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Falsity   /fˈɔlsəti/   Listen
Falsity

noun
(pl. falsities)
1.
The state of being false or untrue.  Synonym: falseness.
2.
A false statement.  Synonyms: falsehood, untruth.






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"Falsity" Quotes from Famous Books



... disapproval, and came along with lack lustre eye. S. came down, too, just as I was wading in, to see me start, and in a few minutes I announced that a good fish had risen short at the small Killer. This was a timely falsity, as I wanted just then the opportunity of filling my pipe—not an easy thing to do knee-deep in water. By putting your rod over your right arm, and fixing the butt into your pocket, it may, however, ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... last aim I had pleasure. With me it was a difficult and anxious time till my facts were found, selected, and properly jointed; nor could I rest from research and effort till I was satisfied of correct anatomy; the strength of my inward repugnance to the idea of flaw or falsity sometimes enabled me to shun egregious blunders; but the knowledge was not there in my head, ready and mellow; it had not been sown in Spring, grown in Summer, harvested in Autumn, and garnered through Winter; whatever I wanted I must go out and gather ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... inconceivable. Even in the case of the Sun the motion represents over twenty-five million miles per hour, and the apparent motion of the Stars is thousands of times faster than Light travels. These insuperable difficulties were not swept away until, by the advance of Knowledge, the falsity of Conception, based only upon appearance, was made manifest, and it was seen that it was the Earth which revolved and not the Stars. Even then, owing to its supposed antagonism to what was stated in the Bible, the new Conception was opposed with great bitterness, it being long looked upon ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein

... over him in these days the conviction of some similarity between his work and the thin, clear, clever brush-work of Allaire—with all its mastery of ways and means, all its triumph over technical difficulties, all its tricks and subtle appeals, and its falsity, and its glamour. ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... capable of choosing the worst style of wall-paper become suddenly afflicted by its ugliness under an attack of illness. And if an evil state of blood and lymph usually goes along with an evil state of mind, who shall say that the ugliness of our streets, the falsity of our ornamentation, the vulgarity of our upholstery, have not something to do with those bad tempers ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... matter, in order to see if the form is good, and then if each premiss is either admitted or proved by another argument of like force, until one is able to make do with admitted premisses alone? Now if there is such an objection against our thesis we must say that the falsity of this thesis is demonstrated, and that it is impossible for us to have reasons sufficient to prove it; otherwise two contradictories would be true at once. One must always yield to proofs, whether they be proposed in positive form or advanced in the shape of objections. And it ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... experience demonstrates the fallibility of majorities. It palpably exhibits, too, the danger as well as the folly of presuming the unpopularity of certain speculative opinions an evidence of their falsity. A public intellect, untainted by gross superstition, can nowhere be appealed to. Even in this favoured country, 'the envy of surrounding nations and admiration of the world,' the multitude are anything but ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... employed either on the fort or in the Quartermaster's Department, and put on board. Amid the farewells and benedictions of hundreds of their friends on shore they took their departure, to prove the truth or falsity of the charge, 'The black man can never fight.' On calling the roll, a few miles from port, it was found our twenty-five men had increased to fifty-four. Determined not to be foiled in their purpose of being soldiers, it was found that thirty men had quietly found their way on board just ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... painters have power to dare, I mean to dare to do whatever they may approve of; and this good insight and this power they have always had, for whenever a great painter (which very seldom happens) does a work which appears to be false and lying, that falsity is very true, and if he were to put more truth into it it would be a lie, as he will never do a thing which cannot be in itself, nor make a man's hand with ten fingers, nor paint on a horse the ears of a bull or the hump of a camel, nor will he paint ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd

... you for your silence—I would not have heard your tongue avow such falsity; be't your punishment to remember that I ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan

... Predication, according to the well-known remark of Leibnitz, and the avowal of Hobbes himself,(32) renders truth and falsity completely arbitrary, with no standard but the will of men, it must not be concluded that either Hobbes, or any of the other thinkers who have in the main agreed with him, did in fact consider the distinction between truth and error as ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... Hilton again took mental note. Presently he asked a question, but in such a tone that the Doctor pricked up his ears. There was a premeditated self-suppression, a gravity of restraint, which implied some falsity; some intention other than ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... however, that Mr. Ames had made an early morning call on his London bankers, and had immediately dispatched his reply. Morgan was glad that it had arrived at this opportune moment. With Murphy to testify that Marsh had claimed Ames as a friend, and with this cablegram to prove the falsity of the claim, he had at least one unanswerable piece of evidence of a suspicious nature to warrant his proposed ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne

... indisputable that outbreaks of self-abasement and emotional revival have a distinct relation to periods of scarcity. But apart from this influence on the feelings, there was in Hill a distinct aversion to falsity that the blasphemous Landport cobbler had inculcated by strap and tongue from his earliest years. Of one fact about professed atheists I am convinced; they may be—they usually are—fools, void of subtlety, revilers of holy institutions, brutal speakers, and mischievous knaves, but ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... For the perverted Russian all is possible; it is indeed his favourite maxim, borrowed, he thinks, from Nietzsche, that 'all is permitted,' and by 'all' he means all abomination, all fearful and unheard-of bestiality, all cruelty, all falsity, all debauch.... Selfish as it is possible to be, crass, heavy, ugly, unfaithful in marriage, unclean, impure, incapable apparently of understanding the good and the true in their neighbours and in life—such is the ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... complex feeling Isabel Penny might have for her husband, Caroline's frank desire for David Forsythe, Myrtle's meagre emotion, Fanny Gilkan's sense of Hesa and life's necessary compromises, his own collapse—all were alike called love. It was not only a useless word but a dangerous falsity. It had without question cloaked immense harm, pretence; it had perpetuated old lies, brought them plausibly, as if in a distinguished and reputable company, out of past superstitions and credulity; the real and the meaningless, the good ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... necessary to expose this falsity in its crude and most violent forms. For we may find it expressed in an almost academic way, with philosophical aloofness, a show of nice reasoning, and a kind of Epicurean sweetness in a Romanes lecture delivered by Mr. Arthur James Balfour and published under the title Criticism ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... think he has no standing of consequence; I think his teaching is the most active ferment in the economic thought of to-day. We may be both mistaken, but whether we are or not cuts no figure in the truth or falsity of the Single Tax. But it is worth while to point out that the reason you have given for his lack of "standing" lends neither weight nor force to your argument. "Because," you say, "his teachings are violative ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... The one door to admit this formal notion was hard to open; and when admitted, the figure was not easy to set up so that it could be looked at. The human niche where the idea of a God must stand, was in Richard's house occupied by the most hideous falsity. On the pedestal crouched the goblin of ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... was interrupted by somebody calling them out of the room; and I could not help making some reflections on what had passed. How dreadful a crime, thought I, is lying and falsity; to what sad mortifications does it subject the person who is ever wicked enough to commit it; and how does it expose them to the contempt of everyone, and make them to be suspected of faults they are even perfectly free from. Little Hetty now is innocent, with respect ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner

... I'm their servant—their valet," said Aaron to himself, and a curious half-amused, half-contemptuous look flickered on his face. It annoyed him. The falsity occasioned by the difference in the price of the tickets was really humiliating. Aaron had lived long enough to know that as far as manhood and intellect went—nay, even education—he was not the inferior ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... brother Quintus, who had espoused the cause of the augurs, he combats and defeats his false reasonings with a force, and at the same time with so refined and delicate a raillery, as leaves us nothing to wish; and he demonstrates by proofs, each more convincing than the other, the falsity, contrariety, and impossibility of that art. But what is very surprising, in the midst of all his arguments, he takes occasion to blame the generals and magistrates, who on important conjunctures had contemned the prognostics; and maintains, that the use of them, as great an abuse as it was in his ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... it seem worth while to dwell upon these exaggerations and untruths? Was it necessary to go through the mortality records of a nation for more than half a century merely to prove the falsity of a single laboratory claim? I think so. These are not ordinary blunders or trivial mistakes. They are affirmations made in opposition to the slightest step toward reform of great abuses, by honoured and distinguished writers; by men who are regarded as absolutely ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... attention to certain anatomical details of the figure. Finally, with much sense, he pointed out that the Council would be mad to come to any decision upon such evidence, or to give faith to prophecies, whereof the truth or falsity could only be known ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard

... inquired, "that I am a Monteagle, and have implanted in me that pride and temper which can illy condone, even in those they love, deceit and falsity? Have no fears for me," he added, advancing with a determined ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley

... considered a good theory regarding Petrak's presence outside my door. It occurred to me that Meeker was the author of the false message, and that he was really on his way to visit me to learn if I had discovered the falsity of it when he met me rushing down the stairs. But he had sent Petrak ahead of him to listen at the door in case I telephoned the company to verify the first message; Petrak had heard me ask the company for the sailing time and was about to report to Meeker when I opened the ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore

... it: as, for instance, when the four hundred imposed upon the people by telling them that the king of Persia would supply them with money for the war against the Lacedaemonians; and after they had been guilty of this falsity, they endeavoured to keep possession of the supreme power; or when they are at first persuaded and afterwards consent to be governed: and by one of these methods which I have mentioned are all revolutions in governments ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle

... died, brooding over the emptiness of his great triumph. His son the Black Prince had died, cursing the falsity of Frenchmen. England also had gone through the great tragedy of the Black Death and her people, like those of France, had been driven to the point of rebellion—though with them this meant no more than that they felt ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... gave the case to the detectives, and set the machinery of publicity at work. Both were acting quite within their rights, both were fulfilling an official duty. Hilary, however, had been forced against his grain into the position, almost, of Northwick's protector; he had suffered keenly from the falsity of this position, for no one despised the sort of man Northwick was more than he; but when you have suffered, even for a rogue, you begin to feel some kindness for him. All these blows fell upon his growing sympathy for the poor devil, as he called him. ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... latter, and very few were designed only to amuse a child. It seems as if all concerned were bent on unbending themselves, careful to offer grains of truth to young minds with an occasional terrible falsity of their attitude; indeed, its satire and profound analysis make it superfluous to reopen the subject. As one might expect, the literature, "genteel" and dull, naturally desired pictures in the same key. The art of even the better class of children's books was satisfied if it succeeded ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White

... souls, or at least cannot attain to the highest heaven possible for man. The former statement has been vulgarly attributed to the Moslem creed, but with utter falsity. A pious and aged female disciple once asked Mohammed concerning her future condition in heaven. The prophet replied, "There will not be any old women in heaven." She wept and bewailed her fate, but was comforted upon the gracious assurance from the prophet's lips, "They ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... masters to instruct their slaves created a strong bond of union between them and their masters.[1] History, he believed, showed that the direct way of exposing the slaves to acts of insubordination was to leave them in ignorance and superstition to the care of their own religion.[2] To disprove the falsity of the charge that literary instruction given in Neau's school in New York was the cause of a rising of slaves in 1709, he produced evidence that it was due to their opposition to becoming Christians. The rebellions in South Carolina from ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson

... their niece, wrote letter after letter to the King of Navarre, urging him to bring with him his brother the Prince of Conde to clear himself of the accusations brought against him "by these miserable heretics, who made marvellous charges against him. . . . Conde would easily prove the falsity of the assertions made by these rascals." The King of Navarre still hesitated; the king insisted haughtily. "I should be sorry," he wrote on the 30th of August, 1560, "that into the heart of a person of such good family, and one that touches me so nearly, so miserable an inclination should have ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... them and attached them to a spot in the carpet as if he were making a strong effort to say nothing but what he ought. He was a strong man in the wrong, and he was acute enough to see that an uncompromising exhibition of his strength would only throw the falsity of his position into relief. Isabel was not incapable of tasting any advantage of position over a person of this quality, and though little desirous to flaunt it in his face she could enjoy being able to say "You know you oughtn't to have written to me ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... intensified as he saw the self-sacrificing devotion with which she earned enough by her spinning to enable him to continue his schooling. At the age of fifteen he was married, and on the bride's arrival the falsity of the middleman through whom the engagement had been long ago contracted was revealed, for the bride was a helpless cripple and a serious burden on ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable

... this council omitted from the list of councils acknowledged to be general that held at Constantinople in 381, it likewise proclaimed the falsity of the ground alleged in the canon passed in that council, which gave to Constantinople the second rank in the episcopate because it was New Rome, which canon again was enlarged by the attempt at the Council of Chalcedon to put upon the world the positive falsehood asserted in the rejected ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... "I could persuade Sir Winterton to give Mr. Quisante a private assurance that the scandal is entirely baseless, would Mr. Quisante state publicly that he was convinced of its falsity and did not wish it to influence the electors ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... its falsity, I have reproduced in this paper plates taken from leading American and English fashion monthlies during the past three decades, in each of which it is noticeable that extremes have been reached. In 1860-65, the hoop-skirt held sway, and the wasp waist was typical of beauty. Then no lady was ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... is proved by the fact that all such gain rests on good fortune. The falsity is shown by the opinions of almost all the doctors ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... I shall be accused, I suppose, of saying that no event in war can ever occur which may not be foreseen and provided for. To prove the falsity of this accusation, it is sufficient for me to cite the surprises of Cremona, Berg-op-zoom, and Hochkirch. I am still of the opinion, however, that such events even as these might always have been anticipated, ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... Mr. Cabell's stories, read his Beyond Life, which explains his theory of romance. He maintains that art should be based on the dream of life as it should be, not as it is; that enduring literature is not "reportorial work"; that there is vital falsity in being true to life because "facts out of relation to the rest of life become lies," and that art therefore "must become more or ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert

... fearing to get into trouble with the government. He then pushed on to confer with the Pottawatomi, who had a village at Sycamore Creek about forty miles farther on. Here he found similar conditions; also he learned the falsity of the story that he could get aid from ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... all this was false. When the minstrel troupe arrived, hundreds were at the depot. Alfred was one of the first to leave the train. The officers and many others were aware of the falsity of the published statement, but hundreds were ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... among his countrymen, enemies who were in a position to discover the truth, his statements passed unchallenged and uncontradicted by them,—that the numerous adventurers and explorers who followed in his track, instead of exposing the falsity of his relations and descriptions, found their interest in embellishing the narrative,—that a similar drama was performed by other actors and on a different stage,—that the Peruvian civilization, so analogous to that of the Aztecs and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... as, "Amos, the herdsman of Tekoa, was not a prophet's son."—"It is the king's chapel, and it is the king's court."—Amos, vii, 13. How ignorant then must that person be, who cannot see the falsity of the instructions above cited! How careless the reader ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... irresponsible anti-imperialists, of using his public office to promote his private interests. Near the end of his administration grossly and absurdly false charges were made against him on the floor of the House by Representative William A. Jones. As their falsity has been conclusively and finally shown, [480] I will not here lend importance to them by repeating them. No official has ever given any country a cleaner administration than Governor-General Forbes gave ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... however," with a bow to Jack, "been good enough to accept my explanation and apologies, and I therefore venture to hope that we may now consider the incident as closed. But Senor Singleton insists— quite justifiably, I think—that we shall satisfy ourselves as to the falsity of the statement that he is carrying munitions of war; and I have therefore sent for you to accompany me on a tour of inspection through this yacht, which we must make so thorough that there shall be no possibility of any aspersions being ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... mind responsive to the more systematic philosophy of Comte. Bray had taught her, along with Kant, to regard all knowledge as subjective, while Hennell and her other friends had shown her the objective falsity of Christianity. Thus her mind was made ready for Feuerbach's leading principle, that all religion is a product of the mind and has no outward reality corresponding to its doctrines. According to Feuerbach, the mind creates for itself objective images corresponding to its subjective states, ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... usually depends far less on the truth of the premises than on the validity of the reasoning. And the premises selected by Calvin not only seemed natural to a large body of educated European opinion of his time, but were such that their truth or falsity was very difficult to demonstrate convincingly. Calvin's system has been overthrown not by direct attack, but by the flank, in science as in war the most effective way. To take but one example out of many that might be given: what has modern criticism made of ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... for solution. Agnosticism, the foreboding silence of those who think, socialism, communism, and nihilism, the petulant cry of those who do not, alike depend ultimately for the right to be upon the truth or the falsity of the ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... were always a friend so true and steadfast. How happy we were in those dear old days—you, and Inez, and I! Ah, Inez—Inez! She died in her sweet innocence, loving and beloved—died by violence; but she never lived to suffer from the falsity of those she loved! Well, she is in ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask

... that is indecent; it is the beholder's own thought, inference, distorted construction. True modesty is one of the most precious of attributes, even virtues, but in nothing is there more pretense, more falsity, than the needless assumption of it. Through precept and consciousness, man has long enough realized how bad he is. I would not so much disturb or demolish that conviction, only to resume and keep unerringly with it the spinal meaning of the Scriptural text, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... every idle rumour; but this has been so confidently and so long asserted that it would be a satisfaction to me to be able to declare its falsity as a fact, from your authority. I did indeed at once declare my utter unbelief; but then this has only the weight of my opinion; though an opinion resting I think on no insufficient grounds. I did not profess to rest my disbelief on our long, intimate, and confidential friendship, which ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... common feet. Nevertheless" (and here the Young Fogey put on his most judicial manner) "the extra inches must tell. For because real ethics resides not in rules but in principles, obedience to the letter may mean falsity to the spirit, if the circumstances that dictated the rules have changed. This is not casuistry. 'T is a concept not to be found in Panaetius or Cicero or the Jesuit Fathers. It means that we are not to wear our boyhood's waistcoats, but to be measured for manhood's. Tight-lacing is bad for the spiritual ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... fortunately unreal only in the sense that they stand for nothing rational or in line with the proper and natural processes of human life. They are false, and the mind spontaneously reacts against falsity and denies it. But here are half a million (or some say, a million) men every year who suffer actual and real misery from this falsity, and many of whom die of it; that is the tragedy of the farce. And the fact that this falsity, prison, exists among us and has legal standing ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... that ostriches wear boots by the straps of which they lift themselves over ten-foot woven-wire fences. But Lyly used the conventional natural history that was at hand, and troubled himself in no respect to inquire about its truth or falsity. ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... consideration in giving it its true weight; but in the case I am about to relate there was nothing but the appearance and manner of the witnesses testifying upon which to base a judgment of their truth or falsity, and it was this novel feature that lent additional and ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... of his daughter's lover, returned a cordial assent to my proposal for her hand. Thus far every thing had gone on as smoothly as a summer sea. We smiled sometimes together at the carping adage, 'The course of true love never did run smooth,' and referred to our own case as a signal instance of its falsity. ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur

... her insincerity in this instance, and of the falsity of her professions, put an end to all her further hopes regarding the gallant young Irishman, who could not tolerate a falsehood in any body, but especially in a lady, and who ever after avoided her society as much as possible. His presence, however, in ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... the priest, 'how dare you tell me a falsity,' says he, 'to my face? how could he gallop acrass you if you were far before him? Not a word more, or I'll leave you without a mouth to your face, which will be a double share of provision and bacon saved any way. And, Flanagan, ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... twain makes one flesh approves itself, in all experience, to be greatly stronger and more engrossing than that which attaches the child to the parent; and while we see the unnatural Chinese law making the weaker traverse and overrule the stronger affection, and thus demonstrating its own falsity, we find the law of Christ exquisitely concerting with the nature which Christ gave, and thus establishing its own truth. Now, regarding the commission of the minister of the gospel,' he continued, 'I put a similar question ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... of love and the opera—no tragedies had been written in Italy which deserved to be compared with the great dramas of France, Spain, and England. Indeed, it had been said that tragedy was not adapted to the Italian tongue or character. It remained for Alfieri to prove the falsity of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... got materials towards a treatise proving the falsity of that definition animal rationale, and to show it should be only rationis capax.... The matter is so clear that it will admit of no dispute—nay, I will hold a hundred pounds that you and I agree in ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... must work for speedy results only." Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam. I then accepted the doctrine, in profound obedience to the absolutely infallible system of precepts. I now see that the falsity and mischief of the doctrine is one of the very many disproofs of the assumed, but unverified infallibility. However, the hold which the apostolic belief then took of me, subjected my conscience to the exhortations of the Irish clergyman, ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... them, prize them, and use them. Study the Bible for the sake of its wonderful and sacred truth, catch the inspiration of its writers, and you will soon discriminate the inspired from the uninspired. With the statements of the true is necessarily more or less error; the Truth we want, the falsity we leave behind. Whatever is good and pure and ennobling is of God; whatever is evil, erroneous, degrading, is from man's ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson

... strange that he makes no noise,' said Mrs. Heddegan, convicting the girl of falsity by ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... spiritual understanding. The highest prayer 16:3 is not one of faith merely; it is demonstra- tion. Such prayer heals sickness, and must destroy sin and death. It distinguishes between Truth 16:6 that is sinless and the falsity of ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... had gone, I suppose, and my brain had been very active the while, when something occurred to me which placed a new complexion upon this second summons. I thought of the falsity of the first, of the improbability of even the most hardened practical joker practising his wiles at one o'clock in the morning. I thought of our recent conversation; above all I thought of the girl who had delivered the message to Eltham, the girl whom he had described as a French ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... The exaggeration is unnecessary, for there is enough community of lot suggested in the sternest scientific record to constitute a natural basis for sympathy on the part of the human animal. Without any falsity of presentation whatever, the nature story may be counted on as a help in the beginnings of culture of the sympathies. It is not, of course, a help confined to the powers of the nature story; all types of story share in some ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant

... and have been opposed by the most religious sections of society. What religion has done for the world we know; what freethought will do we can only guess. But we are confident that as honesty is possible without the falsity of religion, as duty may be done with no other incentive than its visible consequences on the people around us, so life may be lived in honour and closed in peace with no other inspiration than comes from the contemplation of the human stream ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... My one hope of the world, my inexpugnable consolation in looking at the miseries of the world, is that this is altering. Here and there one does now find a man who knows, as of old, that this world is a Truth, and no Plausibility and Falsity; that he himself is alive, not dead or paralytic; and that the world is alive, instinct with Godhood, beautiful and awful, even as in the beginning of days! One man once knowing this, many men, all men, must by and by come to know it. It lies there ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... wasn't to me—sure I didn't say it was—but don't you know my sister's at sarvice in the Bodagh's family? Divil the word o' falsity I'm tellin' you; so, if you haven't the heart to spake for yourself, I wouldn't give knots o' straws for you; and now, there's no harm done I hope—moreover, an' by the same token, you needn't go to the trouble o' puttin' up an advertisement ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... anarchist is a criminal whose perverted instincts lead him to prefer confusion and chaos to the most beneficent form of social order. His protest of concern for workingmen is outrageous in its impudent falsity; for if the political institutions of this country do not afford opportunity to every honest and intelligent son of toil, then the door of hope is forever closed against him. The anarchist is everywhere not merely the enemy of system and of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... that go to her return again, neither take they hold of the paths of life.'"[57] This hazardous and immoral mode of treatment is the result of the common opinion that emissions are necessary and natural, which we have previously shown to be a falsity. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg

... dying scene at Missolonghi—the sufferer's inability to make his farewell messages of love intelligible, and the last long hours of silent pain? Yet for the sake of furnishing his disciples with a "ready reply," Dr. Cumming can prevail on himself to inoculate them with a bad-spirited falsity ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... Saxon-man, if he cannot work on these terms, finds no work. The uncivilised Irishman, not by his strength, but by the opposite of strength, drives the Saxon native out, takes possession in his room. There abides he, in his squalor and unreason, in his falsity and drunken violence, as the ready-made nucleus of degradation and disorder. Whoever struggles, swimming with difficulty, may now find an example how the human being can exist not swimming, but sunk. That the condition of the lower multitude ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... investigations. In the first field he was in a part of his work connected with the Hemenway Archaeological Expedition and in the second worked for Henry Villard of New York, and for the American Museum of Natural History of the same city. Bandelier has shown the falsity of various historical myths, notably in his conclusions respecting the Inca civilization of Peru. His publications include: three studies "On the Art of War and Mode of Warfare of the Ancient Mexicans," "On the Distribution and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... demonstration of his opinions, and another would follow quickly, doing the same. In this way, I learned that, regardless of what his specialty might be, every man in the party was a musician. I was at the same time impressed with the falsity of the general idea that Frenchmen are excitable and emotional, and that Germans are calm and phlegmatic. Frenchmen are merely gay and never overwhelmed by their emotions. When they talk loud and fast, it is merely talk, while Germans get worked ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson

... well-thumbed copies of his book passed from hand to hand in many a rural tavern or store, where the village atheist wrestled in debate with the deacon or the school-master. Paine rested his argument against Christianity upon the familiar grounds of the incredibility of miracles, the falsity of prophecy, the cruelty or immorality of Moses and David and other Old Testament worthies, the disagreement of the evangelists in their gospels, etc. The spirit of his book and his competence as a critic are illustrated by ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... in order to defend their unrighteous systems, charge him with having a devil, but he also knew that for the same purpose men would charge him with having connections with such systems; therefore he said, to uncloak the falsity of such charges, "Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not." Mat. 24:26. Jesus gives commandment to preach upon the housetop what ye hear in the ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... Proof.- Falsity consists solely in the privation of knowledge which inadequate ideas involve (II:xxxv.), nor have they any positive quality on account of which they are called false (II:xxxiii.); contrariwise, in so far as they are referred to God, they are true (II:xxxii.). Wherefore, if the positive quality ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza

... handkerchief and mopped his face. His manner was that of a man who, having heard bad news, has just been assured of its falsity. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... of domestic life are littleness, falsity, vulgarity, harshness, scolding vociferation, an incessant issuing of superfluous prohibitions and orders, which are regarded as impertinent interferences with the general liberty and repose, and are provocative of rankling ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... then, that beauty is an illusion? Certainly it is no falsity; we may call it provisional truth,—truth at a certain stage, as appearance, not yet as idea. It is appearance seen as final, as the highest the mind has reached. Hence its miraculousness. It is in advance of consciousness; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... fame so dear to thee, poor, youthful fool?" said he. "Aye me! doubt not her falsity shall break thy heart some day and ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... falsity of this was thrown away. Ice and iron cannot be welded; and the points of view of the Justice-Clerk and Mrs. Weir were not less unassimilable. The character and position of his father had long been a stumbling-block ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... astray, it seems to me, by his desire to present his argument antithetically (using the term in its logical sense). What he really wished to prove was not so much the truth of the proposition that he was then advancing, but the falsity of quite another proposition. The question for him, the question which he had in his mind, was as follows: Is the people capable of governing the state, of taking measures beforehand, and of understanding and solving the difficulties of home and foreign affairs? By no means. Then ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... a young man in good health, and you will, in all probability, live long enough to assure yourself of the truth or falsity of what I have told you about my indefinite longevity. I should be glad to relate my story to scientific men, to physicians, to students; but, as I have said, we shall wait for that. In the meantime, you may, if you choose, write down what I have told you, ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton

... "a sceptical century and a godless," according to Carlyle's deliberate estimate, "opulent in accumulated falsities, as never century before was; which had no longer the consciousness of being false, so false has it grown; so steeped in falsity, and impregnated with it to the very bone, that, in fact, the measure of the thing was full, and a French Revolution had to end it"; which it did only symbolically, however, as he afterwards admitted, and but admonitorily of a doomsday ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... the room vibrated in the frequencies of a deep bass laugh. "You are trying to hold a completely untenable position, friend Hilton. Any attempt to convince a mind of real power that falsity is truth is illogical. My advice is for you ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... have already promoted the general good, I will here mention the fruits that may be gathered from my Principles. The first is the satisfaction which the mind will experience on finding in the work many truths before unknown; for although frequently truth does not so greatly affect our imagination as falsity and fiction, because it seems less wonderful and is more simple, yet the gratification it affords is always more durable and solid. The second fruit is, that in studying these principles we will become accustomed by degrees to ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes

... True, the falsity of an extra-judicial oath, carries with it no temporal punishment; but the moral obligation remains to give it validity. That eternal reward or punishment which the Citizen has taken so much ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector

... of his innocence long since established the falsity of the charge, except in the minds of those who seem to delight only in that which dispoils the character ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams

... statements of the same points he had made in the confessional and in his sermon. They contained no assault upon the Church, no arraignment of the pope, no personal attack on any one. Neither were they given as necessarily true, but as what Luther believed to be true, and the real truth or falsity of which he desired to have decided in the only way questions of faith and salvation can be ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss

... have doubtless found out by this time the falsity of the saying. To show the feeling prevailing in Spain, it may be well to quote a Madrid ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall

... rises, like the virtuous woman, while it is yet night, and brings down on his devoted head the anathemas of various students by commencing his day's sawing under their windows at the moderately early hour of one A.M. He is a living proof of the utter and irreclaimable falsity of ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park

... Herodotus, was careful to avoid debt. He had a keen sense of the difficulty with which a debtor escapes subterfuge and equivocation—forms, slightly disguised, of lying. To buy and sell wares in a market place, to chaffer and haggle over prices, was distasteful to him, as apt to involve falsity and unfairness. He was free and open in speech, bold in act, generous, warm-hearted, hospitable. His chief faults were an addiction to self-indulgence and luxury, a passionate abandon to the feeling of the hour, whatever that might happen to be; and a tameness and subservience ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson

... be alone. What soft, helpless creatures they are!—even when intellectually they fly far ahead of us. If she would but put her hand in mine I would so serve and worship her, she would have no need for these strange things she does—the doublings and ruses of the persecuted." Thus the touches of falsity that repelled Wilfrid Bury were to Delafield's passion merely the stains of rough travel on a ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... What God knows, He also predestinates; and it must be fulfilled. Jesus proved to perfection, so far as this could be done in that age, what Christian Science is to-day proving in a small degree,—the falsity of the evidence of the material senses that sin, sickness, and death are sensible claims, and that God substantiates their evidence by knowing their claim. He established the only true idealism on the basis that God is All, and He is good, and good ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy

... been only within the last ten years, and as the sequel of investigations of the seat of life beginning in 1835, that I succeeded in ascertaining the absolute falsity of the doctrines on this subject maintained by all scientific biologists at the present time, and demonstrating that the human body is only a tenement, of which life is the builder, and which drops into decay ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various

... for, though, as the said Warren Hastings himself has observed on another occasion, "papers may be forged, and evidences may appear in numbers to attest them, yet it must always be an easy matter to detect the falsity of any forged paper produced by examining the witnesses separately, and subjecting them to a subsequent cross-examination, in which case, if false, they will not be able to persevere in one regular, consistent story "; whereas, if no advantage be taken of such particularity in the charge to ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... has been forgotten by me, and no feature of our intercourse fits the language you have ascribed to her. On the contrary, there is a lamentable contradiction between facts as they were and the fancies you have made her indulge in. And this, as you must acknowledge, not only proves their falsity, but exonerates Miss Challoner from all possible charge ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green

... Pragmatism is its account of the relation called 'truth' which may obtain between an idea (opinion, belief, statement, or what not) and its object. 'Truth,' I there say, 'is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality. Pragmatists and intellectualists both accept this definition as ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James

... the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various



Words linked to "Falsity" :   dodging, misrepresentation, lie, unreality, untruth, falsify, falsehood, false, deception, prevarication, dodge, scheme, fiction, spuriousness, contradiction in terms, truth, falseness, statement, contradiction, fable, deceit, irreality, fabrication



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