"Falsehood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... woman (listening intently for the sound of a step on the stairs) refused to submit to a shameful exposure, even now. To her perverted moral sense, any falsehood was acceptable, as a means of hiding herself from discovery by Iris. In the very face of detection, the skilled deceiver kept ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... is self-destructive. The man who believes himself invulnerable will scarcely survive his first combat. A man's true ideas are the most he can hope, and all that he should wish, to carry with him to a life hereafter. Falsehood, sin, is the efficient agent of death. As Bishop Hall says: "There is a kind of not-being in sin; for sin is not an existence of somewhat that is, but a deficiency of that rectitude which should be; it is a privation, as blindness is a ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... took two for one. I tried to explain, but he was in a passion, and gave me a blow. The lady said something to him about his improper conduct, and he said that I was such a careless little rascal, that he lost all patience with me. That hurt me a great deal more than the blow. It was a falsehood, and he knew it; but he wanted to excuse himself. I felt that I was going into a passion, too, but I thought of what you are always telling me about patience and forbearance, and I kept down my passion; ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... it involved a falsehood. Egremont happened to regard her as she spoke, and at once a blush came to her cheeks. To what was she falling? Why did she tell untruths without the least need? She could not understand the motive which ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... thing of hollowness or insolidity in the result. Except in some of his earlier plays, written before he had found his proper strength, and before his genius had got fairly disciplined into power, there is nothing ambitious or obtrusive in his idealizing; no root of falsehood in the work, as indeed there never is in any work of art that is truly worthy the name. Works of artifice are a very different sort of thing. And one, perhaps the main, secret of Shakespeare's mode in this respect ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... 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 |
