"Libel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear, Or from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear! But he who hurts a harmless neighbour's peace, Insults fallen worth, or beauty in distress; Who loves a lie, lame slander helps about; Who writes a libel, or who copies out; That fop, whose pride affects a patron's name, Yet absent, wounds an author's honest fame; Who can your merit selfishly approve, And show the sense of it without the love; Who has ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... their full-blown complacency. But, when they hear that the Republic has been traduced by a foreign, and especially a British pen, their vanity is piqued, their curiosity excited, and their conscience smitten. Every one denounces the libel in public, and every one admits its truth to himself—"What!" say they, "does the Old World in truth judge us thus harshly? Is it really scandalised by such trifles as the repudiation of our debts, and the enslavement of our fellow creatures? Must we give up our playful duels, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... Bishop's letter, demanded to know to what "metropolitan newspaper" the Bishop had alluded, as, if any such paper had spread scandalous imputations as to him, the Doctor, respecting the lady in question, it would be his, the Doctor's, duty to proceed against that newspaper for libel. In answer to this the Bishop, in a note much shorter and much less affectionate than his former letter, said that he did not wish to name any metropolitan newspaper. But the Doctor would not, of course, put up with such ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... Mattingley not long before he died. There was no doubt as to the validity of the transfer, for the deed was duly registered au greffe, and it said: "In consideration of one livre turnois," etc. Possibly it was a libel against the departed jurat that he and Mattingley had had dealings unrecognised by customs law, crystallising at last into this ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... real transaction alluded to, is understood to have been this: an individual being under prosecution for a libel on a naval officer, censuring his conduct on the West India station, when a French squadron was in those seas, pretended that it would aid his defence to show that the French ships were at that time ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... provosts, in a letter signed or not signed, which letter shall be left with the doorkeeper of the Academy. Nor shall any person delivering such a letter be seized, molested, or detained, though it should prove to be a libel. But the letters so delivered shall be presented to the provosts; and in case they be so many that they cannot well be perused by the provosts themselves, they shall distribute them as they please to be read by the gentlemen of the Academy, ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... solemnities. Sampayo was inclined to have landed again at Cananor, but Nuno ordered him to go along with him to Cochin, and published a proclamation that all who had been wronged by Sampayo might repair to the new governor, who would do them justice. Sampayo complained of this as a libel against him, as those who had complaints to make needed not to be invited by sound of trumpet. On arriving at Cochin, Nuno ordered Sampayo to be imprisoned and an inventory to be taken of all his effects, all of which were directed to be deposited in safe custody and sent to Lisbon, to be there ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... which had been sent. No libellous statement had been made, and yet a hundred things had been suggested—inability, carelessness, ignorance, fraud, chicanery had all been hinted at, and hinted at cleverly. And yet no word of libel had been used, only the sting of the circular lay in the tail, and it was contained in these words: "Stepaside is the man that controls Stepaside and Preston. Is he the man whom we can trust ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... sent to him for correction which would make him wish that the article should not appear. If the demand for suppression were made—I say nothing about what might be granted to request—the answer would be, 'It is not your article, but mine; I have all the responsibility; if it should contain a libel, I could not give you up, even at your own desire. You have furnished me with materials, on the known and common understanding that I was to use them at my discretion, and you have no right to impede my operations by making the appearance of the article depend on your approbation of my ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... Now he had become the missionary in England of the new French gospel of "impressionism," which to Ruskin was one of those half-truths which are ever the worst of heresies. Mr. Whistler appealed to the law. He brought an action for libel, which was tried on November 25th and 26th before Baron Huddleston, and recovered a farthing damages. Ruskin's costs—amounting to L386 12s. 4d.—were paid by a public subscription to which one hundred and twenty ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... talking! she said. He's a caution to rattlesnakes. He's in there now with his lawbooks finding out the law of libel. He has me heartscalded. Wait till I ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... sweet, too womanly frail, Alone in thy faith and thy need; In the homeless home, in the poisonous air Of spite and libel and greed; Mid perfidy's net thy pathway is set, And thy feet in the ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... 'twar made bran new Vrom top ta bottom; I tell ye true! Tha Acltar piece wi' Peter war now naw libel Upon tha church, Which booAth athin an, tower an all, athout Look'd like a well-dressed maid in pride about; Tha walls rejAcic'd wi' texts took vrom tha Bible. Bit vor all that, thAc left en in tha lurch; I bag your pardon. I mean, of Acll tha expense thAc ood'n ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... They were talking earnestly; that is to say, Miss Bailey was talking earnestly and volubly, and Mrs. Falconer was listening. Mrs. Falconer had reduced the practice of listening to a fine art. She was a thin, wistful-faced mite of a woman, with sad brown eyes, and with snow-white hair that was a libel on her fifty-five years and girlish step. Nobody in Lindsay ever felt very well acquainted with Mrs. Falconer, in spite of the fact that she had lived among them forty years. She kept between her and her world a fine, baffling reserve ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that Meeting was! Of course, you have seen the paper. There ought to be some way of punishing those agitators that go about the country, taking away people's characters. Could not you bring him up for libel, or Reginald? I never knew anything so shocking. To come to your own town, your own neighbourhood, and to strike you through your son! It is the nastiest, most underhanded, unprincipled ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... 'Every Man his Own Lawyer,'" he said, "giving all that it is necessary for any man to know regarding the laws of his native land, including laws of business, how to draw up legal papers, what constitutes libel, et cetery. This one division alone being worth the whole cost of the book, showing among other things what a paper should print and what it should not. Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art is a marvelous work, including as it does the chapter on ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... own discomfort, the ruination of their tobacco, the scandalization of gentle and simple, and the encouragement of vicious manufactures. Now, we are not going to particularize too closely, for fear of consequences. In these days, when a man may bring an action for libel because it has been said of him that he sells bad soup at a railway station, prudence is the better part of valor. But, just examine this heterogeneous pile of 'cigar-lights,' which rears its audacious head upon the table. Here are Palmers, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... charged the defendant with publishing a libel, containing in one part thereof these words: "Then we are not to meddle with the subject of slavery in any manner; neither by appeals to the patriotism, by exhortation to humanity, by application of ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown
... space paved with cobble-stones which separated their small and ancient houses, while the matrons, more gregariously inclined, bunched in little groups and discussed subjects which in higher circles would have inundated the land with libel actions. Up and down the alley a tiny boy all ready for bed, with the exception of his nightgown, mechanically avoided friendly palms as he sought anxiously for ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... crime would not, in any case, be an alleged criminal, for an allegation is a definite and positive statement. In their tiresome addiction to this use of alleged, the newspapers, though having mainly in mind the danger of libel suits, can urge in further justification the lack of any other single word that exactly expresses their meaning; but the fact that a mud-puddle supplies the shortest route is not a compelling reason for walking through it. One can ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... uproar broke out, many of those present protesting against these statements as involving a libel on the entire female sex. It being impossible to restore order, Professor Splurgeson had to be escorted to his hotel by policemen, the date of his second lecture ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... all your life to be tamed and loved, haven't you, old man?" I asked. "You're nothing but a good pup, and the man who put the hyaeno in your name ought to be sued for libel." ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to the man! One would think I spent half my time insisting on his doing what he hates; which is a rank libel! Now, Mr Richardson, back to your chair, please. You've done enough ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... was an example of "dry" Scotch humour. A neighbouring city had previously banned The Merchant of Venice from its schools on the ground that the character of Shylock was a libel on the Jewish race. If Jewish children no longer had to pay for school editions of The Merchant of Venice should Scottish infants still have to squander their bawbees on a play that insulted their forbears? Perish ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... which this page is headed may be found in the current and established dictionaries of the present day; and it shall be our task to show that never was slander more foul, calumny more base, or libel more cowardly, than when it associated the words luxury and sensuality with the memory of the Athenian Epicurus. The much-worn anecdote of the brief endorsed "The Defendant has no case, abuse the Plaintiffs Solicitor," will well apply here. The religionists had no ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... that, he published to the world, and circulated extensively, this uncalled-for libel on my State and my blood. Whatever insults my State insults me. Her history and character have commanded my pious veneration; and in her defence I hope I shall always be prepared, humbly and modestly, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... magnificence, and the piety of a prince, who, both as a conqueror and legislator, had surpassed the puerile virtues of Cyrus and Themistocles. Disappointment might urge the flatterer to secret revenge, and the first glance of favour might again tempt him to suspend and suppress a libel, in which the Roman Cyrus is degraded into an odious and contemptible tyrant, in which both the Emperor and his consort Theodora are seriously represented as two demons, who had assumed a human form for the destruction ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... Ecclesiastical Court when cited for that purpose. In the year 1788 he was stimulated by some new insanity to write and publish an injurious pamphlet, reflecting on the Queen of France, in very violent terms. Being indicted for the libel, and (after various strange demonstrations in court) found guilty, he fled into Holland in place of appearing to receive sentence: from whence, as the quiet burgomasters of Amsterdam had no relish for his company, he was sent home again with ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... urgent need of funds, decided to admit men among their audience at the small charge of twopence per head, and on hearing this, my father and myself strolled round to witness the proceedings. They were remarkably lively. Allix, while reading a report respecting the club's progress, began to libel some of the Paris convents, whereupon a National Guard in the audience flatly called him a liar. A terrific hubbub arose, all the women gesticulating and protesting, whilst their presidente energetically rang her bell, and the interrupter strode towards the platform. He proved to ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... brimming over with facts and figures. Then I fired a volley of candid details as to the manner in which city and State officials had recently betrayed the public's interests. Lastly, I discharged at "Standard Oil" a broadside which my attorneys and friends assured me meant jail on a libel charge. I put my banking-house and my personal guarantee behind the old and new loans, and proceeded to roll up my sleeves in the stock-market. I got results at once. A change became apparent in public sentiment—the rottenness of Addicksism was overcome ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... was inevitable, and he eagerly ranged himself on the people's side. He had an idea of publishing a series of poems adapted expressly to commemorate their circumstances and wrongs. He wrote a few; but, in those days of prosecution for libel, they could not be printed. They are not among the best of his productions, a writer being always shackled when he endeavours to write down to the comprehension of those who could not understand or feel a highly imaginative style; but ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... between 1815 and 1830 were therefore a period of constant bitterness and contention between the higher and the lower classes. Mass meetings which were called by the popular leaders were dissolved by the government, radical writers were prosecuted by the government for libel, the habeas corpus act was suspended repeatedly, and threatened rioting was met with severe measures. The actions of the ministers, while upheld by the higher classes, were bitterly attacked by others as being unconstitutional ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... for his fame, if, over and above leaving legacies to such friends as Burke and Malone, he had opened his heart to humbler people. A little would have gone a long way—a kindly word and a guinea prudently given."—P. 319. Opened his heart to humbler people! was the author of this libel upon a generous character, ignorant of his charity to humbler people, which Johnson certified? Why did he not narrate the robbery of the black servant, and his kindness to the humblest and the most wretched? What was fifty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... this time had pulled herself together. "If this outrageous story is current, Mrs. Cargill, there was nothing for it but to come back. Your friends know that it is a gross libel. The only denial necessary is for Mr. Cargill to resume his work. I trust his health ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... connected with a popular newspaper, and it proves that sensational journalists have their distinct place in the cosmogony of nature, being bound to print what is scandalous, either for the sake of those who are libelled or out of simple justice to those who start and spread the libel. This desire to give fair play all round, even to slanderers and malefactors, and the common father of these, is the crown and apex ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... view had been that the whole cargo was included in the libel for trading with the enemy declared against the ship, but the plea of the American owners was heard, that the rules of prize procedure should not be so rigorously enforced in the present instances, since such an interpretation ...
— Neutral Rights and Obligations in the Anglo-Boer War • Robert Granville Campbell
... this passage, in explanation, adds, that "Montaigne in his Essays supposes his cat thought him a fool for losing his time in playing with her;" but, under favor, this is a misinterpretation of the essayist's sentiments, and something like a libel on the capacity of both himself and cat. Montaigne's words are: "When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me? We mutually divert each other with our play. If I have my hour to begin or refuse, so also has she hers." ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... on the colored race to state that even the majority of its members are chicken thieves by descent rather than inclination, just as it is a libel on their religion to insinuate that a colored camp meeting is almost certain to involve severe inroads into the chicken coops and roosts of the neighboring farmers. Certain it is, however, that chicken stealing is one of the most dangerous causes of backsliding on the part of colored ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... to the tender mercies of broadswords and bayonets, and decamped in the disguise of sailors, old women, and dissenting preachers. He had sat three months in Lancaster Castle, the Bastille of England, one day perhaps to fall like that Parisian one, for a libel which he never wrote, because he would not betray his cowardly contributor. He had twice pleaded his own cause, without help of attorney, and showed himself as practised in every law-quibble and practical cheat as if he had been a regularly ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... dare she? But that she is dead, as Juliet told me, I would have her up for libel. Maraquito herself killed the woman. I am sure of it. ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... landlord nothing; one because he is rich; another because he is poor; one to show that he is not afraid, and another to show that he can write.' The people, he thinks, are as well off as they are likely to be under any form of government; and grievances about general warrants or the rights of juries in libel cases are not really felt so long as they have enough to eat and drink and wear. The error, we may probably say, was less in the contempt for a very shallow agitation than in the want of perception that deeper causes of discontent were accumulating in the background. Wilkes in himself was ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... same time—why libel ourselves? Were we never young, did we never know the play, the fire, the thrill of life's forces? We too have been in Arcady, we too have strayed about her bright meadows!... Have you chanced, strolling about a copse, to come across those ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... patients, he had been unable, after the most careful analysis, to find one whose illness did not grow from some lack of adjustment of the sex-life, he was met by a storm of protest from all quarters. No amount of evidence seemed to make any difference. People were determined that no such libel should be heaped on human nature. Sex-urge was not respectable and nervous people were to ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... pleaded for one little day's extension of leave to make himself decent. "Not a bit of it," said the War Office. "If you choose to spend your leave playing with sailor-men and getting wet all over, that's your concern. You will return to duty by to-night's boat." (This may be a libel on the W.O., but it sounds very like them.) "And he had to," said the boy, "but I expect he spent the next week at Headquarters telling fat generals all ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... which sheet the said Jefferson Davis Rand had once cost the loss of an expensive libel-suit and exposed in certain journalistic malpractices verging upon blackmail, promptly burst into print with an indignant editorial entitled Trial by Pistol. The terms: "legalized slaughter," and "flagrant whitewash," were used, and mention was made of "the well ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... much appreciated in Germany. The illness, however, quickly took a favourable turn, and after a month's rest the chancellor was able to resume his duties. In 1907 Prince Buelow was made the subject of a disgraceful libel, which received more attention than it deserved because it coincided with the Harden-Moltke scandals; his character was, however, completely vindicated, and the libeller, a journalist named Brand, received ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... profound impression even in the agitated state of the public mind, for bitterly as North might be denounced he always was listened to. The press lashed itself into a fury and wrote head- lines which would have ridden its editors into prison had the country possessed libel laws adequate to protect a noble provision of the Constitution. The temperate men in the country had been with North from the beginning, but the excited millions excoriated him the more loudly. He was denounced at public banquets and accused by excited ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... desires to state that both the injunction for restraint and the libel action have been withdrawn unreservedly by Professor G. E. Challenger, who, being satisfied that no criticism or comment in this book is meant in an offensive spirit, has guaranteed that he will place no impediment to ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... advice which may spare you much unpleasantness: be unusually cautious of what you say. If you appear as an expert or a witness, and you make a mistake unfavorable to the patient, he will be your enemy for life; even he may at times recover damages for libel. If he is really crazy, he may be all the more dangerous. Do your duty, of course, as an honest man must always do; ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... this audacious address?—Reject it as a libel? Treat it as an affront to government? Spurn it as a derogation from the rights of legislature? Did they toss it over the table? Did they burn it by the hands of the common hangman?—They took the petition of grievance, all rugged as it was, without softening or ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... is extremely foolish. I did not say that I would commence suit against a minister for libel. I can hardly conceive of a proceeding that would be less liable to produce a dividend. The fact about it is, that the Rev. Mr. Jewett seems to think anything true that he hears against me. Mr. Jewett is probably ashamed of what he said by this time. He must have known ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... councillors were so divided that some of them were for appointing public prayers for two days; others proposed to desire his Royal Highness to take care of the public safety. I resolved to treat the writing drawn up against me by the Cardinal as a satire and a libel, and, by some ingenious, short passage, to arouse the minds of my hearers. As my memory did not furnish me with anything in ancient authors that had any relation to my subject, I made a small discourse in the best Latin I was capable of, and then ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... eminent than his zeal, was found to be the only measure capable of restoring peace to the distracted church of Rome. The behavior of Mensurius, bishop of Carthage, appears to have been still more reprehensible. A deacon of that city had published a libel against the emperor. The offender took refuge in the episcopal palace; and though it was somewhat early to advance any claims of ecclesiastical immunities, the bishop refused to deliver him up to the officers of justice. For this treasonable resistance, Mensurius was summoned to court, and instead ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... compelled to flight; Charles Churchill, Hume, and Priestley, persecuted; John Wilkes sent to the Tower. The task would be a long one, were we to count over the victims of the statute against seditious libel. The Inquisition had, to some extent, spread its arrangements throughout Europe, and its police practice was taken as a guide. A monstrous attempt against all rights was possible in England. We have only ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... I have ever heard was Dr. L——. General Hamilton at the bar was unrivalled. I heard his great effort in the case of People versus Croswell, for a libel upon Jefferson. There was a curious changing of sides in the position of the advocates. Spencer, the Attorney-General, who had long been climbing the ladder of democracy, managed the cause for the people; and Hamilton, esteemed an old-school Federalist, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... animadverting upon the conduct of the Queen of France in the affair of the necklace, and asserting that she was really the guilty party. For this letter Lord George was exposed to a prosecution at the instance of the French Ambassador - found guilty of libel, and sentenced to fine and a ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... of telling the truth in print, but the mysterious law of libel, which it is written that all mariners shall dread and never understand, scared him; and besides, he was still raw from his recent week's outing in the British Press. So he just went and gave his ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... denunciation—why, they would trample to scorn the name of Irishman—(applause in the court, which the officials vainly tried to silence). [Footnote C: For publishing an illustration in the Weekly News thus picturing England's policy of coercion, Mr. Sullivan had been found guilty of seditious libel ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... incredible in the present case," he said. "Do you think Wilton Fern could do evil to a woman? Look in his face once and dismiss that libel within the second." ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... regulation on the subject of our wheat is one proof. The prohibition of it in England would, of itself, be of no great moment, because I do not know that it is much sent there. But it is the publishing a libel on our wheat, sanctioned with the name of parliament, and which can have no object but to do us injury, by spreading a groundless alarm in those countries of Europe where our wheat is constantly and kindly received. It is a mere assassination. If the insect they pretend ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... not scrupled to libel Varro's common sense; they represent his idea of the absurd to consist in the embarrassment that would be caused by the birth occurring at the critical moment of change,—split as it were upon the knife-edge of noon; so that, in the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... difference in principle between our measures and those you are so ready to condemn among the people I am treating of? There is none; the difference is merely circumstantial. Thus we denounce, instead of banishing—we libel, instead of scourging—we turn out of office, instead of hanging—and where they burnt an offender in proper person, we either tar and feather, or burn him in effigy—this political persecution being, somehow or other, the grand palladium of our liberties, and ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... specially his chaplain, giveth him a brace of dogs. These be trim things for prelates to give or receive; especially of them to make such account as to print them among such special prerogatives." Sign. D. iiij. v. Yet even to this libel was affixed the following epitaph upon Parker; which shews that truth "is great, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... are to give notice, that what person soever shall discover unto one of the secretaries of state, the printer, publisher, author, or hander to the press of any of the said libels, so that full evidence may be made thereof to a Jury, without mentioning the informer, especially one libel, entitled An Account of the Growth of Popery; and another called A Reasonable Argument to all the Grand Juries, &c. the discoverer shall be rewarded as follows; he shall have fifty pounds for such discovery as aforesaid, of the printer or publisher of it from the press, and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... crazy on vodka. He transformed Hamlet into "a yelling man" and Romeo and Juliet into "two monstrous Cossacks, who gibber and squeak at each other while reading some obscene volume." "His Manfred is a libel on Byron, who was a libel on God." And even Schumann is a vanishing star, a literary man turned composer, a pathological case. But, as I have said, a serious idea runs through all this concerto for slapstick and seltzer siphon, and to me, at ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... sometimes, too, his genealogical tree is appended. Such expressions as "no cheating here" or "I cannot deceive," are common, but, in nearly every case, belie the character of the proprietor, who is a living libel on the word honesty. Honesty! old Shylock even would blush ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... cancel marvel level travel rebel gravel barrel nickel apparel towel channel kennel chapel citadel revel Mabel libel camel ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... continued, "at our hostess. I am sure her ears and her nose take off at night. Her hair is a libel ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... pass on to cheese. We have some glorious cheeses, and far too few people glorying in them. The Cheddar of the inn, of the chophouse, of the average English home, is a libel on a thing which, when authentic, is worthy of great honor. Cheshire, divinely commanded into existence as to three parts to precede and as to one part to accompany certain Tawny Ports and some Late-Bottled Ports, can be a thing for which the British Navy ought ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... distinct touch!" cried Holmes. "You are developing a certain unexpected vein of pawky humour, Watson, against which I must learn to guard myself. But in calling Moriarty a criminal you are uttering libel in the eyes of the law—and there lie the glory and the wonder of it! The greatest schemer of all time, the organizer of every deviltry, the controlling brain of the underworld, a brain which might have made ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rose within me to proclaim the foolish chatterer as a prophet. So life was not as I had been taught—a painful struggle between good and evil. There was no such thing as evil; the senseless epithet was a libel upon Nature. Not through wearisome repression, but rather through joyous expression of the ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... you might expect from such a start. My own suspicion is that Lady Rosia is one of many novels that owe their existence to a summer holiday. I haven't the slightest knowledge of the facts, and still less wish to incur a libel action, but, by my way of imagining it, Miss FREDA MARY GROVES found herself one day in the Winchelsea country, fell very naturally in love with its jolly old houses, and determined there and then to write a story about ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... association of men (to come nearer to you) who, out of Parliament cannot be consider'd in a public capacity, to meet, as you daily do, in factious clubs, to vilify the Government in your discourses, and to libel it in all your writings? Who made you judges in Israel? Or how is it consistent with your zeal for the public welfare, to promote sedition? Does your definition of loyal, which is to serve the King according to ...
— English Satires • Various
... her husband, the soldier from Salzburg with one lung. He was having a holiday from his sentry duty at the hospital, and the one lung seemed to be a libel, for while the women had coffee together and a bit of mackerel he sang a very fair bass to the Portier's tenor. Together they pored over the score, and even on their way to the beer hall hummed together such ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... N. detraction, disparagement, depreciation, vilification, obloquy, scurrility, scandal, defamation, aspersion, traducement, slander, calumny, obtrectation[obs3], evil-speaking, backbiting, scandalum magnatum[Lat]. personality, libel, lampoon, skit, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... New World;' he prosecuted the caricaturists; and was seen everywhere with his wife. 'The Universe' and 'The New World' revenged themselves on the Signora; and then she indicted them. They could not now even libel an opera singer with impunity; where was the ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... against his patron on the matter of Amy's death. Probably the Richard Verney who died in 1575 was the Verney aimed at in 'Leicester's Commonwealth.' He was a kind of retainer of Dudley, otherwise he would not have been selected by the author of the libel. But we know nothing to prove that he was at Cumnor on ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... conscientious discharge of her few remaining duties is, in some vague way, discreditable and degrading. To call her a good cook, I daresay, was never anything but flattery; the early American cuisine was probably a fearful thing, indeed. But today the flattery turns into a sort of libel, and she resents it, or, at all events, does not welcome it. I used to know an American literary man, educated on the Continent, who married a woman because she had exceptional gifts in this department. Years later, at one of her dinners, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... opening of Busy Gap is reached. This being such a convenient pass from north to south, it was naturally used constantly by raiders and thieves; and such an unenviable notoriety did it possess, that to call a person a "Busy Gap rogue" was sufficient to lay oneself open to an action for libel. Climbing the next slope we look down on Broomlee Lough and reach the portion of the Wall we have already noted—Borcovicus (Housesteads), Cuddy's Crag, Hot Bank farmhouse, and ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... the unreliability of many witnesses and their shocking readiness to perjure themselves. It is always possible to manufacture testimony at small expense. While the criminal libel suit brought against certain members of the staff of the newspaper El Renacimiento, which libelled me, was in progress the judge showed me the opinion of the two Filipino assessors [497] in one of the cases and told me that it was written by an attorney for the defence. ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... to the tongue is slander. I am not of course, speaking now of that species of slander against which the law of libel provides a remedy, but of that of which the Gospel alone takes cognisance; for the worst injuries which man can do to man, are precisely those which are too delicate for law to deal with. We consider therefore not the calumny which is reckoned ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... be said of Lowe is that he possessed distorted human intelligence. He was amiable when he pleased, a good business man, so it is said, and the domestic part of his life has never been assailed; but it would be a libel on all decency to say that he was suited to the delicate and responsible post he was sent to fulfil. In fact, all his actions prove him to have been without an atom of tact, judgment, or administrative quality, and his ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... stated that he "was dishonored at Cambridge for preaching Deism, and that he had since left his native country, and left his poor children fatherless, and his wife destitute:" ex his disce his friends Lamb and Southey. A scurrilous libel of this stamp would now be rejected by all persons of good feeling or good character. It would be spurned by a decent publication, or, if published, would be consigned to the justice ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... of the village. In them he gave fully all the facts in the case. To the assertion paraded in many of the Whig journals of the state, that this meeting showed the spirit of the people in Cooperstown, he made an indignant reply. Such a remark, he said, was a libel on the character of the place. The meeting, he declared, was not composed of a fourth part of the population, or a hundredth part of the respectability of the village. The resolutions he described as ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... declared, in defiance of the law of scandal and libel; "six months I would give the feller at the outside. A feller couldn't attend to business if he would set up till all hours of the night playing fiddle with that lowlife, Rabiner. That ain't all yet, neither! Yesterday he pays for a fiddle three ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... commit a libel on French honor and on French patriotism if we assumed that any step on our part could have prevented her from trying to redress the state of affairs produced ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... D. The Law of Unfair Business Competition. Including chapters on trade secrets and confidential business relations; unfair interference with contracts; libel and slander of articles of merchandise, trade names and business credit and reputation. New ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... mother country and pledged to Heaven "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor" to maintain their freedom, could never have been actuated by so unworthy a motive. They knew no weakness or fear where right or duty pointed the way, and it is a libel upon their fair fame for us, while we enjoy the blessings for which they so nobly fought and bled, to insinuate it. The truth is that the course which they pursued was dictated by a stern sense of international justice, by ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... the queen; "and M. de Crosne is an honest man, and would not willingly injure me; but his agents may have been bought. I have enemies, dear Lamballe. Still there must have been some foundation for this tale. This infamous libel represents me as intoxicated, and overcome to such a degree by the magnetic fluid, that I lost all control over myself, and all womanly reserve. Did any such scene take place, Madame la Comtesse? Was there any one ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... ground with your lovely little feet, on the table with your sweet rosy fingers, and cry, "Oh, sneerer! You don't know the depth of woman's feeling, the lofty scorn of all deceit, the entire absence of mean curiosity in the sex, or never, never would you libel us so!" Ah, Delia! dear, dear Delia! It is because I fancy I do know something about you (not all, mind—no, no; no man knows that)—Ah, my bride, my ringdove, my rose, my poppet—choose, in fact, whatever name you like—bulbul ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a sufficiently discourteous message came back; and the mighty personage, after loafing about for an hour or two, retired and wrote an article in which he described the people of the Black Country as savages, and revived a foolish old libel or two which at one time had currency concerning them. The old nonsense about the champagne was there, for one thing. I know the Black Country miners pretty well—I ought to do so, at least, for I was born in the thick of them and watched ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... last I have never seen. In truth, without assistance from the magistrates and gentlemen of the country, who give none except Addresses, it is very vain for Government to attempt to see and know, at Whitehall, every libel which may ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... the political warfare; such, for instance, as the appearance of a neat little pamphlet which purported to give a full and complete account of Mutimer's life. In this pamphlet nothing untrue was set down, nor did it contain anything likely to render its publisher amenable to the law of libel; but the writer, a gentleman closely connected with Comrade Roodhouse, most skilfully managed to convey the worst possible impression throughout. Nor did the vicar hesitate to express his regret that Mutimer should be seeking election at all. Adela ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... admitted upon the record, and never by us abandoned. As to his defence having been abandoned, we refer your Lordships to the last petition laid by him upon your table, (that libellous petition, which we speak of as a libel upon the House of Commons,) and which has no validity but as it asserts a matter of fact from the petitioner; and there you will find that he has declared explicitly, that, for the accommodation and ease of this business, and for its expedition, he did abandon his defence ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... to show awful symptoms of decline and fall; and though you may suppose literature to be a lucrative business, between ourselves it is not so at all, (very likely the "Atlantic" gentlemen will omit that sentence, for fear of a libel-suit from the trade,—but it's all the same a fact, unless you write for the "Dodger,")—and, I'm likely to mend and patch and court-plaster the holes in that old black silk, another year at least: but this is my solitary real ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... in which, without directly contesting the principle, the whole substance, energy, and virtue of the privilege is taken out of it,—that is, in the case of a trial by indictment or information for a libel. The doctrine in that case, laid down by several judges, amounts to this: that the jury have no competence, where a libel is alleged, except to find the gross corporeal facts of the writing and the publication, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the idea of treachery to his friend about a woman. Whenever Drumley heard that a woman other than the brazenly out and out disreputables was "loose" or was inclined that way, he indignantly denied it as a libel upon the empedestaled sex. If proofs beyond dispute were furnished, he raved against the man with all the venom of the unsuccessful hating the successful for their success. He had been sought of women, of course, for he had a comfortable ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... just given fresh subject of offence by publishing "<La Cour du Roi Petaud" ("The Court of the King Petaud," ) a satire evidently directed as strongly against the king as your humble servant. M. de Voltaire had doubtless been encouraged to write this libel by the Choiseul party. He was at a distance, judged unfavorably of me, and thought he could scourge me without compromising himself. It was comte Jean who brought me these verses, in which there was ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... steer clear of libel suits, how to handle figures so as to demonstrate, according to the requirements of the case, that two and two make three, or make five. It is seldom, that, before the third article, the company does not ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... Leigh Hunts, was full of private and public troubles, and was not to hold him long. The country was agitated by riots due to unemployment. The Government, frightened and vindictive, was multiplying trials for treason and blasphemous libel, and Shelley feared he might be put in the pillory himself. Mary's sister Fanny, to whom he was attached, killed herself in October; Harriet's suicide followed in December; and in the same winter the Westbrooks began to prepare their case for the ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... had something of an adventure,' said Mr. Winkle, with a smile; and, at the request of Mr. Pickwick, he detailed the malicious libel of the Eatanswill INDEPENDENT, and the consequent excitement of ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... newspaper man Allison prided himself on never having involved any of his papers in a libel suit, though he was usually the man who wrote the "danger-stuff." He had complaints, yes; libel suits, no. Dick Ryan, known in prehistoric newspaper circles in Louisville as "Cold Steel," because his mild blue ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... twelfth muse wandered all over Europe, and found that she was really more appreciated than her sisters. The castle, the abbey, the inn, the lone ale-house on the Berkshire moors, all made her welcome. Finally she settled in Ireland, where, according to a protestant libel, she took the black ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... Melville procured the Basilicon Doron in Manuscript, and circulated it in Scotland, which produced a libel against it and first caused its publication in 1599. This celebrated person was born in 1545, and was educated at the University of St. Andrews, which he left with an eminent character for learning, and travelled through France to Geneva. He was elected principal ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... the mouth, and to lament that good material had been marred in the making. "They wept," the organist said, "when they showed the coats and garments that Dorcas made, because they were so badly cut;" but this was a libel, for there were many excellent needlewomen in the society, and among the very best was ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... upon his house, which might mend his prospect, but it did not fill his barn." He made however a grateful return to the lord treasurer for this instance of patronage, by composing an answer to a popish libel, entitled "A Declaration of the true Causes of the late Troubles," in which he warmly vindicated the conduct of this minister, of his own father, and of other members of the administration; not forgetting to make a high eulogium on the talents and dispositions ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Gulliver's Travels an acute and illuminating little essay, contains one comment that gives an amusing revelation of his point of view. He says in regard to the fourth part of the story: "It is some consolation to remark that the fiction on which this libel on human nature rests is in every respect gross and improbable, and, far from being entitled to the praise due to the management of the first two parts, is inferior in plan even to the third."[196] This is a sound verdict, even if it does contain an extra-literary element. Scott surpassed ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... occur to us until after we had left the town, and therefore we failed to make inquiries as to how this gentleman was regarded by his fellow-citizens of Oxfordshire. In this connection, soon afterwards I saw an amusing report in the newspapers stating that a libel suit had been brought against a British magazine for having published an article in which the ex-boss was spoken of in an uncomplimentary manner. The report stated that the case had been settled, the magazine editor paying the legal costs and retracting what ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... from the husband. He was liable for all of her debts contracted before marriage, and this was the case, though he may have received no property with her. He was responsible for certain wrongs committed by her after marriage, such as libel and slander, and judgment could be recovered against him. If a wrong were committed jointly by both, action might be brought against the husband alone. When a judgment was recovered upon contract, or because of the wrongful act of ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson
... years he devoted himself chiefly to his profession. In this period he made many of his most famous law arguments, and acquired the enmity of the Prince Regent by his defense of Leigh Hunt, and his brother, in the case of their famous libel in "The Examiner." In 1816 he commenced those powerful and indefatigable efforts in behalf of education, by which he is perhaps best entitled to the gratitude of mankind. As chairman of the educational committee of forty, he ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... noble ends by noble means. I will not do that which my conscience tells me is wrong upon this occasion to gain the huzzas of thousands, or the daily praise of all the papers which come from the press; I will not avoid doing what I think is right, though it should draw on me the whole artillery of libel, all that falsehood and malice can invent or the credulity of a deluded populace can swallow. I can say, with a great magistrate, upon an occasion and under circumstances not unlike, "Ego hoc animo semper fui. ut invidiam virtute partam gloriam, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... old John Fox, upright, downright man as he was, should have inserted in his "Acts and Monuments" a libel like this, which contains no arguments except such as were adapted ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... situation that night and left town for good. The tailor came with his goose and a pair of shears; but he despised me, too, and departed for the South that night. The two lampooned citizens came with threats of libel, and went away incensed at my insignificance. The country editor pranced in with a warwhoop next day, suffering for blood to drink; but he ended by forgiving me cordially and inviting me down to the drug-store to wash away ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain
... and Mary this restriction was removed. Henceforth men were free not only to think, but to print and circulate their thought (subject, of course, to the law of libel and sedition). They could thus bring the government more directly before that bar of public opinion which judges all ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... stop, because error cannot stand agitation. Whoever espouses the cause of error must evade facts, falsify figures, libel logic, tangle his tongue or pen with contradictions and ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... of the commentators of Shakspeare have thought it incumbent on their gallantry to express their utter contempt for the scene between Richard and Lady Anne, as a monstrous and incredible libel on your sex? ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... offer their cheeks to the smiters, been held to be public enemies. Such scruples, however, never hampered the theocracy. Their justice was trammelled neither by judges, by juries, nor by laws; the petition was declared to be a seditious libel, and the petitioners were given their choice of disavowing their act and making ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... Mr. Justice Darling's Court without attracting a large attendance of the public, as much from expectation of being entertained by the repartees between Bench and Bar as from interest in the proceedings before the Court. In a recent turf libel case his lordship gave a free rein to his proclivity to give an amusing turn to statements of both counsel and witnesses. At one point he intervened by remarking that other witnesses than the one under examination had said ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... least provocation is liable to go off into a gangrene and drag one of the main generative, or even all the procreative, apparatus into the general wreck. Nature certainly never intended anything of the kind. To be generous, and not libel nature, we must conclude that the prepuce is a near relative to the fast-disappearing climbing-muscle; very useful in our primitive, arboreal days, when we needed such a muscle to reach our perch for the ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... makes it all the worse, because it proves that you have—or think you have—something against me. I don't know much about law, but it strikes me as something tremendously like libel. Don't you ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... unsolicited a special report of these facts to all subscribers on the agency's books who have ever at any time made inquiry concerning the firm. One might expect that these agencies expose themselves to risk of prosecution for libel, but since no malice is ever intended in any report circulated, and since it rarely occurs that damaging reports are sent out by these institutions unless abundantly confirmed, there is little opportunity ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... predilection be a burden to his interests. Where was the best opening for him? The Tories—I still prefer the name, as being without definite meaning; the direct falsehood implied in the title of Conservative amounts almost to a libel—the Tories were in; but from the fact of being in, were always liable to be turned out. Then, too, they were of course provided with attorneys and solicitors-general, lords-advocate and legal hangers-on of every sort. The coming chances might ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... the strange amiability of the master of the Works toward the man he had once threatened to break for libel. They had stood ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison |
