the very shadow of the Tree! And the Reverend Gentleman gains in unction as he goes: 'In the Cart they all kneeled down to prayers and seemed very penitent; the Ordinary used all the means ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... commotion; but he who had any interest whatever in what was about to disappear; he who was cultivating for his own profit a social fiction, and had an abuse to let out on hire; he who was guardian of some falsehood, doorkeeper of some prejudice, or farmer of some superstition; he who was taking advantage of another, or dealing in usury, oppression and falsehood; he who sold by false weights, from those who ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... proceeding to the final, the fatal sentence. At that instant the grand master advanced; his gesture implored silence; judges and people gazed in awestruck apprehension. In a calm, clear voice Du Molay spoke: "Before heaven and earth, on the verge of death, where the least falsehood bears like an intolerable weight upon the soul, I protest that we have richly deserved death, not on account of any heresy or sin of which ourselves or our order have been guilty, but because we have yielded, to save our lives, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... example of the ungodly, with whom she begged him to have no communion. She spoke of the necessity there was for constant watchfulness and prayer; told him to avoid all exhibition of self-will or disobedience; but above all to shun falsehood, that most ruinous of all vices, since it is the first step on the way which leads to eternal death. She bade him remember how the Scriptures teach, "Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life;" and that it is ever open to the scrutiny of ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers

... only a mouthful in comparison with what they ought to have considering their apparent bulk— insignificant, mere skin and bone covering a cavern. What right had they, or anything else, to assert themselves as so big, and prove so empty? And now this discovery of woman's falsehood was quite too much for him. The world itself was hollow, made up of shams and delusions, full of sound and ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... existence. Alas, Sir! must I think that such, soon, will be my lot! and from the damn'd, dark insinuations of hellish, groundless envy too! I believe, Sir, I may aver it, and in the sight of Omniscience, that I would not tell a deliberate falsehood, no, not though even worse horrors, if worse can be, than those I have mentioned, hung over my head; and I say, that the allegation, whatever villain has made it, is a lie! To the British Constitution, on revolution principles, next after my ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... the Parisians avoid disliking an unfortunate people who were the cause of that shameful falsehood enacted during the famous review at which all Paris declared its will to succor Poland? The Poles were held up to them as the allies of the republican party, and they never once remembered that Poland was a republic of aristocrats. From that day forth the bourgeoisie ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac

... Jaffa. It has also been stated that it was because the men composing the El-Arish garrison did not proceed to Bagdad, according to the capitulation, that we shot them at Jaffa. We shall presently see the falsehood of these assertions. ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... cunning, full of dissimulation, and very wicked. She deceived the good Queen cruelly; but the latter rewarded her for this in exposing her falsehood and in unmasking her to the world. As soon as the King had undeceived Her Majesty with respect to this woman, her history became notorious, and the Queen amused herself in relating her triumph, as she ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... lot with their Democratic friends and allies, openly and without special rebuke, prevailed upon the National Democracy to adopt the Rebel Free-Trade Shibboleth of "a Tariff for revenue;" and that same Democracy, obtaining power and place, through violence and fraud and falsehood at the so-called "elections" in the Solid Southern States, now threatens the Country once more with iniquitous Free-Trade legislation, and all its attendant train of commercial disasters and ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... of Christ's character—He was an impostor unless he was Divine! Either Christ never uttered those things regarding Himself which are here recorded, and so the history which we have assumed as true is false in fact; or, having uttered them, He spoke falsehood, and was a blasphemer, or spoke the truth, and was Divine. To deny the Divinity of His Person is to deny the truth of ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod

... that two Boswells, or three at most, would have made great men extraordinarily false, and would have set them on always playing a part, and would have made distinguished people about them for ever restless and distrustful. I can imagine a succession of Boswells bringing about a tremendous state of falsehood in society, and playing the very devil with confidence and friendship. Secondly, I cannot help objecting to that practice (begun, I think, or greatly enlarged by Hunt) of italicising lines and words and whole passages ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... mischievous falsehood that the way to a man's heart was through his stomach? How many a silly woman, taking it for truth, has let love slip out of the parlour, while she was busy in the kitchen. Of course, if you were foolish enough ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... Count he heard Gayferos, in the palace where he lay;— "Now silence, silence, Countess! it is falsehood that you say; I neither slew the man, nor hired another's sword to slay;— But, for that the mother hath desired, be sure the ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... great care what you are doing; nothing shall save you from my just anger, if you utter but one single falsehood in your narration. ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere

... very indefinite ideas as to how he was to make his living. He had told the captain that he knew his way home, for having falsely represented that he lived in New York, he was in a manner compelled to this additional falsehood. Still, in spite of his friendless condition, his spirits were very good. The sun shone brightly; all looked animated and cheerful. Ben saw numbers of men at work about him, and he thought, "It will be a pity if I cannot make ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger

... Monasticism held the field in Europe, with all its faults, for centuries, because it enshrined the great Christian truth of self-sacrifice and absolute obedience. And you may take it as a fixed rule, that howsoever some 'mixture of falsehood doth ever please,' as Bacon says, in his cynical way, the reason for the power of any great movement has been the truth that was in it and not the lie; and the reason why great men have exercised influence has been ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... to her. But here again Manu says, "Woman has no business with the texts of the Vedas; thus is the law fully settled. Having therefore no evidence of law, and no knowledge of expiatory texts, sinful woman must be as foul as falsehood itself; and this is ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... plans were laid, or an enemy's battery, vomiting flame and death and strewing corpses round about him,—he was always cold, calm, resolute, like fate. He performed a treason or a court bow, he told a falsehood as black as Styx, as easily as he paid a compliment or spoke about the weather. He took a mistress and left her, he betrayed his benefactor and supported him, or would have murdered him, with the same calmness always and having no more remorse ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... And as they returned the elder was on the left side and the younger on the right, and the pigeons picked out the other eye of each of them. And so they were condemned to go blind for the rest of their days because of their wickedness and falsehood. ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

... your commissioners in Europe. We have had no information of what passes in America but through England, and the advices are, for the most part, such only as the ministry choose to publish. Our total ignorance of the truth or falsehood of facts, when questions are asked of us concerning them, makes us appear small in the eyes of the people here, and is ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various

... was astounded, as well he might be; for Bainbridge's answer was a most preposterous falsehood, nearly doubling the actual armament of the two vessels. An eager consultation was immediately held by the officers on the quarter-deck. Bainbridge looked on anxiously, and was delighted with the success of his ruse, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... find no such name as Kingsley whatever; and has been forced to come to the conclusion that he most have applied to Congress to change his name on arriving in the New World, or else that her informant was laboring reader a falsehood when she told her so. As for ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming

... and maintained as much dogged silence as he could. Once, however, they got a yelp of anguish out of him. It was when Cousin Virginia said: "Oh, Herbert, Herbert! How could you make up that terrible falsehood about Mr. Crum? And, think of it; right on the same page with your cousin ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... leave H. K. S. C. to the same gentle correction bestowed upon a neighbour of his at Brixton some time since, by MR. HICKSON, but I must not allow him to support his dogmatic and flippant hypercriticism by falsehood and unfounded insinuation, and I therefore beg leave to assure him that I have no claim to the enviable distinction of being designated as the friend of MR. HICKSON, to whom I am an utter stranger, having never seen him, and knowing ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various

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

... my story. I went back to Colmar, and then, after a while, there came tidings, true tidings, that she was engaged to this man. I came over again yesterday, determined,—you may blame me if you will, father, but listen to me,—determined to throw her falsehood in her teeth.' ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope

... regarded as an attempt to achieve holy ends by unholy means, but really and radically the apotheosis of falsehood and unreality to the dethronement of faith in the true, the genuine and the real, a deliberate shutting of the eyes to the truth, a belief in a lie in the name of God, a belief in symbols and formulas as in themselves ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... forbidden by a Voice which was not to be gainsaid. People who broke or evaded these commands did so willfully, and without excusing themselves, or being excused by others. I think most of us expected the fate of Ananias and Sapphira, if we told what we knew was a falsehood. ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom

... your pardon, Sir] I wish Hamlet had made some other defence; it is unsuitable to the character of a good or a brave man, to shelter himself in falsehood. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... selfishness, acted out in this particular way. This is the foundation of all covetousness and sensuality, as it blinds people's eyes, contracts their hearts, and sinks them down, so that they look upon earthly enjoyments as the greatest good. This is the source of all falsehood, injustice, and oppression, as it excites mankind by undue methods to invade the property of others. Self-love produces all the violent passions—envy, wrath, clamor, and evil speaking; and every thing contrary to the ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... that's true; and then ag'in there's a sight o' things that ain't true. Now, my old gran'ther used to say, 'Boys, says he, 'if ye want to lead a pleasant and prosperous life, ye must contrive allers to keep jest the happy medium between truth and falsehood.' Now, ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... heresy together with necromancy was also in question—which certainly was often the case. A point which it would be interesting to decide is this: whether and in what cases the Dominican (and also the Franciscan) Inquisitors in Italy were conscious of the falsehood of the charges, and yet condemned the accused, either to oblige some enemy of the prisoner or from hatred to natural science, and particularly to experiments. The latter doubtless occurred, but it is not easy to prove the fact. What helped to cause such persecutions ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... and not evil, a blessing and not a curse. We believe that that fire is for ever burning, though men are for ever trying to quench it all day long; and that it has been and will be in every age burning up all the chaff and stubble of man's inventions; the folly, the falsehood, the ignorance, the vice of this sinful world; and we praise God for it; and give thanks to Him for His great glory, that He is the everlasting and triumphant foe of evil and misery, of whom it is written, that our God is a consuming ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... of the British army. The air was red with blood. No importance was attached to these ghastly theories—they were nothing more—but their effects were depressing; they threw an atmosphere of gloom over the city, which was reflected in a thousand faces. What was once a "frigid falsehood" had been modified to mean a "gross exaggeration." This connoted a slight departure from sentiment, a tendency to reason, to think more dispassionately. Anxious as we were to get again in touch with the world and what it could offer to eat, we could no longer ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... seemed to me that our ship had also become a star, and was sailing through space with its glittering companions. What inhabitants peopled those fair planets, I wondered? Mere men and women who lived and loved and lied to one another as bravely as we do? or superior beings to whom the least falsehood is unknown? Was there one world among them where no women were born? Vague fancies—odd theories—flitted through my brain, I lived over again the agony of my imprisonment in the vaults—again I forced myself to contemplate ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... irresistible life and impulsive will; living fully in the present, looking neither before nor after; as ready to execute as to conceive; full of imagination—a faculty too often thwarted and warped by the fears of parents and friends that it means insincerity and falsehood, when it is in reality but the spontaneous exercise of faculties as yet unknown even to the possessor, and misunderstood by those ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles

... out of his self-control, Jefferson could not help saying that 'a suspension of the press would not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood.' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... came of a race of kings!" she answered. "All my ancestors were proud, and of a temper unknown to this petty day. They resented a wrong, they punished falsehood and treachery, and they took a life for a life. YOUR generation tolerates every sin known in the calendar with a smile and a shrug,—you have arrived at the end of your civilization, even to the denial of Deity ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... very gentlemanly manner] Will you allow me to remind you, Mrs Tarleton, that this man has uttered a most serious and disgraceful falsehood concerning ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw

... her husband, and the clother of the motherless, grant that I may place thy name in this land in connection with all good law. Guide in whom there is no avarice, great man in whom there is no meanness, who destroyest falsehood and makest what is true to exist, who comest to the word of my mouth, I speak that thou mayest hear. Perform justice, O thou who art praised, to whom those who are most worthy of praise give praise. Do away the oppression that weigheth me down. Behold, I am weighted with sorrow, ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge

... the argument. What necessary connection is there, they will ask, between the exhibition of mechanico chemical wonders, physical feats, however abnormal and inexplicable, and the possession of infallibility of intellectual insight and moral utterance? If a man should say, God is falsehood and hatred, and in evidence of his declaration should make a whole cemetery disembogue its dead alive, or cause the sun suddenly to sink from its station at noon and return again, would his wonderful performance prove his horrible doctrine? Why, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... separately, and subjecting them to a subsequent cross-examination, in which case, if false, they will not be able to persevere in one regular, consistent story "; whereas, if no advantage be taken of such particularity in the charge to detect the falsehood thereof, and if no attempt to disprove it, and no defence whatever be made, a presumption justly and reasonably arises in favor of the truth of such charge. That the said Warren Hastings, instead of offering anything ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... my dearest relatives are now in a slave Slate. Can you for a moment believe I would prove so recreant to the feelings of a daughter and a sister, as to join a society which was seeking to overthrow slavery by falsehood, bloodshed and murder? I appeal to you who have known and loved me in days that are passed, can you believe it? No! my friends. As a Carolinian I was peculiarly jealous of any movements on this subject; and ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke

... practiced, as we have found in more instances than one, that it would take the whole of a person's time to trace all their stories. Many pretend to have been American soldiers, some have served as officers. A most glaring instance of falsehood, however, Colonel Smith detected in a man of these pretensions, who sent to Mr. Adams from the King's Bench prison, and modestly desired five guineas; a qualified cheat, but evidently a man of letters and abilities: but if ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... face comes back to him. Could he accuse that face of falsehood? And another thing: If she and that cousin of hers were in collusion, would they have so openly defied him, ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford

... mind of the—murderer, Mr. McCall. You see, don't you, the thin line of demarcation that lies between truth and falsehood? When the difference between the two may mean the difference between life and death it behooves me to be extremely careful. I am not holding a brief for the defendant or the state, Mr. District Attorney, I ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew

... "'A scounthrelly falsehood regarding me and my friend!' shouted out Mr. Macshane; 'and the Count shall answer ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... around him to beware of the seven tempter spirits, which are the spirit of fornication, gluttony, strife, love of admiration, arrogance, falsehood, and injustice. He cautioned them especially against unchastity, saying: "Pay no heed to the glances of a woman, and remain not alone with a married woman, and do not occupy yourselves with the affairs of women. Had I not seen Bilhah bathe in a secluded spot, I had not fallen ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... The idea of disbelieving his daughter never entered his head. He knew she would never debase herself by uttering a falsehood, and he quietly resumed his work. Then, after a few minutes of silence, he turned again to her: "Is Jacques gone?" ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel

... communicate as much or as little upon the subject as you think proper;—only something I should like to know, as soon as possible, from yourself, in order to set my mind at rest with respect to the truth or falsehood of the report." The following ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... Mary, equally unconscious of her meaning, "I have thought much and often, very often, upon you, and wished I could have come to you; but—-" she stopped, for she could not tell the truth, and would not utter a falsehood. ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... disbelieving this story. Marmion was quite as fond of the chase as his young master, and frequently indulged in hunting expeditions on his own responsibility; sometimes being absent all day and nearly all night. But he was not off hunting then, and Pierre had told a deliberate falsehood, when he said that he had seen him in pursuit of a rabbit. The Ranchero had determined upon a course of action which he knew he could not follow out so long as the dog was at liberty, and Marmion was, at that very moment, ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon

... firmness; and Talma, with an expression of countenance which cannot be described, awaits, in triumph and joy, the confirmation of her innocence,—and seems to call upon the spirit which had haunted him, to behold the solemn scene which proves the falsehood of its mission. But the very tenderness which he shews destroys the resolution of his mother, and she hesitates in the oath she had begun to pronounce. His feelings are at once changed,—the paleness of horror, and fury of revenge, are marked in his countenance, and his hands ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... According to a well-known cynical dictum a diplomatist is a man who is paid to lie for his country. And, indeed, it is one of the least gracious aspects of the diplomatic career that it seems necessarily to involve the use of a certain amount of chicanery and falsehood, the object being to jockey opponents by means of skilful ruses into a position in which they find themselves at a disadvantage. Clearly, however, there are better aims than these for diplomacy—one aim in particular, which ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney

... placed him, nor the depth of his nephew's fall in position and character. He longed to have been able to stand up in vindication of George against the terrible insinuations of Williams; he would have been intensely thankful if he could have accosted the stranger, and said, "That man is guilty of falsehood who dares to speak against the good name of my nephew." But there he stood, with blood boiling and lips quivering, unable to contradict one ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder

... two gownsmen into a cyprian temple in the neighbourhood of Saint Thomas, circulated a false report that they had carried thither the wives of two respectable mechanics. Without taking the trouble to inquire into the truth or falsehood of the accusation, the door was immediately beset; the old cry of Town and Gown vociferated in every direction; and the unfortunate wights compelled to seek their safety by an ignominious flight through a back door and over the meadows. The tumult ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... laughed at the "miserable man crawling from beneath the coverture," I wonder I [? you] did not perceive it was a laugh of horror—such as I have laughed at Dante's picture of the famished Ugolino. Without falsehood, I perceive an hundred beauties in your narrative. Yet I wonder you do not perceive something out-of-the way, something unsimple and artificial, in the expression, "voiced a sad tale." I hate made-dishes ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... daughter, make altogether an interesting story, and is almost the first touch of sentiment with which the historian has refreshed us; a pleasant change from the continued accounts of corruption, violence, lust, war and petty falsehood, that have thus far marked the history of this people. The only value of these records to us is to show the character of the Jewish nation, and make it easy for us to reject their ideas as to the true status of woman, and their pretension of being guided by the hand of God, in all their ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

... the Lion. He prefaces it by saying that he has no regard "to what AEsop has said upon the subject, whom," says he, "I look upon to have been a republican, by the unworthy treatment which he often gives to the king of beasts, and whom, if I had time, I could convict of falsehood and forgery in almost every matter of fact which he has related of ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... flowers, my pocketful of nuts, or little string of fish they palled upon me and I began immediately to feel an uneasy sense of disappointment, of disillusion, knowing I had miserably failed. The bombastic brag to my mother and her praise were a kind of mockery and falsehood. Illusion followed illusion, defeat followed defeat, yet the morrow was ever to be their healer and compensation. How often have I been soothed by the waveless waters of the Charles river, its whispering ripples scarcely reaching the shores and ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee

... God's infliction, roam the weary world. How I have fared, thou hearest: be there aught Of what remains to bear, that thou canst tell, Speak on! but let not thy compassion warm Thy words to cheering falsehood. Worst of woes Are words that break their promise to ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus

... that Raymond should confide his dying message to his sworn and most deadly foe? The story seemed to bear upon it the impress of falsehood. Sanghurst, studying her face intently, appeared ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... He really dare not tell her any falsehood. He did not love Cecil's mother this way, and though he may come to love Violet with the highest and purest passion, he does not do so now. "No, my dear child, very ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... my pity, Not only hath discover'd to my Father What she had promis'd to conceal, but also Hath drawn my life into this fatal forfeit; For which since I must dye, I crave a like Equality of justice against her; Not that I covet bloud, but that she may not Practise this art of falsehood on some other, Perhaps more worthy of ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... no one would pronounce. The king, then, observing my men who had gone to Unyoro together with Kamrasi's, questioned them on their mission; and when told that no white men were there, he waxed wrathful, and said it was a falsehood, for his men had seen them, and could not be mistaken. Kamrasi, he said, must have hidden them somewhere, fearful of the number of guns which now surrounded him; and, for the same reason, he told lies, yes, lies—but ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... white lies, Peggy. They are all black. It is wrong, it is sinful, to tell a falsehood. Remember that, my child," Miss Margery ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin

... true worshippers, look to the whole mind of God, and especially the chief pleasure of God's mind, that which he most delights in, and by any means do not separate what God hath conjoined. Do not divide righteousness towards men from a profession of holiness to God, else it is but a falsehood, a counterfeit coin. Do not please yourselves so much in external church privileges, without a holy and godly conversation adorning the gospel, but let the chief study, endeavour, and delight of your souls be about that which God most delights in. Let the substantiate of religion have ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... of realising the hot resentment, the intense susceptibility to affronts, the element of heroism, which were dominant forty years ago in the national character. And he therefore has little or no expectation that the falsehood of legends which have been circulated regarding the events of 1870 will be proved, to his countrymen, even by the most irrefragable demonstration. All political parties in France, he says, have combined to hold their own ministry responsible for that calamitous war; he despairs of obtaining ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... method of instruction; that which had made the greatest noise was upon the infamous fiction of Spelling-Books: "A more lying, roundabout, puzzle-headed delusion than that by which we Confuse the clear instincts of truth in our accursed systems of spelling, was never concocted by the father of falsehood." Such was the exordium of this famous treatise. For instance, take the monosyllable Cat. What a brazen forehead you must have when you say to an infant, c, a, t,—spell Cat: that is, three sounds, forming a totally opposite compound,—opposite in every detail, opposite in the whole,—compose ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to pry into that," he told her. "But I should like to know why both you and Mr. Copplestone preferred to tell me a falsehood rather than admit that you were talking together in ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming

... But dark deceit and falsehood's shameless shame They had not learned, until the white man came. He taught them, too, the lurking devil's joy In liquid lies, that lure but to destroy. With wily words, as false as they were sweet, He spread his snares for unsuspecting feet; Paid truth with guile, ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... that upon no danger would send them where he would not lead them himself; that would never see us want what he either had or could by any means get us; that would rather want than borrow; or starve than not pay; that loved action more than words, and hated falsehood and covetousness worse than death; whose adventures were our lives, and whose loss ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... point of view, should exist among individuals only to make them more obedient and disciplined, for morality per se impedes governments and should be suppressed as a useless obstacle. For the State there exists neither truth nor falsehood; it only recognizes the utility of things. The glorious Bismarck, in order to consummate the war with France, the base of German grandeur, had not hesitated ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... themselves, I unhesitatingly pronounce that they have been greatly exaggerated. To say that the town was in any way "ruined" is simply an exhibition of ignorance on the part of those who are not acquainted with the facts, and a falsehood on the part of ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... thought I to myself; "the time has come when I must plunge headforemost into the sea of falsehood; so here goes." And I ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... ugly—she with a face more lovely than ever an artist dreamed of! A girl of eighteen who has never looked in a mirror! I wonder if there is another such in any civilized country in the world. What could have possessed her mother to tell her such a falsehood? I wonder if Margaret Gordon could have been quite sane. It is strange that Neil has never told her the truth. Perhaps he doesn't want her to ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... was—"whoever was charged with a fault of which they were guilty, if they would ingenuously confess it and promise to amend should not be beaten." The most careful discrimination was made between inadvertent and deliberate falsehood. ...
— Excellent Women • Various

... Rebels or the Rebellion, while it had not words enough, or words not strong enough, to employ in denouncing those whose sole offence consists in their efforts to conquer the Rebels and to put down the Rebellion. With a perversion of history that is quite without a parallel even in the hardy falsehood of American politics, the responsibility for the war was placed to the account of the loyal men of the country, and not to the account of the traitors, who brought it upon the nation by a fierce forcing-process. The speech of Mr. Horatio Seymour, who presided over ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... women hastened to their rooms to make ready; Mistletoe still boo-hooing and snuffling, and declaring that she had always said some wretched, abominable villain would tell her child about that horrid, ridiculous legend, that was a perfect falsehood, as anybody could see, and very likely invented by the Dragon himself, because no human being with any feelings at all would think of such a cruel, absurd idea; and if they ever did, they deserved to be eaten themselves; and she ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister

... I don't reproach you. But don't you see? I'm sick of lies. Dead sick. I've been up to my neck in a bog of falsehood ever since I was a child and I'm making a hell of a struggle to get on to solid ground. The Truth for me now. By God! nothing ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... carried the stocks, and turned over the profits to those who had paid nothing and risked nothing. When the investigation was threatened, many of those who were involved ran to shelter under a variety of excuses and some of them hoped to escape by the aid of falsehood which ripened into perjury when the investigation was made. A few admitted ownership and asserted their right to ownership. Those men escaped with but little loss of prestige. Of the others, some retained their hold upon public office and some were advanced ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell

... sins, with their aggravating circumstances, as I said, he pleadeth against us at the bar of God. But there he meeteth with Jesus Christ, our Lord and Advocate, who entereth his plea against him, unravels all his reasons and arguments against us, and shows the guile and falsehood of them. He also pleadeth as to the nature of sin, as also to all those high aggravations, and proveth that neither the sin in itself, nor yet as joined with all its advantageous circumstances, can be the sin unto death, (Col 2:19), ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... of the goodness of your intentions) "that they do not appear to go with you against their will." Impudent and base assertion! Why then do you load them with chains? Why keep you your daily and nightly watches? But alas, as a farther, though a more melancholy proof, of the falsehood of your assertions, how many, when on board your ships, have put a period to their existence? How many have leaped into the sea? How many have pined to death, that, even at the expence of their lives, they might ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson

... the angry king said it was all a falsehood, made up by the queen's friends, and he bade them go on with the trial. Yet even as he spoke, a messenger entered to say that the king's son Mamillius had died suddenly, grieving for his mother. Hermione, overcome by such sad tidings, fainted; and ...
— The Children's Portion • Various

... partially, slightly, tenderly—catches the flying lights of things, the momentary glooms: paints also partially, tenderly, never with half his strength; content with uncertain visions, insecure delights; the truth not precious nor significant to him, only pleasing; falsehood also pleasurable, even useful on occasion—must, however, be discreetly touched, just enough to make all men noble, all women lovely: "we do not need this flattery often, most of those we know being such; and it is a pleasant world, and with diligence—for nothing can be ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... impatiently waited, his eyes meanwhile restlessly roving the splendor of the room in search of some object which would suggest Hermia—mad Hermia of Vagabondia. Opposite him upon the wall was a portrait of her by a distinguished Frenchman, with whose mÂŽtier he was familiar—an astounding falsehood in various shades of tooth-powder. This Hermia smirked at him like the lady in the fashion page, exuding an atmosphere of wealth and nothing else—a strange, unreal Hermia who floated vaguely between her gilt barriers, neither sprite nor flesh and ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... falsehood of his enemies had failed to do, was accomplished by a few words of unaffected sympathy. These alone had power to wring tears from his firm manhood, and Chester led his little protege home with a heavy heart, ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... a genius I had when I wrote that book!" I think he was admiring not the genius, but the consequences to which the genius had brought him—a vast genius, a magnificent genius, a genius wonderfully bright, and dazzling, and strong,—to seize, to know, to see, to flash upon falsehood and scorch it into perdition, to penetrate into the hidden motives, and expose the black thoughts of ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... more Christian, and therefore more just, I apprehend, to consider both sides of the question, the authorities and those under them. Other and better reasons would be found for some things which have occurred, and reasons which would not be based on falsehood, and which would not tend to perpetuate the conflict of right and prejudice. My own success will prove, I hope, not only that I had sufficient ability to graduate—which by the way none have questioned—but also that the authorities were ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... farmers gave similar evidence regarding their districts. They included Mr. J. S. Smit, the Klerksdorp Magistrate, who incidentally exploded the stale old falsehood about Natives living on the labour of their wives. The Rev. J. L. Dube said inter alia: "It is a fact that none can deny that the white man has got the best land. In the Free State you can go for miles ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... Northerners fling at Southerners. There are no Baron Munchausens in the south of France, neither at Nimes nor Marseilles, Toulouse nor Tarascon. The Southerner does not deceive but is self-deceived. He does not always tell the cold-drawn truth, but he believes he does. His falsehood is not any such thing, but a ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... did so possesse my minde, as if all things else concern'd me not. Besides, that the three preceding Maximes were grounded only on the designe I had, to continue the instruction of my self. For God having given to every one of us a light to discern truth from falsehood, I could not beleeve I ought to content my self one moment with the opinions of others, unlesse I had proposed to my self in due time to imploy my judgment in the examination of them. Neither could I have exempted my ...
— A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reason - and the Discovery of Truth in the Sciences • Rene Descartes

... awful enigma presented by Christ's abandonment of the Church and mankind, by the extinction of appointed sacraments and means of grace, and by the impious rupture of the tie between man and God. The downfall of Church and priesthood and the triumph of falsehood and wrong were foretold by the prophets. This is the time predicted in Holy Writ, when the very elect shall be wellnigh seduced, and when God shall seem to give up His own into the hand of the Adversary. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... the officers. A complaint of this character had repeatedly been made by released prisoners. Still, it required personal experience to enable me to appreciate its full and lamentable force. Hence, the shock I felt at the virtual request of the warden for me to join in the falsehood course, by telling the prisoners that Henry Stewart, when removed to the insane asylum, was taken out to be tried for attempts to murder his overseer.—Then, again, there were the assertions I repeatedly heard the warden make to prison visitors, on ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby

... Baroness von Vernon was as useful to you in Berlin the last two years, as Baroness de Simonie is now in Vienna. She aided you in all your plans, entered into your designs, pitilessly betrayed all who trusted her and whose secrets she stole by craft, falsehood, and hypocrisy." ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach

... to my honour or ease. They said my eldest daughter is appointed the governess of the young Princess. This has been the joke of some witty correspondent; for my eldest daughter is but fifteen, and stands in need of a governess herself. Perhaps they may suppose me mean enough to circulate falsehood. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck

... gentleman is found bolstering up the argument of another, he is not, ever for the nonce, to be taken for his friend." I think the denial to be expressed in rather strong language; but I hasten to make the amende suitable to the occasion, by withdrawing the "falsehood ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various

... where she could view her action with complacency. At first, there was an irritating, nagging fear that Mr. Wrandall had been genuinely soul-sacrificing in his effort to defend her; that his decisive falsehood was a sincere declaration of loyalty to her and not the transparent outburst of one actuated by a sort of fanatical selfishness, in that he dreaded the further dragging in the dust of the name of Wrandall, and all that in spite of his positive belief that she was being ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

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

... Carrick and Gilbert of Gloucester. There came a rumor that the instigations of a base traitor had poisoned your grace's ear against one of these sworn brothers, threatening his liberty, if not his life; that which was revealed, its exact truth or falsehood, might Gloucester pause to list or weigh? My liege, thou knowest it could not be. A piece of money and a pair of spurs was all the hint, the warning, that he dared to give, and it was given, and its warning taken; and the imperative duty the laws of chivalry, of honor, friendship, all alike ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... their blows and started up panic-stricken. But only for a moment. The ready and reckless falsehood ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... shown by the fact that our approbation is not in proportion to the amount of happiness flowing from an action [he means immediately flowing, which does not decide the question]. We disapprove of falsehood, injustice, and unprovoked violence, even although more happiness would result from them than from the contrary. Moreover, we are not always judges of the whole consequences of acting. Undoubtedly, however, benevolence is our duty, if there be no ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... passing over all other sins for the present, Hosea fixes upon one, the prevalence of which strikes at the very foundation of society. What can be done with a community in which lying has become a national characteristic, and that even in formal agreements? Honey-combed with falsehood, it is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... great bound toward his throat, then sank what seemed to be fathoms deep in his breast. This was a thunderbolt out of heaven itself. Had she seen him, then? For a space he was tempted to utter a falsehood; but there was that in her eyes which warned him of the uselessness of such an expedient. Yet, to give up that rose would be like giving up some part of his being. She repeated the question: "I ask you ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath

... have been already told that; she is one of those overnice and affectedly particular people who place heaven in the foreground in order to conceal themselves behind it. But if she refuses to tell a falsehood,—as she will expose herself to the jests of the whole court, as she will have annoyed the king by a confession as ridiculous as it was immodest,—Mademoiselle la Baume le Blanc de la Valliere will think it but proper I should send her back again to her pigeons in the country, in order that, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... the two blades of grass theory has been exploded, the increased production cry has been tried out, carried to its logical conclusion, and found wanting, and the inefficiency explanation has been proved a falsehood on its face. It is, therefore, obvious that with a proper system of distribution, the entire question of production will take care of itself; but just so long as the producers find it unprofitable to produce food, just so long will ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... can man resign thee Once having felt thy generous flame? Can dungeons, bolts, or bars confine thee, Or whips thy noble spirit tame? Too long the world has wept, bewailing That falsehood's dagger tyrants wield; But freedom is our sword and shield, And all their arts are unavailing. To arms, to arms, ye brave! The avenging sword unsheathe! March on, march on, all hearts ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head

... and loyal herself in spite of the many deceptions and treacheries which she had witnessed in her life, she never looked for falsehood or for cant in others. Even now she only saw before her a woman who had been wrongfully persecuted, who had suffered and had forgiven those who had caused her to suffer. She bitterly accused herself for her original mistrust ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... and impossible in its cruelty, falsehood, and stupidity. The Russian Tsar, the same man who exhorted all the nations in the cause of peace, publicly announces that, notwithstanding all his efforts to maintain the peace so dear to his heart (efforts which express themselves in the seizing of other ...
— "Bethink Yourselves" • Leo Tolstoy

... unsuspected currents in her life-river," she asked herself, "had carried her so easily into falsehood? What strange forces were these," she wondered, "that had set her so suddenly against honesty and truthfulness and law and justice? And this stranger,—this wretched, haggard-faced, drunken creature, who had been brought by the mysterious currents of life to her door,—what was there ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright

... will not be heard among the dogmatists. He will have a great and cool allowance for all sorts of people and opinions. If he finds no out-of-the-way truths, he will identify himself with no very burning falsehood. His way took him along a by-road, not much frequented, but very even and pleasant, which is called Commonplace Lane, and leads to the Belvedere of Commonsense.[16] Thence he shall command an agreeable, if no very noble prospect; and ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... any language but that of truth in the presence of kings; this man abused his majesty, and spoke what was unworthy of him." The king turned away indignant at this remark, and replied, "I was better pleased with his falsehood than with this truth that you have told; for that bore the face of good policy, and this was founded in malignity; and the intelligent have said, 'A peace-mingling falsehood is preferable to a mischief-stirring truth':—Whatever prince may do that which he (his counsellor) will recommend, ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... he was a music-master?" cried shrewd William. And Lady Isabel felt the red blood flush to her face at the unlucky admission she had made. It flushed deeper at her own falsehood, as she muttered some evasive words about hearing of him ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... room, which he had turned upside down, he laid back his death-warrant where he had found it; and at that, her face lighted up. The next thing he heard, she was explaining to her maid, with some ingenious falsehood, the disorder of her things. Flesh and blood could bear the strain no longer; and I think it was the next morning (though chronology is always hazy in the theatre of the mind) that he burst from his reserve. They had been breakfasting together in one corner of a great, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to Isabel a full retraction and explanation of every falsehood you have uttered to her or to me in this matter." Leonard was pale again; Arthur burned red a moment, and then turned paler ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable

... which were both passed in Ireland, by references to the King's Council here, both less advantageous to the coiner than this of Wood, and in both securities given to receive the coin at every call, and give gold and silver in lieu of it. This demonstrates the most flagrant falsehood and impudence of Wood, by which he would endeavour to make the right honourable Committee his instruments, (for his own illegal and exorbitant gain,) to ruin a kingdom, which ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift

... am I, an honest old fellow,—I may say it, with all my faults; and one who shrinks from falsehood more than from fire; and I find that I, with my bearish temper, am actually driving those about me into it—teaching them to be crafty, tricky, and cowardly! I knew well enough that my gruffness plagued others, but I never saw how it tempted others until now; ...
— False Friends, and The Sailor's Resolve • Unknown

... or a pair of them, and I shall respect you more. Confess that it was the voice of Basil Bainrothe I heard at my cabin-door, and that Captain Van Dorne was imposed upon by that specious scoundrel, even to the point of being conscientiously compelled to falsehood. ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... irate at this appeal to his wife, and speaking in a loud voice, "do you misdoubt my word; or do you think that if I were minded to be false to you, that I should be corrected in my falsehood by the firmer faith ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... drink tobacco water. He generally saw the visions,—if he lived. In some islands the priests inhaled the smoke of a burning powder and thereupon fell into a stupor or a frenzy in which they talked with the dead. Was this the smoke of tobacco, plus a little abandon, a little falsehood, a little enthusiasm? Its enemies in King James's time would have said that the smokers deserved not merely to talk with the dead, but ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... indignation which counsel must feel when defending innocence from the false attacks, with the uncalled-for, the unprofessional acerbity which has now been used in promoting such an accusation as this. I may at times be angry, when I see mean falsehood before me in vain assuming the garb of truth—for with such juries as I meet here it generally is in vain—I may at times forget myself in anger; but, if we talk of venom, virulence, and eager hostility, I yield ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... from the falsehood in this dramatic monologue has not been Browning's intention, and it need not be ours. It may be repeated that Browning is no apologist for Louis Napoleon: he simply calls him to the front, and, standing aside, allows him to speak ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... my wife's estate, of which I have control. I do not, however, wish her to know that I have raised money on them," answered Duncan, with a smooth falsehood. ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger

... herself? She was aware that she could no longer stay in his house as his adopted daughter. But she could go forth,—and starve if there was nothing better for her. But as she thought of starvation, she stamped with one foot against the other, as though to punish herself for her own falsehood. He would not let her starve. He would get some place for her as a governess. And she was not in the least afraid of starvation. It would be sweeter for her to work with any kind of hardship around her, and to be allowed to think of ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope

... he will die!;' and the other addeth, 'Extolled be the perfection of the Living who dieth not!'[FN89] Moreover by reason of his justice and ordinance and intelligence, there is no Kazi in his city, and all his lieges distinguish between Truth and Falsehood." Quoth the Caliph, "How great is this King! His letter hath shown me this; and as for the mightiness of his dominion thou hast told us what thou hast eye-witnessed. By Allah, he hath been endowed with ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... and grievances with decision and despatch, he all the time in good humour with the people and they delighted with him, though he often rated them roundly when they stood before him perverse in litigation, helpless in procrastination, detected in cunning or convicted of falsehood. They saw into his character almost as soon as ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)

... sent a penitent note to Kitty, imploring her to overlook my strange conduct of the previous afternoon. My Divinity was still very wroth, and a personal apology was necessary. I explained, with a fluency born of night-long pondering over a falsehood, that I had been attacked with sudden palpitation of the heart—the result of indigestion. This eminently practical solution had its effect; and Kitty and I rode out that afternoon with the shadow of my first ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... prepares a public death to meet, A people's ransom at a tyrant's shrine: Oh glorious falsehood! beautiful deceit! Can Truth's own light thy loveliness outshine? To her bold speech misdoubting Aladine With unaccustomed temper calm replied: "If so it were, who planned the rash design, Advised thee to it, or became thy guide? Say, with thyself who else his ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... companion of our pleasures and our toils, hath invested him with a nature noble and incapable of deceit. He forgets neither friend nor foe—remembers, and with accuracy, both benefit and injury. He hath a share of man's intelligence, but no share of man's falsehood. You may bribe a soldier to slay a man with his sword, or a witness to take life by false accusation, but you cannot make a dog tear his benefactor. He is the friend of man, save when man ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... which they can, and are content therewith; because, what they are not able to do, they do not will so strongly as would suffice to make them able? For I ask any one, had he rather joy in truth, or in falsehood? They will as little hesitate to say "in the truth," as to say "that they desire to be happy," for a happy life is joy in the truth: for this is a joying in Thee, Who art the Truth, O God my light, health of my countenance, my God. This ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... a hypocrite, yet wasn't Lilienfeld a hypocrite, too, when he spoke openly of Ingigerd Hahlstroem's honour and chastity? I looked up in alarm, and I saw a grin glide like a malicious shadow over the rows of reporters. Doesn't falsehood blossom everywhere? Doesn't hypocrisy flourish equally on each side of every contest? Isn't it a matter ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... the King of the adventure her curiosity had led her into, at which he laughed, and said he wished the Police had arrested her. He added a very sensible remark. "In order to judge," said he, "of the truth or falsehood of such predictions, one ought to collect fifty of them. It would be found that they are almost always made up of the same phrases, which are sometimes inapplicable, and some times hit the mark. But the first are rarely-mentioned, while the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... your answer. But it seems to me that it behoves you to give a good answer to such a matter, for this match is a noble one." Thorgerd answered, "I have often heard you say that you love me best of all your children, but now it seems to me you make that a falsehood if you wish me to marry the son of a bonds-woman, however goodly and great a dandy he may be." Egil said, "In this matter you are not so well up, as in others. Have you not heard that he is the son of the daughter of Myrkjartan, king of Ireland? so that ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous

... valid for the conduct of life. By such teaching, if they have the heart to heed it, men become wise, learning how to be both brave and gentle, faithful and free; how to renounce superstition and yet retain faith; how to keep a fine poise of reason between the falsehood of extremes; how to accept the joys of life with glee, and endure its ills with patient valor; how to look upon the folly of man and not forget his nobility—in short, how to live cleanly, kindly, calmly, open-eyed and unafraid in a sane world, sweet ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... abounds in falsehood, though to serve its purpose it is certainly adroitly written. We had not intended to be married on the evening of the mob, so that not only is the speech which the Editor puts in my mouth false, but so also is his statement that we repaired to ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen

... been incurred, and of such a nature as to interfere with the plans of his mother. He came to her, frankly owning his error, and she replied, while tears of affection moistened her eyes, "I had rather it should be so, than that my son should have been guilty of a falsehood." ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... possible personal confession. Other conjectures are justified, I believe, by still other notes, but it may be preferable to list, without comment, some of the topics upon which Johnson has his say in the notes to Shakespeare. He comments on melancholy, falsehood, the lightness with which vows are made, cruelty to animals, "the pain of deformity," the horrors of solitude, kindness to dependents, friendship, slavery, guilt, the "unsocial mind," the "mean" and the "great"—and a host of others. ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... letter was concealed, Casanova called his companion. The spy, by this time, was really ill with terror; for he believed that he had provoked the wrath of the Virgin Mary by breaking his oath. He was ready to do anything his companion told him to do, and weak enough to credit any falsehood. ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... The first falsehood she had ever told him, and yet uttered with such perfect assumption of sincerity as would have deceived the acutest observer. He nodded, discontented as usual, but entertaining ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... truth, only so far as it is united with good. VII. That the Lord doesn't suffer that any thing should be divided; wherefore a man must either be in good and at the same time in truth, or in evil and at the same time in falsehood: not to ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... self-defence. No reasonable person expects the burglar to confess his pursuits, or to refrain from joining in the cry of Stop Thief when the police get on the track of another burglar. If society chooses to penalize candor, it has itself to thank if its attack is countered by falsehood. The clamorous virtue of the libertine is therefore no more hypocritical than the plea of Not Guilty which is allowed to every criminal. But one result is that the theorists who write most sincerely and favorably ...
— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw

... breviaries, the legendaries and hymn-books of this strange new creed, is to protest that the love poems must be allegories, the love romances solar myths, the Courts of Love historical bungles; that all this mediaeval world of love is a figment, a misinterpretation, a falsehood. ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee

... he was proceeding to the final, the fatal sentence. At that instant the grand master advanced; his gesture implored silence; judges and people gazed in awestruck apprehension. In a calm, clear voice Du Molay spoke: "Before heaven and earth, on the verge of death, where the least falsehood bears like an intolerable weight upon the soul, I protest that we have richly deserved death, not on account of any heresy or sin of which ourselves or our order have been guilty, but because we have yielded, to save our lives, to the seductive words of the Pope and of the King; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

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

... and women in every walk in life appeal to him; while still later, real history seizes the imagination of the youth, who now looks for the causes of things and learns to trace out their effects. He learns to reason and to separate truth from falsehood. Casting aside the wild tales of boyhood, he gathers up instead the facts of life and experience, and draws his inspiration from the noble works of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... gave many evidences of unscrupulous falsehood, there was no counter-evidence to set against it, and O'Shea's counsel complained strongly of the meagre instructions which were briefed to him in the case, and his utter inability to construct a ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... received this gold, and had it placed in a small box, the key of which he gave to the Moro, telling him to keep it until the promise was fulfilled; but to consider that after treason nothing could be more blameworthy than falsehood. The Moro salaamed low, and said that he would not lie, and that they would fulfil their promise, little by little. And so they did, for, on that same day, four more messengers came with gold; and all entreated and begged the master-of-camp ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair

... circumstances, may or may not be important; in a certain sense even they may or may not be false. The habitual liar may be a very honest fellow, and live truly with his wife and friends; while another man who never told a formal falsehood in his life may yet be himself one lie—heart and face, from top to bottom. This is the kind of lie which poisons intimacy. And, vice versa, veracity to sentiment, truth in a relation, truth to ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... has been done by thee in a hundred former births, all shall become his whom thou defeatest by falsehood![156] ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya

... which King Pelias could not prevent from gleaming out of his eyes, he probably guessed that the king had discovered what he came for, and that he intended to turn his own words against himself. Still he scorned to tell a falsehood. Like an upright and honorable prince as he was, he determined to speak out the real truth. Since the king had chosen to ask him the question, and since Jason had promised him an answer, there was no right way save to tell him precisely what would be the most ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... looked down upon her. "Alice, if you will tell me that you do not love me, I will believe you, and will trouble you no more. I know that you will say nothing to me that is false. Through it all you have spoken no word of falsehood. If you love me, after what has passed, I have a right to demand your hand. My happiness requires it, and I have a right to expect your compliance. I do demand it. If you love me, Alice, I tell you that you dare not refuse me. ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... anything, I shall say that I'm looking at the river," she thought, for in her slavery to her family traditions, she was ready to pay for her transgression with some plausible falsehood. She pushed aside the blind and looked at the river. But it was a dark night and the water was barely visible. Cabs were passing, and couples were loitering slowly along the road, keeping as close to the railings ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... talked wildly? Who has never built castles in Spain? Wise men as well as milkmaids; sages and fools, all have waking dreams and find them sweet! Our senses are carried away by some flattering falsehood, and then wealth, honours, and beauty ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine

... to her room, took the box which contained the plate, felt its light weight, opened it, and saw a pawnbroker's ticket. The poor mother uttered a dreadful cry. Joseph and the Descoings ran to her, saw the empty box, and her noble falsehood was of no avail. All three were silent, and avoided looking at each other; but the next moment, by an almost frantic gesture, Agathe laid her finger on her lips as if to entreat a secrecy no one desired to break. They returned to the salon, ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... ideas; and it is much better to be silent. By the falsehoods which we think it necessary to tell, we often excite still greater curiosity, instead of satisfying that which already exists. I will not undertake to decide what ought to be done; but silence, I am certain, would be far better than falsehood. ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott

... dear Paul. You know how pleasant it is to fall asleep amid storms that shake the trees, and to awake in the stillness and the sunshine, and amid the songs of the birds. To-morrow the falsehood will be outfaced, and you will ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... man weighted with far worse things, and things which, in some cases at least, he can just as little help. You have known men whose extra pounds, or even extra ton, was a hasty temper, flying out of a sudden into ungovernable bursts: or a moral cowardice leading to trickery and falsehood: or a special disposition to envy and evil-speaking: or a very strong tendency to morbid complaining about their misfortunes and troubles: or an invincible bent to be always talking of their sufferings ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... trust in others; and it is rarely, except in a few dark and morose and gloomy natures, which are exceptions to the rule and standard of human nature, that man learns to be distrustful and suspicious of his kind, even after experience of fickleness and falsehood may have in some sort justified suspicions, until ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various

... masses powerfully either for good or evil. A species of moral obliquity pervades a large class of the community, by which the individuals composing it are prevented from discerning between truth and falsehood, except as either tends to their own personal aggrandisement. Thus truth is at a fearful discount, and men exult in successful roguery, as though a new revelation had authorised them to rank ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... entice into error the protector of the parliament; the gold was nothing but a lure; and by the help of this lure they thought to excite the cupidity of the general. This gold might not exist. It was Monk's business, then, to seize the Frenchman in the act of falsehood and trick, and to draw from the false step itself in which his enemies wished to entrap him, a triumph for his renown. When Monk ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... who buy the same clothes, and carry them out of the realm to sell to strangers, be many times in danger to be slain, and sometimes imprisoned, and put to fine and ransom by the same strangers, and their said clothes burnt or forfeit, because of the great deceit and falsehood that is found in the said clothes when they be untacked and opened, to the great slander of the realm of England. It is ordained and assented, that no plain cloth, tacked nor folded, shall be set to sale within the said counties; but that they be opened, upon pain to forfeit them, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various

... other American women, and impossible in our Altrurian women. She had a deep and almost tragical seriousness, masked with a most winning gayety, a light irony, a fine scorn that was rather for herself than for others. She had thought herself out of all sympathy with her environment; she knew its falsehood, its vacuity, its hopelessness; but she necessarily remained in it and of it. She was as much at odds in it as I was, without my poor privilege of criticism and protest, for, as she said, she could not ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells

... nation. And therefore, as you are by a late Act or Acts of Parliament, entrusted with a great power to preserve or waste the Church-lands; yet dispose of them, for Jesus' sake, as you have promised to men, and vowed to God, that is, as the donors intended: let neither falsehood nor flattery beguile you to do otherwise; but put a stop to God's and the Levites' portion, I beseech you, and to the approaching ruins of His Church, as you expect comfort at the Last Great Day; for Kings must be ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton

... understand at all how, supposing it to be true, it can fail, considered as knowledge, to exert a powerful influence on philosophy, literature, and every intellectual creation or discovery whatever. I cannot understand how it is possible, as the phrase goes, to blink the question of its truth or falsehood. It meets us with a profession and a proffer of the highest truths of which the human mind is capable; it embraces a range of subjects the most diversified and distant from each other. What science will not find one part or other of its province ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... party-spirit, when it rages in its full violence, exerts itself in civil war and bloodshed; and when it is under its greatest restraints naturally breaks out in falsehood, detraction, calumny, and a partial administration of justice. In a word, it fills a nation with spleen and rancour, and extinguishes all the seeds of good-nature, compassion, ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... the people on the plains of Kalevala, and spoke to the young men and maidens, saying: 'Listen, all ye young people. Never disobey your parents; never harm the innocent, nor wrong the weak, nor utter falsehood, else ye will pay the penance for it in the gloomy prison of Manala; for there is the dwelling-place of the wicked, and a place for the guilty. Beneath the burning rocks there are fiery couches, with pillows of hissing serpents, and coverlets of green writhing ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind

... reader of the preceding chapters—especially if he has compared their statements with contemporaneous records and other original sources of information—will already have found evidence enough to enable him to discern the falsehood of these representations, and to perceive that, to whatever extent the question of slavery may have served as an occasion, it was far from being the cause of ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... of truth, for whom we long, Thou who wilt hear our prayer, Do thine own battle in our hearts, And slay the falsehood there. ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden

... Beguiling with the falsehood and deceit of their lewd disposition the innocency and ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous

... A kind of official newspaper distributed periodically at the expence of Government in large towns, and pasted up in public places—it contained such news as the convention chose to impart, which was given with the exact measure of truth or falsehood that suited the purpose of ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... a race of kings!" she answered. "All my ancestors were proud, and of a temper unknown to this petty day. They resented a wrong, they punished falsehood and treachery, and they took a life for a life. YOUR generation tolerates every sin known in the calendar with a smile and a shrug,—you have arrived at the end of your civilization, even to the denial of Deity ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... and that a spice of good logic would have put an end to dissensions, which had troubled the world for centuries,—would have prevented many a bloody war, many a fierce anathema, many a savage execution, and many a ponderous folio. He went on to imply that in fact there was no truth or falsehood in the received dogmas in theology; that they were modes, neither good nor bad in themselves, but personal, national, or periodic, in which the intellect reasoned upon the great truths of religion; that the fault lay, ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... passion. He had, indeed, betrayed his sentiments by no direct speech. He had told her gravely that he was interested in her, and deeply concerned that one so worthy and so amiable should have been brought up in the house of idolaters, should have been taught falsehood instead of truth. ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... Thus again a false coin was nailed to the counter, but only after it had circulated so widely that many who had passed it would never know that it was proved to be base metal. Incredible as it may seem, the infamous falsehood was repeated in 1902 by a Dr. Vallentin, in the 'Deutsche Rundschau,' from which it was copied into other leading German papers without any reference to ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle

... there sought that pleasure, and found it. To discover a truth and separate it from a falsehood is surely an occupation of the best intellect, and not at all unworthy of the best heart. Consider how few of our countrymen have done it, or attempted it, on works of criticism; how few of them have analyzed and compared. Without these two ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... shame that authours are not now better patronized.' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir. If learning cannot support a man, if he must sit with his hands across till somebody feeds him, it is as to him a bad thing, and it is better as it is. With patronage, what flattery! what falsehood! While a man is in equilibrio, he throws truth among the multitude, and lets them take it as they please: in patronage, he must say what pleases his patron, and it is an equal chance whether that be truth or falsehood.' WATSON. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... strangely appalling in the pallid looks of people who live mainly in the open air, and the finest air in the world. Doubtless they tell a good story without, as I have already said, any very severe adherence to truth; but there can be no falsehood in their gaunt, famished faces, no fabrication in their own rags and the nakedness of their children. I doubt me Mr. Ruskin would designate the condition of Mount Misery, otherwise Lettermore ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... have said that! what an impudent falsehood! Ah, Madame the Countess, you know me well enough not to hesitate between the declarations of this fellow ...
— The Story of a Cat • mile Gigault de La Bdollire

... that both these religions—Greek and Mediaeval—perished by falsehood in their own main purpose. The Greek religion of Wisdom perished in a false philosophy—'Oppositions of science, falsely so called.' The Mediaeval religion of Consolation perished in false comfort; in remission of sins given lyingly. It was ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... is a gentleman, and he did ask me which were the shortest way thereto. But, good lack! it seemed me as all the pins that ever were in a cushion started o' pricking me when I thus spake. Yet what ill had I done, forsooth? I had said no falsehood: only shut Nell's mouth, for she asked no further. And, dear heart, may I not make so much as a friend to divert me withal, but I must send round the town-crier to proclaim the same? After I had writ thus ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt

... furnished. I am lodged in a handsome house, a very kind, good, quiet family, and their meals are excellent. I consider myself fortunate in all this. I feel assured that the Republicans, who, to cover up their own perfidy and neglect, have used every villanous falsehood in their power to injure me—I fear they have more than succeeded, but if their day of reckoning does not come in this world, it will surely in the ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley

... No, I was obliged to tell a falsehood and represent that I was going to Canada on business. I have been in constant dread that my crime would get into the papers and she would hear it. Poor mother! I believe that it would ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger

... as if speaking to himself, "thus is it that our priests fight with the weapons of calumny and falsehood, perverting the minds of the Creoles with fanatical superstition! So, Senor Lantejas," he continued in a louder tone, addressing himself to the student, "you are afraid to enrol yourself in the ranks of the insurgents, ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... said, "you desire to leave a slander of mademoiselle that may afflict me or her after your death; but your quickness to perceive circumstances that seemingly fit your lie will not avail you. A thousand facts might seem to bear out your falsehood, yet I would not heed them. I would know them to be accidental. For every lie there are many circumstances that may be turned to its support. So do not, in dying, felicitate yourself on leaving behind you a lie that will live to injure ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens

... afterwards she would come into intimate relationship with his protege. To give the impression that he, and she also, knowing Trenholme's origin, had overlooked it, was totally false. Yet she did not regret this falsehood. Who with a spark of chivalry would not have dealt as hard a blow as strength might permit in return for so mean an attack on the absent man? But none the less did her heart upbraid the man she ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... so, Mr. Sergeant. 'T is done by advice of an able lawyer. My life is in peril, unless I shake this witness's credit. To that end I show you she is incontinent, and practised in falsehood. Unchastity has been held in these courts to disqualify a female witness, hath ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... that the Oregon question had been settled. Again the Northwestern Democrats, who had been promised all of Oregon, were sorely disappointed. One of their most popular leaders declared in the Senate: "James K. Polk has spoken words of falsehood, and with the tongue of a serpent." Would the Northwestern wing of the party continue loyal? This may, perhaps, best be answered when we come to discuss ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... relieved. While lying in bed he decided to get rid of Sanderus; but afterward he thought that the scoundrel might be useful to him because he could speak German. Sanderus had not told him a falsehood; and although he was a costly acquisition, because he ate and drank as much as four men would in the inns, still he was serviceable, and showed some attachment for the young knight. Then he possessed the art of writing, and that gave ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... Pertinent, indeed, was the ringing cry of that ancient prosecutor: 'Most illustrious Caesar! if denial of guilt be sufficient defence, who would ever be convicted?' You have been assured that inferences drawn from probable facts eclipse the stupendous falsehood of Ananias and Sapphira! Then the same family strain inevitably crops out, in the loosely-woven web of defensive presumptive evidence—whose pedigree we trace to the same parentage. God forbid that I should commit ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... "Truly the Kali Yug (iron age) has commenced, since which time falsehood has increased in the world and truth has diminished; people talk smoothly with their tongues, but nourish deceit in their hearts; religion is destroyed, crime has increased, and the earth has begun to give little fruit. Kings levy ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... treachery, falsehood, and disloyalty left unpunished, society must become like an arena full of wild beasts, tearing one another to pieces. ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw

... either immediately or mediately to convince the mind of the truth or the falsehood of a fact or proposition." [Footnote: On Evidence, Best, p. 45.] Belief in a specific statement is induced by a presentation of pertinent facts, and usually by a process of reasoning whereby from the existence of these known facts, the conclusion, hitherto ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee

... while Christianity by its very nature would sacrifice everything. According to pantheism all things that exist, and all events that transpire, are expressions of the Divine will. The one only existent Being embraces all causes and all effects, all truth and all falsehood. He is no more the source of good than of evil. "I am immortality," says Krishna. "I am also death." Man with all his thoughts and acts is but the shadow of God, and moves as he is moved upon. Arjuna's divine counsellor says to him: "The soul, existing ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... old willow dejectedly grieves And drops from each leaf, for love's falsehoods, a tear; Go! rivals, and gather the willow's pale leaves, For falsehood ne'er cross'd between ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... sent 100 tusks and 100 slaves towards the coast to buy gunpowder. If true, the war is still far from being finished; but falsehood is fashionable. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

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

... Friend!—our scenes of kindness close! To cordial looks, to sunny smiles farewell! To sweet consolings, that can grief expel, And every joy soft sympathy bestows! For alter'd looks, where truth no longer glows, Thou hast prepar'd my heart;—and it was well To bid thy pen th' unlook'd for story tell, Falsehood avow'd, that shame, nor sorrow knows.— O! when we meet,—(to meet we're destin'd, try To avoid it as thou may'st) on either brow, Nor in the stealing consciousness of eye, Be seen the slightest trace of what, or how We once were ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... neighbors of the North. Neither can I believe the Mexicans ignorant of the infamy of the calumnies put forth by the press in order to excite hostility against us. No, public spirit can not be created or animated by falsehood. We have not profaned your temples, nor abused your women, nor seized your property, as they could have you believe. We say it with pride, and we confirm it by an appeal to your bishops and the curates of Tampico, Tuzpan, Matamoros, Monterey, Vera Cruz, and Jalapa; ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright

... of satire it is the business of Horace to instruct us how to combat our vices, to regulate our passions, to follow nature, to give bounds to our desires, to distinguish betwixt truth and falsehood, and betwixt our conceptions of things and things themselves; to come back from our prejudicate opinions, to understand exactly the principles and motives of all our actions; and to avoid the ridicule into which all men necessarily fall who are intoxicated with those notions which ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden

... magnitude—stars that show what they are. PUNCHINELLO perhaps goes to NIBLO'S, and not only sees plenty stars, but plenty of them. But of April. It is called "fickle;" but that's a slander. "Every thing by turns and nothing long"—that is a libel on which a suit could be hung. The same vile falsehood is cruelly uttered of some women, when every body knows, or should know, that these same women are nothing of the sort. Who ever knew a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various

... books. You have not written my plays. Any statement to the contrary is an infamous falsehood. No one else, dead or alive, could ever have written anything which I have written. When I have become an imbecile, which is not likely to happen yet, as I am a vegetarian and do not read your rag, it will be time enough for other people to lay claim to my work. Nor have I ever assisted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various

... impression that he must be a hard drinker, or that he drank to stimulate his eloquence. After he retired from office, his enemies, in order to undermine his further political influence, sowed the falsehood that he was a drunkard. I do not recall that they ever suggested that he used his office for his private profit—there are some things too absurd for even malice to suggest—but he had reason enough many times to calm himself by reflecting that his Uncle Jimmy Bulloch, the best of men, believed ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... There was something at last that he could say without falsehood. "She sent a prayer for your forgiveness," he said. "She told me to tell you to think of her as little as might be; not to grieve for her too much, and to try to forget her, so that her sin ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... (The Burmans are averse to taking religious offerings, which was the cause of my making the inquiry.) "We will state this circumstance to the king," said one of them, "and perhaps he will restore it. But is this all the silver you have?" I could not tell a falsehood. The house is in your possession, I replied, search for yourselves. "Have you not deposited silver with some person of your acquaintance?" My acquaintances are all in prison, with whom should I deposit silver? They next ordered my trunk and drawers to be examined. The secretary only was ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart

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

... and in the midst of the greatest revolution ever known, this excitement is only too easily understood. But the result of this excitement is that all those rumours which go flying about, mingling truth and falsehood together, end by misleading the public. It is unquestionably necessary to arrive at a clear understanding. The public has a right to know what has really happened, it has the right to know why we did not succeed ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin

... blot on the fairness of My world, and a shame to the brightness of My Heaven!—thy rulers are corrupt,—thy teachers are proud of heart and narrow in judgment,—thy young men and maidens go astray and follow each after their own vain opinions,—in thy great temples and holy places Falsehood abides, and Vice holds court in thy glorious palaces. Wherefore because thou hast neither sought nor served Me, and because thou hast set up gold as thy god, and a multitude of riches as thy chief good, lo! now mine eyes have grown weary of beholding ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... to take the names of persons of different historical periods, and connected with different subjects, yet all united in the bond of the Faith? To point to these men—and a host of other names might be cited—is to overthrow at once and finally the edifice of falsehood reared by enemies of the Church, who, before erecting it, might reasonably have been asked to look to the security ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... cause of humanity against the abuses of tyranny and ignorance. "Where there is not complete proof of guilt," said he, "there let there be no condemnation," a maxim observed in England, but not in France. "What is not full truth," is a saying of his, "is full falsehood." It was his hope, his prayer, that he might live to see the injustice of the French laws swept away. That he was not destined to see. He was a kind professor to all his scholars. When he found that some were needy, he assisted them with money and books. "I was once a poorer lad than ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... so evident to those who knew him. At any rate, I have set down nothing concerning him but the literal truth. He was always a mystery. I did not know whence he came; I do not know whither he has gone. I would not weave one spray of falsehood in the wreath I lay ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various

... our attention towards the child, to encourage the development of its initiative, to impress it with a sentiment of its dignity, to preserve it from cowardice and falsehood, to make it observe the pros and cons of all social conceptions, to educate it for the struggle, that is the great work, scarcely ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... respect to what are called ecclesiastical miracles, i.e. miracles performed after the Apostolic age, the author of "Supernatural Religion" recounts the notices of a considerable number, assumes that they are all false, and uses this assumed falsehood as a means of bringing odium on the accounts of the miracles ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler

... know. I don't reproach you. But don't you see? I'm sick of lies. Dead sick. I've been up to my neck in a bog of falsehood ever since I was a child and I'm making a hell of a struggle to get on to solid ground. The Truth for me now. By God! nothing but ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... Sarum (however he may be reviled by a party) with many other obligations conferred upon the world, has added some account of lord Rochester in his dying moments. No state policy in this case, can well be supposed to have biased him, and when there are no motives to falsehood, it is somewhat cruel to discredit assertions. The Dr. could not be influenced by views of interest to give this, or any other account of his lordship; and could certainly have no other incentive, but that of serving his country, by shewing the instability of vice, and, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety. They might, indeed, have been corrected by the wholesome punishments reserved to and provided by the laws of the several States against falsehood and defamation, but public duties more urgent press on the time of public servants, and the offenders have therefore been left to find their punishment ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... disposition, in spite of his long residence among foreigners, was still thoroughly Scotch. He was as undaunted by danger as any of his valiant ancestors had been, consequently he had no need to have recourse to guile; in short, falsehood would have been impossible to that frank nature. He was blunt in speech, but endowed with the kindest heart that ever throbbed in the dungeons of that grim fortress in which his manly career was closed. He had not, however, the prudence ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... R[a], and Horus represented a divine power who was about to avenge the cruel murder of his father, and the wrong which had been done to him, the moral conceptions of right and wrong, good and evil, truth and falsehood were applied to light and darkness, that is to say, ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge

... artist dreamed of! A girl of eighteen who has never looked in a mirror! I wonder if there is another such in any civilized country in the world. What could have possessed her mother to tell her such a falsehood? I wonder if Margaret Gordon could have been quite sane. It is strange that Neil has never told her the truth. Perhaps he doesn't ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... against it, and to have her visitors wriggle around and fidget and look miserable, as if they had cramp colic, while you make her play for them and have them get up and lie, and ask what it was, and say how beautiful it is, and steep their souls in falsehood and hypocrisy all on account of you. You'll have enough sins to answer ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... dragons in cars of gold; or of towns where the customs of men were remote and unexpected; of countries not yet visited, and of the gods returning. For though it is permissible, and a pleasant thing (as Bacon says), to mix a little falsehood with one's truth (so St Louis mixed water with his wine, and so does Sir John Growl mix vinegar with his, unless I am greatly mistaken, for if not, how does he give it that taste at his dinners? eh? There, I think, is a question that would puzzle him!) yet is it much more delectable, and far worthier ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... OF TRUTH can never be shaken. The force of disloyalty may have its hour of triumph, and treachery may march for a season to victory after victory; but all the while truth is secretly exercising her mastery, and in the long run the labor of falsehood will crumble into ruin. There is no permanent conquest for a lie. You can no more keep the truth interred than you could keep the Lord interred in Joseph's tomb. You cannot bury the truth, you cannot strangle her, you cannot even shake her! You may burn up the records of the truth, but you ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... Churchill with a long report for the officer in command there, and in that report he had lied. He reported Scottie Deane as having died of the injury he had received in the snow-slide. Not for a moment had he regretted the falsehood. He also promised to report at Churchill to testify against Bucky Smith as soon as he reached Pelliter and put him ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood









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