"Hearsay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... accounts say that Venkatadri was killed in the battle, and that Tirumala alone of the three brothers survived. Firishtah only wrote from hearsay, and was perhaps misinformed. Probably for "Venkatadri" should ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... have only obeyed Fate, and so will you. From the moment I met him, he seemed as one I had known of old. It was Charlecotism, of course; and his signature filled me with presentiment. Nay, though the fire and the swamp have become mere hearsay to me now, I still retain the recollection of the impression throughout my illness that he was to be all that I might have been. His straightforward good sense and manly innocence brought Phoebe before me, and Currie tells me that ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... men, and at last, at the end of the second act, has her attention led by Captain Location to the hero of the piece as a suitable mate for her wayward daughter, Miss Prosperity,—all this is usually written up from hearsay. For the third act, wherein the twin brothers Steamboat Navigation and Railroad Communication help the hero to press his suit, the imagination often suffices. The grand finale, however, brings back some of the old set of critics, together ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... it had first boycotted the fish, he had sent his steamer and purchased it from the company. Now the boot was on the other leg. The Commission and even the lawyers have all told me that they were prejudiced against the whole Mission by hearsay and misinterpretations, before they even began their exhaustive inquiry. Their findings, however, were a complete refutation of all charges, and ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... break into three, and come forth to assault us at different points. Of the southeastern bastion, where I was stationed, I can only tell. What happened otherwhere I only know by hearsay. There we had some forty of our complement of men to relieve one another with the stones, and shoot their arrows, and be prepared for service with the broadsword should need come. And great prongs we had very swiftly to dislodge ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... replied the man, "I can speak only by hearsay—from whispers which I have heard in a thousand places, and by piecing together scraps of information which I have gathered in a great many ways. I do not yet speak positively. After to-morrow night I hope to be able ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... is passing through strange phases of resurrection. Its modern garb is made up of all the hues of the past, and, in addition, contains some up-to-date threads of severely utilitarian composition. The number of those who claim direct experience of spiritual verity as against mere hearsay is greater than ever. The discovery of the soul is attracting students of every description. The powers of suggestion, and the creative possibilities of the subconscious mind, have opened up new fields of ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... Look at all those notes I took—not worth the paper on which they are written. Everything is hearsay—nothing definite. And yet there is some mystery attached to the whole affair. I am sorely puzzled about that missing gold and where the Rector obtained the ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... illustration of the charge, Aubrey repeats a tale related by an old attendant, who had seen the Lord High Admiral in the Privy Garden wipe with his cloak the dust from Ralegh's shoes 'in compliment.' Aubrey's description of Ralegh is all hearsay; since he was not born till 1627. He may have been told anecdotes by members of the family; for his grandfather was a Wiltshire neighbour of Sir Carew Ralegh, and he was himself a schoolfellow of Sir Carew's grandchildren. But he was utterly ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Bible is just history, most of it hearsay. And I read in the Atlantic the other day that Napoleon said that history was just a lie ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... "You do not permit hearsay evidence to save a man's life; with a fine distinction you permit it to save only ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... rage, he began to investigate. Gradually he learned the story (from sailors in wine-shops and general hearsay) of the mysterious schooner that had twice saved Code Schofield from actual capture, and had aided him on ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... alone is sufficient refutation of an idle story that Milton died a Roman Catholic, The story is not well vouched, being hearsay three times removed. Milton's younger brother. Sir Christopher, is said to have said so at a dinner entertainment. If he ever did say as much, it must be set down to that peculiar form of credulity which makes perverts think ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... native to the soil, but is brought in at great expense from France, La Belle France, and New Jersey, La Belle New Jersey. Mr. Middleton had seen, smelled, and tasted beer, but champagne was unknown to him save by hearsay, and his improper curiosity and his readiness to succumb to temptation caused him to linger in the salon of Mr. Crecelius, thereby nearly accomplishing his ruin. Suddenly there was a patter of light steps ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... him: but my imagination is at a loss in presence of those vague charges, which have commonly been brought against me, charges, which are made up of impressions, and understandings, and inferences, and hearsay, and surmises. Accordingly, I shall not make the attempt, for, in doing so, I should be dealing blows in the air; what I shall attempt is to state what I know of myself and what I recollect, and leave ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... dishes. There is very little wine drunk at table, but to every hotel there is appended a bar, where, we are told, the gentlemen make amends for their moderation at table by discussing gin sling, sherry cobbler, &c.; but of course I know nothing of this, excepting from hearsay. The utmost extent of Papa's excesses on the rare occasions when he went into these bars, was to get a glass of Saratoga water; but he has failed to give me any description of what he saw. The breakfasts are going on usually ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... lady; he writes to me now and then," replied the housekeeper. Bettina had not expected to hear this; her only thought was to draw out some information gained by hearsay. ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... it is generally by their enthusiasm that successes are won. Now, therefore, the fact that a few men drawn up for battle with valour on their side are able to overcome a multitude of the enemy, is well known by every man of you, not by hearsay, but by daily experience of fighting. And it will rest with you not to bring shame upon the former glories of my career as general, nor upon the hope which this enthusiasm of yours inspires. For the whole of what has already been accomplished by us in this war ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... half-term holiday with her family in their flat at Naples, and was delighted to describe every detail of her experiences. She chatted about her relations till Lorna knew Mr. and Mrs. Beverley and Vincent absolutely well by hearsay, though she had never met them in the flesh. The accounts of their doings gave her a peep of home life such as ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... on Tenth Street, the light streamed out upon a remnant of Life's jetsam—that which is submerged, which never comes to the surface unless drawn there by some searching and rescuing hand; that which the home-sheltered never see by daylight, never know, save from hearsay. In the neighboring rectory of Grace Church one dim light was burning in an upper room. The marble church itself looked a part of the winter scene; its walls and pinnacles, already encrusted with ice crystals, glittered ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... do to lie about it: Cornelia had a natural if not a moral disinclination to falsehood, and was, moreover, acute enough to see how strong, in this case, would be the chances of detection. It was not likely that Sophie would accept upon hearsay any imputations or accusations against her lover: she would speak to Bressant at once; the lie would be revealed, and the result would be not only a failure to alienate Sophie from him, but a certainty of alienating him ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... understood what he had formerly learnt by hearsay, from George Alvarez, and other Portuguese, that the empire of Japan was one of the most populous in the world; that the Japonese were naturally curious, and covetous of knowledge, and withal docible, and of great capacity; that being generally ingenious, and very rational, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... Geography, of whatever kind they may be, as soon as they are localised acquire a special interest and importance and particularly as bearing on the question whether Leonardo himself made the observations recorded at the places mentioned or merely noted the statements from hearsay. In a few instances he himself tells us that he writes at second hand. In some cases again, although the style and expressions used make it seem highly probable that he has derived his information from others— though, as it seems ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... teeming with people, its manufactures, and its wealth, told of Tibet and Burma, the Indian Archipelago with its spice islands, of Java and Sumatra, of Hindustan,—all from personal knowledge. From hearsay he told of Japan. In the course of the next seventy-five years other travelers found their way to Cathay and wrote about it. Thus before 1400 Europe had learned of a great ocean to the east of Cathay, and of a wonderful ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... rhymes, or their elders turn away from "Punch and Judy," though the same little play has been performed for centuries. As for inventing stories about real people, that may well have seemed permissible in an age when historians recorded mere hearsay as actual fact. Richard III., perhaps, had one shoulder higher than the other, but within a few years of his death grave historians had represented him as a ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... life has always been something of a puzzle. Of course it has been difficult for them to obtain a personal insight into its details, just as it would be difficult to gain admittance into the mosque of St. Sophia or a Hindu community of religious. Curiosity, unsatisfied, betakes itself to hearsay, and since those who know most are generally most silent about their knowledge, it is to the gossip of ignorance or prejudice that curiosity looks for an answer. Distorted views or imaginary descriptions end by being received into the mill of public opinion, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... manifested itself in ways not to be mistaken. There were incendiary fires within the lines. It was discovered that messengers had been sent to regiments at other stations, with incitements to insubordination. The officer in command at Barrackpore, General Hearsay, addressed the troops on parade, explained to them that the cartridges were not prepared with the obnoxious materials supposed, and set forth the groundlessness of their suspicions. The address was well ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... secluded Tibet, of Burma, Siam, and Cochin- China, with their palaces and pagodas, of the East Indies, famed for spices, of Ceylon, abounding in pearls, and of India, little known since the days of Alexander the Great. Even Cipango (Japan) Marco described from hearsay as an island whose people were white, civilized, and so rich in gold that the royal palace was roofed and paved with that metal. The accounts of these countries naturally made Europeans more eager than ever to ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... years, and she always answered them in the same way, saying, "Water, water, you stupid man." But I do not want you merely to depend on what I say. If you want to understand Madam How, you must ask her questions yourself, and make up your mind yourself like a man, instead of taking things at hearsay or second-hand, like the vulgar. Mind, by "the vulgar" I do not mean poor people: I mean ignorant and uneducated people, who do not use their brains rightly, though they may be fine ladies, kings, or popes. The ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... With greatest interest the two men in company poured over the innumerable documents now piling up in the case. Old Tamiya Yoemon proved easy game. He readily confessed all he knew. This brought in many witnesses from the wardsmen. It was not exactly what was wanted. The evidence was mostly mere hearsay and conjecture. In those days such testimony had a value not far below that of direct statement. All pointed the way to the real criminal, who after all was the star witness. Against Yoemon at first there was but little. However, in his rage against Iemon and Kondo[u] ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... smallest prejudice to any person who was really hostile to the existing order of things. The whole narrative was made up of stories, too true for the most part, yet resting on no better authority than hearsay, about the intrigues of some eminent warriors and statesmen, who, whatever their former conduct might have been, were now at least hearty in support of William. Godolphin, Fenwick averred, had accepted ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... father more gently; 'I will not press you farther. I believe I ought to be glad that these habits are only hearsay to you.' ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on her bed with her clothes on, but they spoke never a word; and as they sat there, the young man's busy brain arrayed before him many and many a scene of death, and sickness, and suffering, and sorrow, and madness, and despair, which, he knew well from hearsay (and he now believed it), had been the terrible ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... with, "My mother said they used to make up a new broom and when the couple jumped over it, they was married. Then they gave the broom to the couple to use keeping house." John was evidently embarrassed. "Laney," he said, "that was never confirmed. It was just hearsay, as far as you know, and I wouldn't tell ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... French writers, as Raynal, Montesquieu, and Voltaire, have treated of Paraguay under Jesuit rule, but their writings are founded on hearsay evidence. A German, Father Dobrizhoffer, stands alone.* His delightful 'History of the Abipones, an Equestrian People of Paraguay', is perhaps the most charming book dealing with the subject. A simple and easy style, a keen habit of observation, ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... if I mistake not, is the quality of greatest import in every operation which needs the instrumentality of man; but most of all, perhaps, in agriculture. Not that I would maintain that it is a thing to be lightly learnt by a glance of the eye, or hearsay fashion, as a tale that is told. Far from it, I assert that he who is to have this power has need of education; he must have at bottom a good natural disposition; and, what is greatest of all, he must be himself a god-like being. [15] ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... were very fortunate: They spoiled us to our hearts' content. Grandma Deborah's methods I know only from hearsay, for I was very little when she died. Grandma Rachel I remember distinctly, spare and trim and always busy. I recall her coming in midwinter from the frozen village where she lived. I remember, as if it were but last winter, the immense shawls and wraps which we unwound from about her person, ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... "Where are the proofs, the witnesses of these pretended facts? Can we receive them without examining the evidence? The least action in a court of justice requires two witnesses; and we are ordered to believe all this on mere tradition and hearsay!" ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... imputing to the black population a degree of reluctance to labour far exceeding the reality. Those who pay a reasonable price for work, and are punctual in their payments, do not fail to get as many labourers as they require. I assert this not from any vague hearsay, but from various unquestionable and authentic documents, amongst which are the examinations taken by Committees of the House of Assembly appointed to inquire into the causes and difficulties alleged to exist in the cultivation ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... the only thing a man knows is himself. The world outside he can know only by hearsay. His shred of personality is all he has; than that, he is nothing richer nothing poorer. Everything else is mere accident and appendage. Alexander must not be measured by the shoutings of his armies, nor Lazarus at Dives' gates by his sores. And a man knows himself only in part. In every ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... Australia, gives it as his opinion that about four-fifths of the land in that colony were bad. However, he had never been more than three weeks in it nor above fourteen miles from its chief town, so his judgment was formed principally upon hearsay. Others, probably, have gone into the contrary extreme of praising the soil too highly, and truth may, as usual, lie between ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... Davager, I can tell you nothing more about him, except what is derived from hearsay evidence, which is always unsatisfactory evidence, even ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... is rendered to the meanest person under accusation. They must esteem him innocent, until direct and sufficient proof shall demonstrate his guilt. Now, what does not consist with your own certain knowledge, should be proved by other evidence than your report from hearsay." ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... the fairies mourned just as that child's playmates did, and the sign of it was there to see; for before the dawn on the day of the funeral they hung a little immortelle over the place where that child was used to sit under the tree. I know this to be true by my own eyes; it is not hearsay. And the reason it was known that the fairies did it was this—that it was made all of black flowers of a sort ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... a sweet spectacle to see two middle-aged women, one fat and one lean, stumping the country on a campaign for young love—subjects in which we are versed only by hearsay and a stray novel or so!" I said all this and a ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... the Queen is going to order work so that the men can get wages; but they don't say if she is going to do anything for the women. She's a woman; but then I suppose a Queen couldn't any way know, except by hearsay, that women really starve; and women do for men first anyhow. But I will work any way at anything, if only you'll find it for me to ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... only partially. Some men whom he valeted might have been doped with opium, certainly, but all did not exhibit those indications which, from hearsay, he associated with the resin ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... charges should be made against him, and that according to the result thereof he should be punished. But he refused to do that, and left his cause to God, who is the most righteous of judges, and who knows naught by hearsay but by sight, for all things are plain to Him. Another religious was sent there, with whom the admiral had a more familiar acquaintance. The ship was finished and launched. It cost sixteen thousand pesos, for it was the reproach of [other] ships. But it cost his Majesty much more, without ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... had produced to you amounts to no more than that such a man believes such a man heard of something; and to close the whole of this hearsay account, Sir Elijah Impey, who always comes in as a supplement, declares that no man doubted of the existence of this rebellion, and of the guilt of the Begums, any more than of the rebellion of 1745: a comparison which, I must say, is, by way of evidence, a little indecorous in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... understood that I am filling certain gaps in the narrative with imagined detail. But the facts are true. My added detail is only intended to give an appearance of life and reality to my history. Let me, therefore, insist upon one vital point. I have not been dependent on hearsay for one single fact in this story. Where my experience does not depend upon personal experience, it has been received from the principals themselves. Finally, it should be remembered that when I have, ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... calmly. "Nobody ever is convinced by hearsay. When a person has once seen a spirit—or thinks he has—he thenceforth believes it. And when somebody else is intimately associated with that person and knows all the circumstances—well, he admits the possibility, at least. That is my position. But by the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... coal at my heart. I see myself now at the end of my journey; my toilsome days are ended. I am going to see that head that was crowned with thorns, and that face that was spit upon for me. I have formerly lived by hearsay and faith, but now I go where I shall live by sight, and shall be with him in whose company I delight myself. I have loved to hear my Lord spoken of; and whenever I have seen the print of his shoe in the earth, there I have coveted to set my foot too. ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... to demand that the whole of mankind should obey the voice of this minister without making him known as such? Is it just to give him as his sole credentials certain private signs, performed in the presence of a few obscure persons, signs which everybody else can only know by hearsay? If one were to believe all the miracles that the uneducated and credulous profess to have seen in every country upon earth, every sect would be in the right; there would be more miracles than ordinary events; and it would ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... Camden has a hearsay story—written, it must be remembered, in James I.'s time—that Buchanan, on his death-bed repented of his harsh words against Queen Mary; and an old Lady Rosyth is said to have said that when she ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... south-western Cassiterides. To get round to the river on the banks of which your home stands would oblige me to run far towards the cold regions, into waters which I have not yet visited—though I know them pretty well by hearsay. On another voyage I may accomplish it, ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... "Naturally you do not take my meaning. Obviously you think I am not a competent witness, that I know nothing except by hearsay. You are, extraordinary as it may seem, quite wrong. My testimony would be of nothing but what I ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... exposed. I am very comfortable though, with my bed and camp chair, and, books to read, when one gets tired of this great, dirty river. I, expect to see hippopotamuses and many crocodiles and to learn something of the "atrocities" by hearsay. To see for oneself, would take months. I return from the Kasai district by a boat like this one, burning wood and with a stern wheel, reaching Leopoldville, this place, about the 12th of March, and sailing on the Albertville for ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... from hearsay and what you see here," he replied. "I don't know whether or not it has a bar at either end, but likely enough it has at both, though ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... life is great and theirs are little," said Helen, taking fire. "I know of things they can't know of, and so do you. We know that there's poetry. We know that there's death. They can only take them on hearsay. We know this is our house, because it feels ours. Oh, they may take the title-deeds and the doorkeys, but for this one night we are ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... set them over against each other, the hearsay that besmirches and the reminiscence that canonizes, we evoke a very human, living personality: a man of keen intellect, of ardent and emotional temperament, autocratic, fanatical, fastidious, and beauty-loving; a loyal friend; an unpleasant enemy. "He saw black ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... had specific knowledge of a world which Bruce knew only by hearsay; and when it had suited his purpose, as when Bruce had first met him in Meadows, he had talked correctly, even brilliantly, and he had had an undeniable charm of manner for men and women alike. But, once well started down the river, he had thrown off all restraint, ignoring ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... Hearsay is not, as a rule, evidence in a court of justice. There are one or two exceptions which I need not mention. If you want, therefore, to say what Smith said, you cannot say it, but must call Smith himself, and probably he will swear he never ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... of widespread inquiries, I have been able to get ... [but little] concerning Louise Amelia Knapp Smith. There are no people now living here who knew her even by hearsay. The records of Amherst Academy show that she attended that institution in 1839 and 1840.... Miss Smith's name adds another to the long list of writers who have lived here at one time or another, and Amherst Academy has added many names to that ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... of slavery than in it. All of which proving a failure, the South took issue with Old and New England on the question of negro slavery being an evil, social, political, or moral, and called for the proof. No proof could be given except that drawn from England, from hearsay evidence, and from theoretical teaching of that system of education designed to support European despotisms, and to destroy American republicanism. This has opened the eyes of the South to the necessity of establishing schools and colleges ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... a week before things seemed favourable. We had only what we stood in, excepting the rough map, which was drawn from hearsay and our scanty knowledge of the country. We planned to travel at night, lay our course by the stars and perhaps walk to ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... county, which was once called, and is still known to old men as, "Bustard Farm." All that Caleb Bawcombe knew of this grandest bird is what his father had told him; and Isaac knew of it only from hearsay, although it was still met with in South Wilts when he ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... issued until 1679, and does not seem to have anything to do with the Red Bull or with any other regular theater. The Messalina and Roxana pictures are small, and both show a rear curtain and a projecting stage. The DeWitt drawing was done from hearsay evidence, is inaccurate in details, and represents a theater with a movable stage, probably not long regularly used for plays; it gives little idea of the stage, but does afford a good general notion of the interior of a public theater. The contract for the Fortune theater, ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... philosopher's patience gave way, and he said he'd be hanged if he'd take the elephant out at all, if there was going to be such a to-do about it. Even the minister sulked, though he wore a pretense of dignity; for he had concocted a short address with very little history in it, and that all hearsay, and the doctor had said lightly, looking it over, "Well, old man, not much of it, is there? But there's enough of it, ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... dollars in their pockets. Certain editors have joined in the same "hue and cry" with their worthy compeers. The reasons were evident in their case. They knew I was invading their dearest worldly interests. There were others who only knew me from hearsay. Why should they become my enemies? It was because I held in my possession secrets, whose exposition would make many of them tremble. It would be to them like the interpreted handwriting upon the wall. Hence they were ready to contribute their talents and wealth, to sustain certain individuals ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... "if you don't mind, we'd better talk it out. You see I do really need to know about him, and you're the only one that can tell me. Mother's is chiefly hearsay." ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... the egregious Bomston before her. But, though her sojourn in England had not taught her very much about actual Englishman, she had probably read Mackenzie, and knew that the "Man of Feeling" touch had to some extent affected us. She tried to combine the two, with divers hints of hearsay and a good deal of pure fancy, and the result was Oswald, Lord Nelvil. As with that other curious contemporary of hers with whom we deal in this chapter, the result was startlingly powerful in literature. There is no doubt that ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... this much about the place from hearsay," he said in a guttural whisper. "It's supposed to be haunted. I've heard more than one of these jays,—big huskies too,—say they wouldn't go near the place after dark for all the money in ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... well known, it is likely that some will write down his doings, and, not knowing them save by hearsay, will write them wrongly and in different ways, whereof will come confusion, and at last none will be believed. Wherefore, as he will not set them down himself, it is best that I do so. Not that I would have anyone ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... rough is the earth below. But if thou wilt I shall swear the great oath by my father's head, that neither I myself am to blame, nor have I seen any other thief of thy kine: be kine what they may, for I know but by hearsay." ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... fable."[163] Innes accepts the views of the classical authorities and argues from them in his own peculiar way,[164] but Sullivan will have it that the materials afforded from classical sources are worthless: "they consist of mere hearsay reports without any sure foundation, and in many cases not in harmony with the results of modern linguistic and archaeological investigations."[165] Neither Turner nor Palgrave has any doubt as to the authority of these ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... her, her long braids of hair dangling half-way down her short skirt as she threw back her head to gaze up, she looked incredibly modern and American. "There were no tourists' agencies in those days," she remarked, regretfully, "so I suppose Shakspere had to trust to hearsay, and somebody must have told him a big tarradiddle. I guess Juliet was really on a visit to an aunt in the country when she first met Romeo, for fancy a girl in her senses yelling down from that balcony up at the top of a tall house to any lover, let alone a secret one? ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of this "duck-under" lies under water, it can only be described from hearsay. Here, so the blacks say, a solid wall of rock runs out into the river, incomplete, though, and complicated, rising and terminating before mid-stream into a large island, which, dividing the stream unequally, sends the main body of water swirling away along its ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... by no means suspect you of any faults that may require that interposition. But, to tell you the plain truth, I am of opinion that my censorial power will not be useless to you, nor a sinecure to me. The sooner you make it both, the better for us both. I can now exercise this employment only upon hearsay, or, at most, written evidence; and therefore shall exercise it with great lenity and some diffidence; but when we meet, and that I can form my judgment upon ocular and auricular evidence, I shall ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... rumors of gold or silver, and some one, believing the stories, made a map, maybe by hearsay, maybe at first hand. Maybe he talked too much, and some other fellow knocked him on ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... while executing orders, than he would put his head in a lion's mouth. It is understood that Alston simply points to a thing when he wants it done, leaving all shocking details to his tools. But this is mere hearsay. No one really knows anything about him; that is to say, no one outside his band—if he actually has one. It is very generally believed, however, that he has only to blow a single blast on a horn at any hour of the day or night, and that from fifty to a hundred armed men will instantly appear, ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... the Revue Germanique, "have enjoyed in a like degree the faculty of observation. That is a rare gift of nature, like all eminent qualities. He possessed a sort of intuition which discerned the truth, apart from his own observations, and thus information given by him from hearsay has a value that seldom attaches to statements of that nature. His mind, early ripened by reflection and study (he was but in his thirty-third year at the time of his death), invariably went straight ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... talk," Lily said, and hesitated. After all, her mother would not understand, and it would only make her uneasy. "I suppose it is rank hearsay to say it, but I ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... may never have heard of him,—was a creature well known (by hearsay, at least) to your great-great-grandmother. It was currently reported that every forest had one within its precincts, who ruled over the woodmen, and exacted tribute from them in the shape of little blocks of wood ready hewn for the fire ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... not?—"inclusive" and "exclusive" forms); what may be the general scheme of orientation, the so-called demonstrative categories ("this" and "that" in an endless procession of nuances);[76] how frequently the form expresses the source or nature of the speaker's knowledge (known by actual experience, by hearsay,[77] by inference); how the syntactic relations may be expressed in the noun (subjective and objective; agentive, instrumental, and person affected;[78] various types of "genitive" and indirect relations) and, ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... Morellet, might well regard such considerations as the products of a weak and eccentric scrupulosity. Turgot was of other calibre, holding it to be only a degree less unprincipled than the avowed selfishness of the adventurer, to contract so serious an engagement on the strength of common hearsay and current usage, without deliberate personal reflection ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... particularly the three heroes of the attack. Finally we observe Ulysses inquiring and learning all about the situation in Ithaca; he obtains everything that information at second hand can give. But hearsay is not enough; he must see at first hand. Thus we pass to the palace, and out of the first series of four Books, which we are ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... quicksands that are found near it, and of its being supplied from the far-off inland ocean of Lake Huron. But like the cove in Tyendenaga, of which everybody in the neighbourhood has heard something, but which nobody has seen, these accounts of the lake of the mountain rest only upon hearsay. ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... reached Lathrop on the fatal day, but who could not be found, and was not at the station to aid in preserving the peace, was quick enough to arrest Neagle without a warrant, for an act not committed in his presence, and therefore known only to him by hearsay. Against the remonstrances of a supreme justice of the United States, who had also been chief justice of California, and who might have been supposed to know the laws as well at least as a constable, the protection placed over him by ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... ever had any earth to rest upon, and was not rather stayed upon some jutting fragment of Rock washed away at last by the ever-encroaching sea. Nay, of its exact situation I am not qualified to tell. I never saw the place, and my knowledge of it is confined to a bald hearsay, albeit of the Deeds that were done within its walls I can affirm the certitude with Truth. From such shadowy accounts as I have collected, the edifice would seem to have consisted but of a single tower or donjon-keep very strong and thick, and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... a dangerous thing for any man to sit down to "make" a book. If he has had personal experience, let him write a description of those subjects which he understands; but if he attempts to "make" a book, he must necessarily collect information from hearsay, when he will most probably gather some ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... these sports I shall give no anecdotes of others, but I shall simply recall scenes in which I myself have shared, preferring even a character for egotism rather than relate the statements of hearsay, for the truth of which I could not vouch. This must be accepted as an excuse for the unpleasant use of the ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... no desire to fill such a post, an Englishman born should do it: it is a national affair. One thing should not deter us from advocating the academy. I refer to the failure of the former school. All I know about it is from hearsay, but it must have been a most miserable business, and if half the tales which are in circulation about the management are true, it was fit for anything except education. The radical and principal fault of the old school was that it had too many heads and ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Helbeck's words—"permission to reserve the Blessed Sacrament." Then, in a flash, a hundred vague memories, the deposit of a hearsay knowledge, enlightened her. She knew and remembered much less than any ordinary girl would have done. But still, in the main, she guessed at what was passing. That of course was the Sacrament, before which Mr. Helbeck and the others were kneeling!—for instinctively she felt that it ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... servant of the long purse; and the story is left to be told, for the first time, in this place. As the Judge might once have heard it, so the Reader shall hear it now. No circumstance of importance, from the beginning to the end of the disclosure, shall be related on hearsay evidence. When the writer of these introductory lines (Walter Hartright by name) happens to be more closely connected than others with the incidents to be recorded, he will describe them in his own person. When his experience ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... the odious mixture of frivolity, beneficence, and bureaucracy, the trick of dabbling in poverty in the intervals of flirtation! And if one of them in disgust has the incredible audacity to venture out alone among the poor or the wretched, whose life she only knows by hearsay, think of what she will see! Sights almost beyond bearing! It is a very hell. What can she do to help them? She is lost, drowned in such a sea of misfortune. However, she struggles on, she tries hard to ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... never was anything published more favourable than the Arctic paper). Lyell had difficulty in preventing Dawson reviewing the "Origin" (356/3. Dawson reviewed the "Origin" in the "Canadian Naturalist," 1860.) on hearsay, without having looked at it. No spirit of fairness can be expected from so biassed ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... wonderful how soon Aldebaran began to taste the sweets of great achievement. His name was on the tongue of every troubador, his deeds in every minstrel's song. And though he travelled far to alien lands, scarce known by hearsay even to the folk at home, his fame was carried back, far over seas again, and in his father's court his name was spoken daily in proud tones, as ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... my advice is that you come with me to the porter's cottage, where I will shortly write out the substance of what he has said, and get him to sign it. You will then have far better grounds for interfering between Mr. and Mrs. Manston than if you went to them with a mere hearsay story.' ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... was present at the trial save the accused, the members of the Vigilance Committee, and witnesses. The testimony was given under oath, though there was no lawful authority for its administration. Hearsay testimony was excluded; the general rules of evidence observed in the courts were adopted: the accused heard all the witnesses, cross-examined those against him, summoned such as he wanted in his favor, had an attorney to assist ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... Reflection shows that all modes of perception or knowledge may be reduced to four:- I. (2) Perception arising from hearsay or from some sign which everyone may name as he please. II. (3) Perception arising from mere experience - that is, form experience not yet classified by the intellect, and only so called because the given event has happened to take place, and we have no contradictory fact to set ...
— On the Improvement of the Understanding • Baruch Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza]
... your own personal knowledge, or merely from hearsay?-A little from my own personal knowledge. I know the way in which the men deal with regard to getting their ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... striving to maintain itself upon the dogmatic creeds of the past, was rapidly petrifying into a mere "dead Letter of Religion," from which all the living spirit had fled; and those who could not nourish themselves on hearsay and inherited formula knew not where to look for the renewal of faith and hope. The generous ardour and the splendid humanitarian enthusiasms which had been stirred by the opening phases of the revolutionary movement, had now ebbed away; revulsion had followed, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... hundred years of life with a decent cremation at the end of it assured to every eugenically born citizen. No more. But I have long ceased to regret that others use their own eyes whether clear or dim. Better the merest glimmer of light perceived thus than the hearsay of the revelations of others. And by the broken fragments of a bewildered hope a man shall eventually reach the goal and rejoice in that dawn where the morning stars sing together and the sons of God shout for joy. It must come, for it is ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... second month of her stay in Roseland. In conversation with her mother, Stella said, "I am really glad I went to Aunt Helen's, for I have lived in two months a year of my life. I have seen so much of a world concerning which I previously knew nothing only by hearsay. I feel it has done me good in many ways. Aunt was kind to me, and made everything very pleasant, and so did her friends. I do say I am glad that I have lived in her world and tasted of its pleasures, because I don't go now on what I hear about that world. I know from my own personal ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... provinces, as in Paris," he said, "you must believe only half of all that you hear. Do not alarm yourself; a piece of hearsay, three leagues away from Angouleme, is sure to be far from the truth. Old Sechard, our neighbor, left Marsac some days ago; very likely he is busy settling his son's difficulties. I am going to Angouleme; I will come ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... full of pitfalls, marked by the wreckage of old theories, yet we claim that the skeptic or the mystic can know of their existence only by traveling over the pathway himself; for in the world of the inner life nothing can be known by hearsay. If, then, he would really know that the road to theoretical insight into beauty is impassable, let him travel with us and see; or, if not with us, alone by himself or with some one wiser than we as ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... G. was a matter of hearsay, as Isabella saw her not after the trial; but she has no reason to doubt the truth of what she heard. Isabel could never learn the subsequent fate of Fowler, but heard, in the spring of '49, that his children had been seen in Kingston-one of ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... I am not going to drop Mr. Arabian because of hearsay, more especially when I don't even know ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... bring back his sense of hearing. The cannonading of the Germans and the bursting of the French shells sounded from his retreat like a distant tempest. There came into his mind the eulogies which he had been accustomed to lavish upon the cannon of '75 without knowing anything about it except by hearsay. Now he had witnessed its effects. "It shoots TOO well!" he muttered. In a short time it would finish destroying his castle—he was finding ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... dwelt upon the Texan coast, according to Sibley, upon an island or peninsula in the Bay of St. Bernard (Matagorda Bay). In 1804 this author, upon hearsay evidence, stated their number to be 500 men.[56] In several places in the paper cited it is explicitly stated that the Karankawa spoke the Attakapa language; the Attakapa was a coast tribe living to the east of them. In 1884 Mr. Gatschet found a Tonkawe at Fort Griffin, Texas, ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... My pleasure's pedigree, if so it please, Nobly, I mean, nor renegade to art. The Grecian gluts me with its perfectness, Unanswerable as Euclid, self-contained, 250 The one thing finished in this hasty world, Forever finished, though the barbarous pit, Fanatical on hearsay, stamp and shout As if a miracle could be encored. But ah! this other, this that never ends, Still climbing, luring fancy still to climb, As full of morals half-divined as life, Graceful, grotesque, with ever new surprise Of hazardous caprices sure to please, Heavy as nightmare, airy-light ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... who loved her had prepared for her so tenderly this happiness, she desired to partake thereof, and to enter therein like a princess coming from some chimerical country, who approaches the real kingdom where she is to reign for ever. In the same way she preferred to know nothing, except by hearsay, of the corbeille, which also was waiting for her—a superb gift from her betrothed, the wedding outfit of fine linen, embroidered with her cipher as marchioness, the full-dress costumes tastefully trimmed, the old family jewels valuable as the richest treasures ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... by surest testimony, was that Mr. Thomas had been to the theatre. There was not a tittle of evidence to support this story, but everybody was certain it was true. Everybody repeated it, and constant repetition will harden the loosest hearsay into a creed far more unshakable than faith ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... find a way," declared the old sailor, with a hopefulness he was far from feeling, for he knew well, by hearsay, of the terrible swamp quagmires that swiftly suck their victims down to a horrible death in the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely |
