"Mendacious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... studied the sacred texts for purposes of writing or having translated other men's studies on Moses, David, the Prophets, Jesus, Paul, the Christian theologians and saints, miracles, etc., he concluded that these accounts were untrustworthy and mendacious. He knew ancient and modern philosophy and found in the greater part of it an unwarranted romantic or theological trend which his scientific training had caused him to suspect. It must be admitted that however false or illogical Holbach's conclusions may be ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... And his power is fiddle-dee-dee. Prankily, crankily prating of naught, Silly old quilly old Monarch of Thought. Public opinion's camp-follower he, Thundering, blundering, plundering free. Affected, Ungracious, Suspected, Mendacious, Respected ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... of those who took part in the struggle have been already quoted, and the most spirited description of the defeat of the armada which ever was penned may perhaps be taken from the letter which our brave vice-admiral Drake wrote in answer to some mendacious stories by which the Spaniards strove to hide their shame. Thus does he describe the scenes in which he played so important ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... old man and fear not death," answered Babalatchi, with a mendacious assumption of indifference. "But ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... turbid excitement which is its own. From the moment when you first start from the breakfast- table at the sound of hoofs, and find the noble animal at the door, arching his neck and champing his bit, as if he felt proud to bear that other animal, bandy-legged, mendacious, and altogether ignoble who sits jauntily on his back, down to the moment when you walk round to the stable for a little quiet enjoyment of the sense of ownership, there is a high tide of mental elation running through the days. ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... because men are always ready to make institutions responsible for the misery inseparable from human existence itself; which is, to speak mythically, the curse that was laid on Adam, and through him on the whole race. But never has that delusion been proclaimed in a more mendacious and impudent manner than by the demagogues of the Jetstzeit—of the day we live in. As enemies of Christianity, they are, of course, optimists: to them the world is its own end and object, and accordingly in itself, that is to say, in its own natural ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... dissimulation or some other alluring shape of lying. I believe that all autobiographical sketches are the result of mere vanity—not excepting those of St. Augustine and Rousseau—falsehood in the mask and mantle of truth. Half ashamed and half conscious of his own mendacious self-flattery, the historian of his own deeds or geographer of his own mind breaks out now and then indignantly, and revenges himself on his own weakness by telling some very disagreeable truth of some other person; and then, re-established in his own good opinion, marches on cheerfully ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... phenomenon, to wit, lynching. A good part of the enormous literature of lynching is devoted to a discussion of its causes, but most of that discussion is ignorant and some of it is deliberately mendacious. The majority of Southern commentators argue that the motive of the lynchers is a laudable yearning to "protect Southern womanhood," despite the plain fact that only a very small proportion of the blackamoors hanged and burned are even ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... himself Be-nyov-sky), is a liar without a peer among the adventurers of early American history. If it were not that his life was known to the famous men of his time, his entire memoirs from 1741 to 1771 might be rejected as fiction of the yellow order; but the comical thing is, the mendacious fellow cut a tremendous swath in his day. The garrisons of Kamchatka trembled at his name twenty-five years after his escapades. Ismyloff, who became a famous trader in the Russian Fur Company, could not be induced ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... before is nothing to what I feel now! That in his depravity he should have stolen was bad enough; but that now, to cover his tracks, he should accuse and defame a defenceless woman is infamy! Look at his story, and tell me could anything be more pitiful and mendacious? Her handkerchief was found in his bureau the night of the robbery. Where is the handkerchief now? He burned it! He found a note on a card from her hidden in the handkerchief she had given Hatton to replace in the drawer. Where is the card? He burned it! He ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... all along, in Poland especially, amid what circumambient deluges of maledictory outcries, and mendacious shriekeries from an ill-informed Public, is not now worth mentioning. Mere distracted rumors of the Pamphleteer and Newspaper kind: which, after hunting them a long time, through dense and rare, end mostly in zero, and angry darkness ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the one to stay with mamma; not that I can manage and look after her and do everything so well as Grace. But, you know, I want to," said Biddy with a liquid note in her voice—and giving her lump of clay a little stab for mendacious emphasis. ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Wales itself, in the more Celtic parts of England proper, a good many relics of the old Welsh Caers still bespeak the incompleteness of the early Teutonic conquest. If we might trust the mendacious Nennius, indeed, all our Casters and Chesters were once good Cymric Caers; for he gives a doubtful list of the chief towns in Britain, where Gloucester appears as Cair Gloui, Colchester as Cair Colun, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... man whose very thought is a lie to him and to us! He too is a frightful man; repeating about this Universe on every hand what is not, and driven to repeat it; the sure herald of ruin to all that follow him, that know with his knowledge! And would you learn how to get a mendacious thought, there is no surer recipe than carrying a loose tongue. The lying thought, you already either have it, or will soon get it by that method. He who lies with his very tongue, he clearly enough has long ceased to think truly in his mind. Does he, in any ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... in catafract—wet, wakeful, windward-eyed— He kept Poseidon's Law intact (his ship and freight beside), But, once discharged the dromond's hold, the bireme beached once more, Splendaciously mendacious rolled ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... as we have that state of things, we shall have wars and secret and mendacious diplomacy. And this is one of many overwhelming reasons for building the State on equality of income, because without it equality of status and general culture is impossible. Democracy without equality ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... O mendacious Greece, wilt thou tell us of Doriscus,[96] the Thracian town, and of the army counted there in battalions in a fenced space, when we careful, or to speak more truly, cautious historians, exaggerate nothing, ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... his own country for pecuniary reward; but exactly what the different agreements were, and exactly how far he tried or intended to fulfil them, is, and must always remain, uncertain. He was so ingrainedly venal, treacherous, and mendacious that nothing he said or wrote can be accepted as true, and no sentiments which he at any time professed can be accepted as those he really felt. He and the leading Louisiana Spaniards had close mercantile relations, in which ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... occasion "lodged some pellets in Massena's left eye while letting fly at a pheasant," and then without the least hesitation accused "the faithful Berthier" of having fired the shot, an accusation which was at once confirmed by the mendacious but courtierlike victim of the accident. Wellington also, Lady Shelley records, "after wounding a retriever early in the day and later on peppering the keeper's gaiters, inadvertently sprinkled the ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... that one is true, the other false. The true and pious one is that which ... elucidates the secret mysteries of the holy law according to the principle of anagogy (i.e. figurative interpretation). This Cabala therefore the Church has never condemned. The false and impious Cabala is a certain mendacious kind of Jewish tradition, full of innumerable vanities and falsehoods, differing but little from necromancy. This kind of superstition, therefore, improperly called Cabala, the Church within the last ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... first Republic, as if Germany were now going to be civilised for the first time, and as if he, who had made an end of the second Republic by a coup d'etat, could speak in the name of Republican freedom. His whole attitude was mendacious and mean, and the wretched pretext under which he declared war could not but prejudice Europe against him. In addition to this, as they knew very well in England, from the earlier wars of the Empire, he had no generals; his ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... an equally nauseating result, over the hard veal, the tough chicken, the "mousey" quails, and the tasteless beef and mutton, which are never roasted, but are baked or stewed in boiling fat—though shamelessly described as "rotis" in the pretentious and mendacious "menu" placed on the dinner-table. The consequence is that the tourist, who has been overfed at home, eats very little, and his health benefits. But in such an hotel the man who lives carefully when at home, and desires a simple but properly cooked meal, is reduced to a state of indigestion, ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... the behaviour of an acquaintance, who stopped and started as he met him at the entrance of the Kinder lane, made as though he would have spoken, and, thinking better of it, walked on. Reuben—the mendacious Reuben—had done very well with his summer stock—very well indeed. And part of his earnings was now safely housed in the hands of an old chapel friend, to whom he had confided them under pledge of secrecy. But he took a curious, excited pleasure ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tell anything more of that first interview and of the several others. To the morality of a Western reader an account of these meetings would wear perhaps the sinister character of old legendary tales where the Enemy of Mankind is represented holding subtly mendacious dialogues with some tempted soul. It is not my part to protest. Let me but remark that the Evil One, with his single passion of satanic pride for the only motive, is yet, on a larger, modern view, allowed to be not quite so black as he used to be painted. With what ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... else, of the old Indian National Congress. It does not lack funds, for Mr. Gandhi professes to have gathered in the crore of rupees which he asked for within the appointed twelvemonth. It controls a large part of the Indian Press, though mostly of the less reputable type, more vituperative and mendacious, in spite of all Indian Press laws, than anything conceived of in this country where there are no Press laws. Mr. Gandhi himself goes on preaching "Non-co-operation" with unabated conviction and unresting energy, the same picture always of physical frailty and unconquerable spirit, travelling ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... The mendacious captain was perfectly well aware that an affair of honor always makes a man stand well in the eyes of a woman. In fact, Fleur-de-Lys looked him full in the face, all agitated with fear, pleasure, and admiration. Still, she ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... one another's character which had arisen among the adherents of the two churches, for the Easterns had learned to regard the people of the West as ignorant and barbarous, and were esteemed by them in turn as mendacious and unmanly. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... successors, and part on the other; nor that the keys which were conceded to me should become a sign upon a banner which should fight against those who are baptized;[2] nor that I should be a figure on a seal to venal and mendacious privileges, whereat I often redden and flash. In garb of shepherd, rapacious wolves are seen from here-above over all the pastures: O defence of God, why dost thou yet lie still! To drink our blood Cahorsines ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... leaving this immense sea of peoples and customs, let us return to our natives of these islands, who, besides having been exceedingly barbarous, living without a ruler, and in a confused monarchy, [111] have the vices of the islanders; for they are fickle, false, and mendacious, and [that] by the special influence and dominion which the moon exercises upon all the islands, isthmuses, and peninsulas [Chersonesos], of which much will be found in the Theatrum vitae humanae of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... was, informed me to my face that any man situated as happily as I am was an infernal fool to entangle himself with a wife, and bade me a curt and everlasting good-morning on the spot. Yet every day the theme of this old troubadour's talk around the hotels is female entanglements—mendacious, unwifely, ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... comfortable enough." The speaker's teeth played an accompaniment to this mendacious denial. "Of course I'm not sweating any, but—I s'pose the stove would cheer things up, eh? ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... a striking old legend, preserved by the somewhat mendacious historian of the Jewish people, that, before Jerusalem fell, the anxious watchers heard from within the sanctuary a great voice saying, 'Let us depart hence!' and through the night were conscious of the winnowing of the mighty wings of the withdrawing cherubim. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... undergone slighting treatment at the hands of their lovers and husbands; and we all know what a common trick of trade it is with men who have been unsuccessful in their attempts to gain a woman's affections, or worse, in their evil designs on her honor, to give out such mendacious impressions! ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... early a play, such a manifest redundancy seems unaccountable. A narrative of things already seen may, of course, be a trait of character in the person delivering it; but, in that case, it will generally be mendacious (for instance, Falstaff and the men in buckram). Or it may be introduced for the sake of its effect upon the characters to whom the narration is addressed. But in these cases its purpose is no longer to convey information to the audience—it belongs, not ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... advanced by men and newspapers like those of whom I speak. Most certainly they can claim immunity from untruthful criticism; and their champions, the newspapers and the public men I have mentioned, exquisitely illustrate by their own actions mendacious criticism in its ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... tree-boughs in primeval forests, and the dusky redman incontinently roasted in his uncontaminated innocence. The longer I live the less faith I have that a man evolves any thing from his inner consciousness. Fancies are only the lies of the mendacious brain, which perceives one thing and declares ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... welcomed and taken to their hearts withdrew himself quietly but firmly from their cheerful circle. When, at rare intervals, he did drop in upon them, he pleaded important business engagements as the reason of his inability to accept their numerous invitations to dinners and theater parties. After these mendacious statements he would wend a gloomy way homeward to his Pine Street boarding-house, and there spend the evening pretending to read, and cursing the fate which had ever brought him within the light of Genevieve's beaux yeux. The fable ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... order that no rash resolution of the people, or senate, or judge might be executed. And this response, given in an audible voice, was final and supreme, and not like the Grecian oracles, venal and mendacious. This oracle of the Hebrew God "was a wise provision to preserve a continual sense of the principal design of their constitution—to keep the Hebrews from idolatry, and to the worship of the only true God as their immediate protector; ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... perched high up in the Passage des Panoramas. There I found M. Julien, a typical meridional—the large stomach, the dark eyes, crafty and watchful; the seductively mendacious manner, the sensual mind. We made friends at once—he consciously making use of me, I unconsciously making use of him. To him my forty francs, a month's subscription, were a godsend, nor were my invitations to dinner and to the theatre to be disdained. I was curious, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... well as of the good. It has maintained customs and ideas that had ceased to be effective and true, and in order to preserve them it has resorted to forced interpretations and has invented accounts of their origin. It has thus in many cases been obscurantive and mendacious. It has tended to make the essence of religion consist in outward observances, and has not infrequently degraded the placation of the deity to a matter of bargaining—it has sold salvation for money. Priests have not always escaped the danger that threatens all such corporations—that ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... of Freemasonry has unfortunately been treated only by its panegyrists or calumniators, both equally mendacious. I do not wish to pry into the mysteries of the craft; but it would be interesting to know more of their history during the period when they were literally architects. They are charged by an act of Parliament with fixing the price of their labor in their annual chapters, contrary ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... Red Dog. We will hereafter publish a paper in Tucson; and if we have been weak and mendacious enough to speak in favor of a party of the name of Bland, who misconducts a low beanery which insults an honourable man by stealing his name—we refer to that feed-trough called the Abe Lincoln House—we will correct ourselves in its columns. ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... playing the old game of striving to promote discord between the Allies. At the very moment when the official communiques announced the capture of 45,000 prisoners, the Chancellor began a new peace-offensive, aimed primarily at France, and supported by mendacious reports that the French Government were starting for Bordeaux, Clemenceau overthrown, and Foch disgraced. But the campaign of falsehood has proved powerless to shake France or impose on the German people. Commandeered enthusiasm is giving place to grave ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... mendicant friars, described periphrastically, but clearly enough, who made free with their charges of paganism and immorality. Then follow the defence of poetry, the proof that the poetry of the ancients and of their modern followers contains nothing mendacious, the praise of it, and especially of the deeper and allegorical meanings which we must always attribute to it, and of that calculated obscurity which is intended to repel the dull ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... penetrate. Small Turkish detachments were beaten here and there, but no general plan of operation appeared to offer a chance of ultimate success to either party. The Porte, therefore, sent its best diplomatic agent, Server Effendi, with a magniloquent and mendacious proclamation and a summons for the election of a deputation of Cretans of both religions, to meet at Constantinople to receive the promises of the well-intentioned Turkish government for their pacification and contentment. Server Effendi was an intelligent and ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... the outside of the platter, lie like a conjuror; hand out false colors, hold out false colors, sail under false colors; commend the poisoned chalice to the lips [Macbeth]; ambiguas in vulgum spargere voces [Lat.]; deceive &c 545. Adj. false, deceitful, mendacious, unveracious, fraudulent, dishonest, faithless, truthless, trothless; unfair, uncandid; hollow-hearted; evasive; uningenuous, disingenuous; hollow, sincere, Parthis mendacior; forsworn. artificial, contrived; canting; hypocritical, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to see him roll out on the snow to the shot. My vexation and disgust may be imagined when I found the noble beast to be a miserable 8-pointer, which I would never have fired at if I could have seen its head properly. Heartily consigning the shikari, together with the mendacious villager and all his kind, to a hot place, I dolefully stumbled away downhill again in the gathering dark, and finally deposited my weary and dejected self on board the boat, after fourteen hours of the hardest walking I have ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... you, the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit of those who write for them; and I enclose you a recent sample, the production of a New England judge, as a proof of the abyss of degradation into which we are fallen. These ordures are rapidly depraving the public taste, and lessening its ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... put before his countrymen a minute and accurate description of the New World and its inhabitants that should vindicate the latter's right to equitable treatment at the hands of their conquerors. Misrepresented and defamed, as he maintained the Indians were, by the mendacious reports sent to Spain, Las Casas composed this interesting apology as one part of his scheme of defence. As a monument to his vast erudition, his powers of observation, and his talents as a writer, the Apologetica ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... of a battle resembles rather a slow disturbance of equilibrium which commences soon, but as we have said almost imperceptibly at first, and then with each moment of time becomes stronger and more visible, than an oscillating to and fro, as those who are misled by mendacious ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... selection, are not strikingly characteristic (for it is only in what a man loves that he displays his real nature), others, from certain prudential motives, are chosen directly opposite to the person's disposition. A mendacious umbrella is a sign of great moral degradation. Hypocrisy naturally shelters itself below a silk; while the fast youth goes to visit his religious friends armed with the decent and reputable gingham. May it not be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sympathy where truth is wanting, but the public does not attend to the correct translation of Graecia mendax; it ought to convey the fact, that foreigners tell more lies about Greece than the natives themselves. Old Juvenal calls the Greeks a mendacious set of fabulists, for recording that Xerxes made a canal through the isthmus to the north of Mount Athos. Colonel Leake declares that the traces of the canal are visible to all men at this day, who ride across that desert plain. The moral we wish to inculcate is, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... official report in which his statements are embodied, that he betrayed all our preparations on the Piave and provided the enemy with a great deal of most important information. Let us mention further that Stiny in his mendacious statements to the Italian command about the Austro-Hungarian situation at the front and in the interior, followed the line of all traitors in order to appear in a favourable light. It is characteristic that in his declaration about our ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... surely. But George is dead; careless of it now. [Coxe (i. 266) is "indebted to his friend Nathaniel Wraxall" for these details,—the since famous Sir Nathaniel, in whose Memoirs (vague, but NOT mendacious, not unintelligent) they are now published more at large. See his Memoirs of the Courts of Berlin, Dresden, &c. (London. 1799), i. 35-40; also Historical Memoirs (London, 1836), iv. 516-518.] After sixty-seven years of it, he has flung his big burdens,—English ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... an adventurer, a Captain of Kopenick of the day, who had poured a gallant but mendacious ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... to say that we can attain culture through antiquity alone. We may learn something from it, certainly; but not culture as the word is now understood. Our present culture is based on an emasculated and mendacious study of antiquity. In order to understand how ineffectual this study is, just look at our philologists . they, trained upon antiquity, should be the most cultured men. ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... in the Rogron household while he, the colonel, had no hold there except by the extremely hypothetical tie of his mendacious affection for Sylvie, which it was not yet clear that Sylvie reciprocated. When the lawyer told him of the priest's manoeuvre, and advised him to break with Sylvie and marry Pierrette, he certainly flattered Gouraud's foible; but after analyzing the inner purpose ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... confession were not inveterate in man. The artist in his studio, the writer in his study, strive to tell their soul's secret; the peasant throws himself at the feet of the priest, for, like them, he would unburden himself of that terrible weight of inwardness which is man. Is not the most mendacious mistress often taken with the desire of confession ... the wish to reveal herself? Upon this bed rock of human nature the confessional has been built. And Owen admired the humanity of Rome. Rome was terribly human. No Church, he reflected, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... order of the Vice-Chancellor. For this he was sent to prison, and fined 26s. 8d.; but he was released the very next day, and his fine cut down to 4d. He lived to be elected Master of University College nine years later, and to be the mendacious champion of the antiquity of Oxford against the Cambridge advocate. This was his namesake Dr. Caius, equally mendacious but more reputable, the pious 'second founder' of a ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... does seem to us almost incredible. Yet so it is. Irish grievances are now in fashion. The most glaring fabrications are swallowed with anxiety if they only profess to be recitals of Irish sufferings; and the British people seem ready to yield to the clamours of mendacious and designing demagogues, measures not only detrimental to the interests of the country for whose welfare they profess so much anxiety, but absolutely ruinous to the glory and the power ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... we to explain Gourgaud's conduct at St. Helena and afterwards? Now, in threading the mendacious labyrinths of St. Helena literature it is hard ever to find a wholly satisfactory clue; but Basil Jackson's "Waterloo and St. Helena" (p. 103) seems to supply ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... of alliance betwixt the Old and the New Englands. As Mr. McGavack well demonstrates, most of our Anglophobia is manufactured by the alleged "historians" who poison the minds of the young through mendacious textbooks. This species of false teaching, an evil potently fostered by the Fenians and Sinn Feiners who lurk serpent-like in our midst, is one which cannot too soon be eradicated; for the cultural identity and moral unity of the States and the Empire make such sources ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... enter the commercial field against the whole world, using ruthlessly whatever inventive skill and knowledge the original patentee may have disclosed, and trusting to the power of money, rapid movement, and mendacious advertising to build up a business which shall presently assume such formidable proportions as to force a compromise, or stave off an injunction until the patent has expired. In nine cases out of ten such a course can be followed with relative impunity; and ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... giving out deadly fumes had no foundation, for the curator had himself sat for three hours under the tree without experiencing any bad effects whatever. All the legends of the upas tree are based on an account of it by a Dr. Foersch in 1783. This mendacious medico declared that no living thing could exist within fifteen miles of the tree. The Peradeniya curator pointed out that Java was a volcanic island, and one valley where the upas flourishes is certainly fatal to all animal ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... more of such exceptions to the rule of inconsiderate, exaggerated and recklessly mendacious talk that wounds ear and heart, the "society lie" would be no more, and this flimsy excuse for falsehood would be voted an article too ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... world: he told her that he went to the French play because he wanted to perfect himself in the language, and there was no such good lesson as a comedy or vaudeville—and when one night the astonished Lady Agnes saw him stand up and dance, and complimented him upon his elegance and activity, the mendacious little rogue asserted that he had learned to dance in Paris, whereas Anatole knew that his young master used to go off privily to an academy in Brewer-street, and study there for some hours in the ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said this mendacious epistle, 'my head is still rather bad, and Dr. Jordan thought that it would be wiser if I were to have an undisturbed rest, but I will send down to you when I feel better. Until then I had best, perhaps, remain alone. Mr. Harrison sent round to say that he would come ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... 1861. In British India a change of rulers is always supposed to offer a favourable opportunity for 'doing something,' often in the shape of a revolt or a campaign. The same proved to be the case in West Africa, where the Ashanti is officially described as 'crafty, persistent, mendacious, and treacherous.' ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... wonderful eyes and beautiful teeth; temperate; quietly, even meanly, clad; generous, grateful for any favor, however small; masterful, courageous, impassive, shrewd, resolute, fluent of speech; profoundly religious, even superstitious; hot-tempered, inscrutable, mendacious, revengeful sometimes and ofttimes forgiving, disdainful of woman and her charms; above all, boastful, conceited, and with a passion for glory. His pride and his imagination were to be barbaric in their immensity, his clannishness was to be that of the most primitive civilization. In all ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... him in the pagans was not their idolatry, but their servility.[3] The young Jewish democrat agreeing on this point with Judas the Gaulonite, and admitting no master but God, was hurt at the honors with which they surrounded the persons of sovereigns, and the frequently mendacious titles given to them. With this exception, in the greater number of instances in which he comes in contact with pagans, he shows great indulgence to them; sometimes he professes to conceive more hope of them than of the Jews.[4] The kingdom of God would be transferred ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... superstitious sea lore of those times, for two of his sailors one morning when looking over the side of the vessel beheld what they declared was a mermaid—with a white skin and a tail like a mackerel, long, black hair, and a back and breast like a woman's. For a long time, these mendacious mariners insisted, the mermaid (who is believed to have been a seal) swam beside the vessel looking earnestly into their eyes, but at last a sea overturned her and she dove deep and ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... unfaithful, dishonest, false, lying, traitorous, unscrupulous, disingenuous, fraudulent, mendacious, treacherous, untrue. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... it ever come? Will it have time to come, while hollow-eyed humanity makes such haste to die? For all this advertisement of war, radiant in the sunshine, all these temporary and mendacious reasons, stupidly or skillfully curtailed, of which not one reaches the lofty elevation of the common welfare—all these insufficient pretexts suffice in sum to make the artless man bow in bestial ignorance, to adorn him with iron and forge ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... mendacious little creature replied, with an indifferent shrug of her soft shoulders, "mostly I'm not rosy at all, but there's days when I is. I'm sorry you're offended by rosy cheeks like mine. I'll try not t' have it happen again when ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... twenty minutes fast, and I had given him up," said Brimmer, with mendacious effrontery. "Miss Montgomery is dressing. You can bring ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... venal witnesses who, during the period of excitement that terminated in the disastrous railway panic, were ready to give scientific evidence on engineering questions, with less regard to truth than to the interests of the persons who paid for their evidence. Having by mendacious evidence gravely injured a cause in which Mr. Hill was interested as counsel, and Mr. Tite, the eminent architect, and present member for Bath, was concerned as a projector, this witness was struck with apoplexy and died—before he could complete the mischief which ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... travels, passing under the name of Sir John Mandeville, managed, by making use of a slight acquaintance with Asia, of a fuller knowledge of the writings of other travellers, and, most of all, of the resources of a fertile imagination, to weave a tissue of mendacious description which really lessened knowledge. [Footnote: Travels of Sir John Mandeville (ed. ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... dreams, half-waking, and not only of Olivia Chichele, naive and frank in divers rural circumstances, but rather of Olivia, Lady Drogheda, that perfect piece of artifice; of how exquisite she was! how swift and volatile in every movement! how airily indomitable, and how mendacious to the tips of her polished finger-nails! and how she always seemed to flit about this world as joyously, alertly, and as colorfully as some ornate and tiny bird of ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... worth no more than the king's, and words were assuredly at a discount just then. A perusal of the international correspondence of the period leaves the reader marvelling why time was wasted in covering paper, with flimsy, insincere phrases, mendacious sign-posts which gave no true indication of the road to be travelled. There are, however, differences in the art of dissimulation and Charles never attained ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... abandoned the implement of calligraphy in the encaustic pigment, exposed to the corrosive action of copperas, green vitriol and nutgall. Unusual polysyllables of foreign origin she interpreted phonetically or by false analogy or by both: metempsychosis (met him pike hoses), alias (a mendacious person mentioned in ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Indians. They naturally, having been trained to look on every foreigner outside the Order of the Jesuits as an enemy, receive him as their King. Under the title of the 'Son of the Sun and Star of Liberty' he rules them, looked on as a God. The brief mendacious chronicle leaves him on the throne, just after having joined the empire of the Mamalucos to that of Paraguay, and promising to give the world more of his history when it comes ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... Pope's birth. But the last of the Villiers family that wore a ducal coronet was far too memorable a person to have died under the cloud of obscurity which Pope's representation presumes. He was the most interesting person of the Alcibiades class [Footnote 9] that perhaps ever existed; and Pope's mendacious story found acceptance only amongst an after-generation unacquainted with the realities of the case. There was not so much as a popular rumor to countenance Pope. The story was a pure, gratuitous invention ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... the boy tells inconvenient or disrespectful truths, because it is customary to do so. He will give the same boy a present on his birthday, and buy him a spade and bucket at the seaside, because it is customary to do so, being all the time neither particularly mendacious, nor particularly cruel, nor particularly generous, but simply incapable of ethical ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... Bumpus, in a voice of thunder. "My wig, you anatomy, you mendacious inventor of outrageous impossibilities. Begone out of the cabin, out of the ship, overboard with you, the instant dinner is served!" And he gave the unhappy barber a kick which sent him flying across the after-cabin, through the door of the outer one, against the sentry, who was knocked over, ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... into shouts of laughter over this description of the Father of his country, but Victoria continued in her gentle drawl to enlighten Lord Dunbeg in regard to other subjects with information equally mendacious, until he decided that she was quite the most eccentric person he had ever met. The boat arrived at Mount Vernon while she was still engaged in a description of the society and manners of America, and especially of the rules which made an offer of marriage necessary. According ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... me to know and to care; and assuming for the moment as a fact that which is one of the greatest lies in this mendacious world—namely, that all men are brothers—you will consider me as an elder brother, who will counsel and control you as he would an imprudent young—sister. I see very well how it is. Somehow or other you, having first admired Mr. Compton as Romeo or Richard III., made his acquaintance as Mr. ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lures and then robs the trustful buyer. "Pools," open and secret, grasping and malicious, may wreak at any hour disasters on the unwary. "Points" are given by one operator to another with the same mendacious glibness as of yore. The market is now dull with the torpor of a sleeping cobra, now aflame, like that reptile, with treacherous and poisonous life. In its repose as in its excitement our novice begins to know it, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... "Mendacious?" Diavolo repeated; "that's do I tell lies, isn't it? Well, you see, sir, it's like this. If I'd been up to something, and you asked me if I'd done it, I'd say 'Yes' like a shot; but if Angelica had been up to something, and I knew all about it, and you asked me if she'd ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... chronologer, a man bristling up with small facts, prurient with dates, wantoning in obsolete evidence. No matter; there are plenty of newspapers who are constantly lavishing their praises upon small men and bad books. A mendacious press will puff the book through a brief season, and then it will go to feed the devouring maw ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... had thrust themselves out of the ground in this unseemly way. They quoted it as nothing more than an ordinary occurrence for one or other of us to crop off two or three fingers, of a morning, by our clumsy use of the hay-cutter. Finally, and as an ultimate catastrophe, these mendacious rogues circulated a report that we communitarians were exterminated, to the last man, by severing ourselves asunder with the sweep of our own scythes! and that the world had lost nothing by this ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the preceding eulogies. What had not PUNCH done for him? Had not PUNCH extinguished the Times by the honest way in which he had advocated his (Roebuck's) injured genealogy? Had PUNCH not proved that he (Mr. Roebuck) had a father, which the "mendacious journal" had asserted was impossible? Had not PUNCH traced the Roebuck family as far back as 1801?—that was something! But he (Mr. Roebuck) believed that he had been injured by an error of the press, and that PUNCH had written the numerals 1081. Be that as it might, he (Mr. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... they are sick." The remark was typical of the sectional and class hatreds and misunderstandings which this debate aroused, and of the maze of ignorance in which both sides were groping. To the silver faction, their opponents were "mendacious hirelings" and "Gilded Shylocks." God, in His infinite wisdom had imbedded silver in the western mountains for a beneficent purpose. "The country," said one speaker, "is in an agony of business distress and looks for some relief by a gradual increase ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... an' tried t' kill 'im!" one of the guards yelled, but was shouted down by the engineers, the checkers and the cook before the other slow-witted guards came to their senses enough to corroborate their fellow's mendacious claim. ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... and having given them both to the trusty Polton, returned somewhat feverishly to my professional duties. To my profound relief, the influx of patients ceased, and the practice sank into its accustomed torpor; whereby I was able, without base and mendacious subterfuge, to escape in good time to ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... complain," she exclaimed, proudly. "I do not speak of myself, but only of you. You swore eternal love to me at that time, but you did so as a mendacious Bavarian; I did not believe you, and knew full well that you had no honest intentions toward me. For this reason I laughed at you, and said the peasant-girl was no suitable match for you, and rejected all your oaths and protestations ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... know. He called upon everybody he had ever heard of; he visited all the theatres and ball-rooms, drank interminable drinks, listened to endless stories, and when questioned as to what he was doing himself, grew delightfully mendacious, and, upon the slight basis of his engagement for the new drama at the Royal, constructed a fabulous scheme for the production of new pieces. In this way the afternoon went by, and he was beginning to give up hopes of turning over any money that day, when he met a dramatic ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... that the engineers of aggressive war build in our time, and we have seen, in the case of neutral nations and of a section of our own nation, what chances they have of succeeding. They have only to fill their people and the world at large with counter-charges, resolutely mendacious, and many will throw up their hands in presence of the mutual accusations and declare that it is impossible to assign the responsibility. That is a fatal concession to immorality, and we must hold that in some one or more of the combatant nations the Churches have, for some reason or other, ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... was claimed to "cure," among other diseases, consumption, cancer, rheumatism, malaria, gallstones, asthma, blood poison, dandruff, and all contagious diseases. It would be impossible to conceive a more mendacious and absurd claim, and it would be impossible to concoct a more impertinently foolish assumption than to assume that such a claim would receive the consideration of ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... attempts to help me out of the mess into which I had got the plot. I did not like to wound their feelings by saying straight out that they had failed, one and all, to hit on the real murderer, just like real police, so I tried to break the truth to them in a roundabout, mendacious fashion, ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... Colonel Flail and Mr. Bisland, and I contrived to render them quite as liberal in their patronage as the mythical Judge Trask himself. Occasionally a donation came in, by way of variety, from Smeaton and Holbrook and Caswell and other solitary creations of my mendacious imagination, when I used to blind poor dear Alice to the hideous truth. Touching myself, I gave it out that I had abandoned book-buying, was convinced of the folly of the mania, had reformed, and was repentant. Alice loved me all the better for that, and she became once more the sweetest, ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... got into Revolution trouble afterwards, but escaped with his head; and republished his Book, swollen out somewhat by new "Anecdotes" and republican bluster, in this second instance; signing himself T. J. D. V—(Paris, 1797). A vague but not dark or mendacious little Book; with traces of real EYESIGHT in it,—by one who had personally known Voltaire, or at least seen and heard him.] He retired to the country for six months, and perfected himself in these two branches. Being perfect, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... currency. Stories did not lose in travel. A work entitled Three Weeks in the Gold Mines, written by a mendacious individual who signed himself H.I. Simpson, had a wide vogue. It is doubtful if the author had ever been ten miles from New York; but he wrote a marvelous and at the time convincing tale. According to his account, Simpson had only three ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... allow anybody to be in the wrong for beating DousterswivelHad I been an hour younger, or had but one single flash of your warlike genius, Bailie, I should have done it myself long ago. He is nebulo nebulonum, an impudent, fraudulent, mendacious quack, that has cost me a hundred pounds by his roguery, and my neighbour Sir Arthur, God knows how much. And besides, Bailie, I do not hold him to be a ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... caprice of the master or mistress. Every circumstance of their life is an affront to that just self-respect which even Americans allow is the right of every human being. With the rich, they are said to be sometimes indolent, dishonest, mendacious, and all that Plato long ago explained that slaves must be; but in the middle-class families they are mostly faithful, diligent, and reliable in a degree that would put to shame most men who hold positions of trust, and would leave many ladies whom ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... night in August. All day long the mercury in the thermometer had been flirting with the figures at the top of the tube, and the promised shower at night which a mendacious Weather Bureau had been prophesying as a slight mitigation of our sufferings was conspicuous wholly by its absence. I had but one comfort in the sweltering hours of the day, afternoon and evening, and that was that my family were away in the mountains, ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... remorse and ruin without regret that Nation they helped place on the map of the world. How do you old Confederates, who followed Pat Cleburne, relish having this blatant tramp defame your dead commander? Can you believe, on the unsupported testimony of this mendacious mountebank, that Father Ryan's tribute to the Stars-and-Bars was rank hypocrisy —that the poet-priest was the political tool of a foreign power? Sherman died a Catholic. Fighting Phil Sheridan was a Catholic. Old Pap Thomas, "the Rock of Chickamauga," ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... graceless subordinates, I knew to be the only satisfaction I was to look for. A request for revision of judgment would have been received with silent scorn, and appeal there was none. Digesting my disgust as best I could, I lighted my cheroot with the mendacious foolscap ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... thoroughly in character here; this observation is quite in keeping with the general veracity of his account of his travels in Guiana, one of the most mendacious accounts of adventure ever told. Naturally, the scholarly researches of Westermarck have failed to discover this people; perhaps Lady Helen might best be protected among the Jibaros of Ecuador, where the men marry ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... performance, fate and a designing oysterman place you in the next box to three or four of these geniuses, you will, unless very much of a philosopher, be disgusted, for the time being, with human nature. Their paltry imitations, their miserable brayings, their misquotations from Shakspeare, their mendacious accounts of interviews with the "Boy," will be enough to drive you mad. Some such thing ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage |
