"Libel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... suspected of 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 ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... principle, if a set of pickpockets at the Five Points should choose to mystify their trade a little by including the term 'to filch' the literal borrowing of a pocket-handkerchief, it would not be a libel to accuse a citizen of 'filching his ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... sting into a poisonous libel And on the honor of—oh God!—his wife, The nearest, dearest part of all men's honor, Left a base slur to pass from month to mouth, Of loose mechanics with all foul comments, Of villainous jests and blasphemies obscene; While sneering nobles in more polished ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... he was at that time the editor, on the first appearance of Peter Simple, in order, among other things, to disclaim the authorship of a work entitled the Port Admiral, which contained "an infamous libel upon one of our most distinguished officers deceased, and upon the service in general." It repudiates, without explaining away, certain unpleasant impressions that even the careful reader of to-day cannot entirely ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... budding childhood has become blooming womanhood. Now, if ever, must be laid the foundation of physical vigor and of a healthy body. Girls should realize the significance of this fact. Do not get the idea that men admire a weakly, puny, delicate, small-waisted, languid, doll-like creature, a libel on true womanhood. Girls admire men with broad chests, square shoulders, erect form, keen bright eyes, hard muscles and undoubted vigor. Men also turn naturally to healthy, robust, well-developed ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... isn't he?" remarked Dud, sarcastically. "Well, first of all, I'll get the date of the occurrence and then search the files of all the city papers. The reporters usually get such matters pretty straight. To misstate such business troubles is skating on the thin ice of libel, ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... quite a libel to call this beautiful creature a hyena. He has neither the ugly form, the harsh pelage, the dull colour, nor the filthy habits of one. Call him a "wolf," or "wild dog," if you please, but he is ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... too glad to be able in any way to share your burdens, and if I can act as a lightning conductor, so much the better.... Of course, if you were quite clear that you ought to go into the box, it is still possible to do so, either by action for libel or probably by intervention of ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... Giles Mompesson. "To the first—vague and general accusations brought against me and my co-patentee, by this branded traitor, who, having been publicly punished for falsehood and libel, cannot be received as a witness, I have deigned no answer, conceiving such accusations cannot be for a moment entertained by you, most gracious Prince. But to this specific charge, I give a flat denial; ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... to him, with the intention of going straight to my solicitors and instituting proceedings against him for talking like a fool; and he put on his hat and went across to his solicitors to commence proceedings against me for libel. ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... not those who read the records of many distinguished, nay, many illustrious lives, imagine, that, because men of genius have too often cherished the perilous habit of seeking consolation or inspiration from what it is a libel on Nature to call "the social glass," it is therefore reasonable or excusable, or can ever be innocuous. Talfourd may gloss it over in Lamb, as averting a vision terrible; Seattle may deplore it in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... if Antony were forgotten, clean wiped from her mind. The whole scene is a libel upon Cleopatra and upon womanhood. When betrayed, women are faithless out of anger, pique, desire of revenge; they are faithless out of fear, out of ambition, for fancy's sake—for fifty motives, but not without motive. It would have ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... did ye—ran into Her Majesty's dock, and ye had room enough to turn a fleet in! Do you think we paint these docks for the fun of havin' you lubbers scrape it off? You'll pay for paintin' it over, sir—that's what you'll do, or I'll libel your boat, and send a file of marines down and tie her up,' and away he went up the ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... will appeal to you," Cried young Guy Semple, as I entered. "We Have been discussing right before his face, All unrebuked by him, as you may see, A poem lately published by our friend: And we are quite divided. I contend The poem is a libel and untrue. I hold the fickle women are but few, Compared with those who are like yon fair moon That, ever faithful, rises in her place Whether she's greeted by the flowers of June Or cold and dreary ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... advice—for what it may be worth. I should say—as you have asked my opinion—have nothing whatever to do with the matter! If anybody else brings you anonymous letters, tell them something of the law of libel—and something too of the guilt of slander! After all, with a little good will, these are matters that are as easily quelled as raised. A charge so preposterous has only to be firmly met to die away. ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in six Familiar Epistles was published in Dublin. So cruel and venomous were these epistles that one actor, Edwin, is believed to have died of chagrin at the attack upon his reputation. An answer to the libel presently appeared, which was signed S. O., and has been generally attributed to Sydney Owenson. The Familiar Epistles were believed to be the work of John Wilson Croker, then young and unknown, and it may be that the lifelong malignity with which that ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... more anxious to make a splendid figure in public, than to secure, by watchful activity, the interests of his clients. Why, then, was such a man retained in the cause? 'Twas a fancy of Quirk's, a vast political admirer of Quicksilver's, who had made one or two most splendid speeches for him in libel cases brought against the Sunday Flash. Gammon most earnestly expostulated, but Quirk was inexorable; and himself carried his retainer to Mr. Quicksilver. Gammon, however, was somewhat consoled by the reflection, that this wild elephant would be, in a manner, held in check by ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... Roman speech, it pronounces that a poniard is the last resource of Rome to rescue herself from a dictator. It asks, is it from a Corsican that a Frenchman must receive his chains? was it to crown a traitor that France had punished her kings? In another, a libel, which traced the rise of Bonaparte, and charged him with the intention of assuming imperial power, concluded in these words:—"Carried on the shield, let him be elected emperor; finally, (and Romulus recalls the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... defiled Coleridge, who was—and you had always known it—"little better than a rogue." One's Tory dinner was the more toothsome for the hot abuse of the Chaldee Manuscript. What stout Tory, indeed, would doze of an evening on such a sheet! There followed of course cases of libel. The editors even found it safer, after the publication of the first number, to retire for a time to the country ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... antiquities, and grouth of the classical and warrelike shipping of this Island: as namely, first of the great nauie of that victorious Saxon prince king Edgar, mentioned by Florentius Wigorniensis, Roger Houeden, Rainulph of Chester, Matthew of Westminster, Flores historiarum, & in the libel of English policie, pag. 224. and 225. of this present volume. [Footnote: Original edition.] Of which Authors some affirme the sayd fleet to haue consisted of 4800. others of 4000. some others of 3600. ships: howbeit ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... regarded greatly interfered with a just and natural estimate of their guilt...As among ourselves, the intent to murder was distinguished by Plato from actual murder...We note that both in Plato and the laws of Athens, libel in the market-place and personality in the theatre were forbidden...Both in Plato and Athenian law, as in modern times, the accomplice of a crime is to be punished as well as the principal...Plato does not allow a witness in a cause to act as a judge of it...Oaths are not to be taken ...
— Laws • Plato
... severe pains and penalties; and looking at the character and mischievous tendency of The Hanover Rat, I am curious to know if Mary Cooper, the publisher, was put under surveillance for her share in its production; for to me it appears a more aggravated libel upon the reigning family than that of the Norfolk Prophecy—for the publication of which, Boswell says, the great Samuel Johnson had to play at hide and seek with the officers ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... have been told about this man for forty years. The lies that have been told about him are legion. The fellows used to say he was the "Iron Mask"; and poor George Pons went to his grave in the belief that this was the author of "Junius," who was being punished for his celebrated libel on Thomas Jefferson. Pons was not very strong in the historical line. A happier story than either of these I have told is of the War. That came along soon after. I have heard this affair told in three or four ways,—and, indeed, it may have happened more than once. But which ship it was on I ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... the Minister of Prussia, M. Thulemeyer, has again visited the Deputies of the eighteen cities of Holland, to inform them of a Memorial, which he has presented to their High Mightinesses against a certain libel, in which, among other calumnies, is an insinuation, that the Princess attempted to imitate the conduct of a certain Empress ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... beyond that line of sensible demarcation which can only be transgressed by the most popular of rulers under very exceptional circumstances. Seven bishops refused to comply with the Royal Command. They were accused of "seditious libel." They were brought before a court. The jury which pronounced the verdict of "not guilty" reaped a rich harvest of ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... and fierce people, the Scythians of Britain,—the Scottish peers, headed by the Duke of Argyll, went in a body to the ministers, and compelled them to disown the sentiments which had been expressed by their partisan, and offer a reward of three hundred pounds for the author of the libel, well known to be the best advocate and most intimate friend of the existing administration. They demanded also that the printer and publisher should be prosecuted before the House of Peers; and Harley, however unwillingly, was obliged to yield ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... experience, as well as from statistical facts, one is able to affirm that the great mass of the working population of these islands have nothing whatever in common with the indolent vagrant; and it is a libel on the working-classes to assume that a man is a workman to-day and a beggar to-morrow. As a matter of fact, beggars are recruited from all ranks of the community, when they are not actually born to the trade. ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... scarcely know Grey Town. There will be squalls, of course, and plenty of fighting. But when I get to work I'll make the old place boom. Ran a paper in the States, and divided the town into friends and enemies. I was just over the last libel action brought against 'The Firebrand' by the last enemy on my list when I sold out. The paper went like wildfire, and the town all but doubled itself in my time. Nothing like a little mustard and pepper if you want ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... (1733), and soon called down the wrath of the governor because of some sharp attacks on his conduct. Copies of the newspaper were burned before the pillory, Zenger was put in jail, and what began as a trial for libel ended in a great struggle for liberty of the press; Zenger's acquittal was the cause of ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... different metre to the original, Heine's words fitted my composition so badly that I was furious at the insult to my work, and thought it necessary to protest against Schott's publication as an entirely unauthorised reprint. Schott then threatened me with an action for libel, as he said that, according to his agreement, his edition was not a reprint (Nachdruck), but a reimpression (Abdruck). In order to be spared further annoyance, I was induced to send him an apology in deference to the distinction he had drawn, which ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... such as he manifested at Nathan's rebuke. Least to his credit was his weakness in relation to his sons and to Joab. On the other hand, the testament attributed to him in 1Kings ii. cannot be justly laid to his charge; it is the libel of a later hand seeking to invest him with a fictitious glory. In like manner it is unjust to hold him responsible for the deaths of Abner and Amasa, or to attribute to him any conspiracy with the hierocracy for the destruction of Saul, and thus to deprive him of the authorship of ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... were desperate characters, and had used such terrible language against his sacred majesty the king that, as a loyal officer, I had sworn they should not speak again until they were safely jailed in St. Malo. The captain's face was distorted with rage as he listened to this libel: he flung his manacled hands about and made frantic efforts to speak, which Joe's gag was too thoroughly ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... exerted herself to spoil him. Reeve refused the Gold Conspiracy. Adams had become used to the idea that he was free of the Quarterlies, and that his writing would be printed of course; but he was stunned by the reason of refusal. Reeve said it would bring half-a-dozen libel suits on him. One knew that the power of Erie was almost as great in England as in America, but one was hardly prepared to find it controlling the Quarterlies. The English press professed to be shocked in 1870 by the Erie scandal, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... 1888 he brought out the result of his studies in two volumes that were filled with admiration for the United States and with disheartening observation upon its practices. One of its chapters cut so close that its victim brought suit for libel, but American opinion accepted the book as a friendly picture and regarded attacks upon it as further evidence of its inherent truth. Probably no book in a generation so profoundly influenced American thought and so specifically ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... by 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 ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... also true that he stacked up more libel suits than a newspaper of limited capital with a staff of local attorneys could handle before he moved to Louisville, where, for three years, he was staff correspondent of The Evening Post. It was here that Cobb discovered how far a humorist could go without being invited to step out at 6 a.m. ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... should we not?" "Yes," replied he. "If we would not consider the best treatment which a slave receives good enough for us, we should not think he ought to be grateful for it. Everybody knows that slavery in its best and mildest form is wrong. Whoever denies this, his lips libel his heart. Try him! Clank the chains in his ears, and tell him they are for him; give him an hour to prepare his wife and children for a life of slavery; bid him make haste, and get ready their necks for the yoke, and their wrists for the coffle ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... ill tongue, friend," answered Dick, "to miscall your good master and my lord the king in the same libel. But King Harry—praised be the saints!—has come again into his right mind, and will have all things peaceably ordained. And as for Sir Daniel, y' are very brave behind his back. But I will be no tale-bearer; and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mayor of the city at the time of its capture, came in a paroxysm of anger to protest against the order as a libel on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... only famous but universally popular. In 1862 the publication of his masterpiece "Fathers and Children" dealt his reputation a blow. The revolutionary elements in Russia regarded his hero, Bazarov, as a calumny and a libel; whereas the reactionary elements in Russia looked upon "Fathers and Children" as a glorification of Nihilism. Thus he satisfied nobody. He fell between two stools. This, perhaps, could only happen in Russia to this ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... has been often made to lower the military character of that great warrior, who is now no more, those who would libel Napoleon rob Wellington of half his glory. It may be the proud boast of England's hero, that the subjugator of Europe fell before him, not in the wane of his genius, but in the full possession of those martial talents which placed him foremost in the list of conquerors—leading ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... her was that she should consent to be almost as completely separated from her family and friends as if she had gone to Calcutta, and almost as close a prisoner as if she had been sent to jail for a libel; that with talents which had instructed and delighted the highest living minds, she should now be employed only in mixing snuff and sticking pins; that she should be summoned by a waiting woman's ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... work abounds with piquant anecdotes of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Keats, Lamb, Hazlitt, and Moore—gives a detailed exposition of Hunt's connection with the Examiner, and his imprisonment for libel—his residence in Italy—his return to England—and his various literary projects—and describes with the most childlike frankness the present state of his opinions and feelings on the manifold questions which ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... licence, which makes a young and beautiful woman an epitome of all the vices, uniting the extreme of masculine profligacy with the extreme of feminine silliness. Will you encourage by your presence the wretches who libel your sex? Will you sit smiling to see your sisters ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... can be obtained. A charge of slander could be brought against her at any moment. If you prefer libel, it is ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... "using the best known means for accomplishing the particular end." Those who adopt the principle do most honour to their sagacity; while their shallow admirers, by abandoning the principle, and clinging to their necessarily imperfect mode of applying it, at once libel their good sense, and dishonour those whom they profess to revere. As society is rapidly advancing, paternal affection would undoubtedly have prompted them to advise their descendants to take the benefits of every advance;—and ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... 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 ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... the Puritan, an attorney of Lincoln's Inn, and Robert Page, his servant (December 3, 1580), had their hands struck off for a libel on the Queen, called "The Gaping Gulph, in which England will be swallowed by the French Marriage." What part the unfortunate servant played that he, too, should deserve a punishment so terrible is difficult ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... twenty francs; we sell it for twenty-three and a half. A million subscribers make three millions and a half of profits; there are my figures; contradict me by figures, or I will bring an action for libel." The reader may fancy the scene takes place in England, where many such a swindling prospectus has obtained credit ere now. At Plate 33, Robert is still a journalist; he brings to the editor of a paper an article of his composition, a violent attack ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... kinds,—where he was born, who were his parents, and what first induced him to attempt writing for the stage; his personal appearance, mode of life, the cut of his clothes; his religious, moral, and political views. Had he been the plaintiff in an action for criminal libel, greater industry in the collection and the fabrication of personal details could hardly have ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... and arsenicum. The reference in inventories, enrolments, and wills, to spoons of these materials are so frequent, so ever-present, as to make citation superfluous. An evil reputation of poisonous unhealthfulness hung around the vari-spelled alchymy (perhaps it is only a gross libel of succeeding generations); but, harmful or harmless, alchymy, no matter how spelt, disappears from use before Revolutionary times. Wooden spoons also are named. Silver spoons were not very plentiful. John Oxenbridge bequeathed thirteen spoons ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... bid the world for him. And shall this man, this Hermes, this Apollo, Sit lag of Ajax' table, almost minstrel, And with his presence grace a brainless feast? Why they con sense from him, grow wits by rote, And yet, by ill repeating, libel him, Making his wit their nonsense: nay, they scorn him; Call him bought railer, mercenary tongue! Play him for sport at ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... I ever knew. He had the gift of gab all right, and he had picked up a couple of panhandlers for horrible examples and they looked the part. If either one of them had ever drawn a sober breath in twenty years he should have sued his face for libel, and they looked as if they had been towed behind a trolley car from the Battery to ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... Satiromastix, and the rest) which is usually linked to them, will be better established when critics have left off being uncertain whether A was B, or B, C. Even the most famous story of all (the disgrace of Jonson with others for Eastward Ho! as a libel against the Scots, for which he was imprisoned, and, being threatened with mutilation, was by his Roman mother supplied with poison), though told by himself, does not rest on any external evidence. What is certain is that Jonson was in great and greater ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... least equally well with the former towns, but I should injure the sale of the "Iris", the editor of which paper, (a very amiable and ingenious young man of the name of James Montgomery)[1] is now in prison for a libel on a bloody-minded magistrate there. Of course I declined publicly advertising or disposing of "The Watch man" in ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... although the combat was not quite so decided as Arthur had boasted, it disposed of the libel which had originated it, and made it clear to the house that those who knew best, at any rate, were now as firmly resolved to defend their master's innocence as last term they had been ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... was a libel on the poor animal. It was only the dear lad Eric's joke! Mouser would never touch one drop of the breakfast cream, save perhaps when we might be late for the meal, or when the dear fellow felt a little ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... are," I said. "They don't make you supermen immune from the laws of libel. If you or anybody I can catch breathes one false word about my being a snake, you'll be on the receiving end of the roughest lawsuit ...
— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett
... proceeding and places the person who does so outside all limits of tender consideration. When Miss Vaughan states that Dr Westcott is a Palladist, a diabolist, a worshipper of Lucifer, or however she may elect to distinguish it, I reply that she is guilty of a gross libel, which is at the same time an abominable and cruel falsehood. When she says that she has been received at his house, I reply that she has not been received there, and that Dr Westcott is likely to require better credentials ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... benefactor to his race. But it was all in vain: the portrait when finished was the portrait of a stranger and a scoundrel. The people for whom it was intended declared they would not have such a libel on their generous friend hung up in their town-hall. The painter was in despair, and there was going to be a general hubbub, when, lo and behold the 'noble' personage himself was suddenly arrested for a brutal murder committed ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... his peace with the Directory, by writing a bulky libel on England, entitled, the Liberty of the Seas. He seems to have confidently expected that this work would produce a great effect. He printed three thousand copies, and in order to defray the expense ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in the universal race for happiness. How common is it, after seeking for it in every place but the right one, for the selfish man to lay the whole blame upon this fine world—as if anybody was to blame but himself. Even some professors of religion are too apt to libel the world. "Well, this is a troublesome world, to make the best of it," is not an uncommon expression; neither is it a truthful one. "Troubles, disappointments, losses, crosses, sickness, and death, make up the sum and substance ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... altogether free from affectation, for dainty phrases; and a feminine love of little niceties in dress, tapestry, needlework, and furnishings. The poem was written mostly in prison where its author spent two years for a libel on the Prince Regent. Byron used to visit him there and bring him books bearing on Francesca's history. Hunt brought into the piece romantic stuff from various sources, including a summary of the book which betrayed the lovers to their fatal passion, the romance ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... St. Leger Smith. "What a knowing set out!" squeaked Johnson secundus. "Mammy-sick!" growled Barlow primus. This last exclamation was, however, a scandalous libel, for certainly no being ever stood in a pedagogue's presence with more perfect sang froid, and with a bolder front, than did, at ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... believe that Almighty God decreed that one-half the women of this world should be sacrificed upon the unclean altar of Lust that the others might be saved. It is an infamous, a revolting doctrine, a damning libel of the Deity. All the courtesans beneath Heaven's blue concave never caused a single son of Adam's misery to refrain from tempting, so far as he possessed the power, one virtuous ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... have forsaken Greene in his last distress, became the defender of his character after his death, and answered this vituperation by still coarser abuse and invective, saying, "Had hee lived, Gabriel, and thou shouldest vnartifically and odiously libel against him as thou hast done, he would have made thee an example of ignominy to all ages that are to come, and driven thee to eate thy owne booke buttered, as I saw him make an Appariter once in a tavern eate his Citation, waxe and all, very handsomely served 'twixt ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... bringing an action against him for libel; as a defendant he will be off his pedestal,—and ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... says that "everybody feels her charm," and that "the Emperor, when presenting her at the balcony on the wedding-day, looked radiant with happiness." My Parisian friend says that young Alexandre Dumas is amongst the people arrested for libel,—a thorough mauvais sujet. Lamartine is quite ruined, and forced to sell his estates. He was always, I believe, expensive, like all those French litterateurs. You don't happen to have in Boston—have you?—a copy of "Les Memoires de Lally Tollendal"? ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... being a pretty libel against the amours of the Court of France. I walked up and down Deptford yarde, where I had not been since I come from living at Greenwich, which is some months. There I met with Mr. Castle, and was forced against my will to have his company back ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... one, and valueless. Here, should the charges against a distinguished and highly respected Government official fail, as in the opinion of the Express they undoubtedly would fail of substantiation was a big libel case all dressed and ready and looking for the Mercury office. "Foolish—foolish," wrote Mr Williams at the close of his editorial comments. ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... pride was injured, his temper was up, and he began to suitably libel everybody. Her Majesty's representative was the object of much vituperation, and a rather brilliant harangue was brought to a close by the officer stating that he would go and see the blooming Consul, and say some straight things to him. With a final flourish he called out at the ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... which, I hope, she will have the goodness to forgive. I was also induced to it in my own defence; many hundred copies of it being dispersed abroad without my knowledge, or consent: so that every one gathering new faults, it became at length a libel against me; and I saw, with some disdain, more nonsense than either I, or as bad a poet, could have crammed into it, at a month's warning; in which time it was wholly written, and not since revised. After this, I cannot, without injury to the deceased author of "Paradise ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... earliest account-book there is an item when he was sixteen years old, "To cash pd ye Musick Master for my Entrance 3/9." It is commonly said that he played the flute, but this is as great a libel on him as any Tom Paine wrote, and though he often went to concerts, and though fond of hearing his granddaughter Nelly play and sing, he never was himself a performer, and the above entry probably refers to the ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... an indweller in the Potter-row, Edinburgh, was indicted before a judge and a jury, on twenty articles of indictment, charging her with witchcraft and sorcery. The libel set forth that she had been guilty of laying on and taking off grievous sickness and diseases from people. Under one count it was set forth that Finnie having had a difference in June preceding with Christina Dickson, the accused, in great ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... no charge against Mr. Parris that could touch the church, as such, or reflect upon the courts, magistrates, or any others that had taken part in the prosecutions. It was necessary to avoid putting any thing into writing, with their names attached, which could in any way be tortured into a libel. Parris lets fall expressions which show that he was on the watch for something of the kind to seize upon, to transfer the movement from the church to the courts. Entirely unaccustomed to public speaking, these three farmers had to meet assemblages composed ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... its clerks, the State Department intends to sue me for libel, contained, as they say, in the first volume of my Diary. Well, great masters, if you swallow me, you may not ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... libel, a hideous libel; but one which is, unfortunately, believed all over the Continent by foreigners not thoroughly acquainted with English ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... 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 ...
— 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
... with 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 ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... Urquhart, folding up the paper and returning it, "thank you for showing it me. But again I must say that I am not particularly interested. Of course you will send anything you like to any paper you like; it is no business of mine. There's the libel law, as of course you know; newspapers are as a rule rather careful about that. No respectable paper, I needn't say, would care to use such copy as this of yours.... Well, good night.... Oh, by the way, I suppose your brother told you ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... with Mr. Canning, he was defeated, and for four 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 drew up the two voluminous and masterly reports which disclosed ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... comrades nor desert his post, is the fear of hell all that animates him? A million such decisive specifications might be made. The renowned sentence of Cicero, "Nemo unquam sine magna spe immortalitatis se pro patria offerret ad mortem," 11 is effective eloquence; but it is a baseless libel against humanity and the truth. In every moment of supreme nobleness and sacrifice personality vanishes. Thousands of patriots, philosophers, saints, have been glad to die for the freedom of native land, the cause of truth, the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... libel on the turtle. He grows to his shell, and his shell is in his body as much as his body is in his shell.—I don't think there is one of our boarders quite so testudineous as I am. Nothing but a combination of motives, more peremptory than the coal on the turtle's back, could have got me to leave ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... been taken some years after. This is another instance of the literary perils to which imaginative authors may be subject; for litera scripta manet, especially if in printer's ink, and, for aught I know, that offhand word might be held a continuous libel. For all else, by way of notice, the stories speak for themselves; as, Covetousness was the text for "The Crock of Gold," while Concealment and False Witness are severally the morale of "The Twins" and "Heart." I once meditated ten tales, on the Ten Commandments, these ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... young man, "I do not know you; I can never have offended you. Will you tell me the motive which has impelled you to make me read a libel for the first time in my life? I generally throw such things ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... was willing to put their story to the proof, so as he had a lot of children, he called them all out of the house to check them over. To the joyful surprise of the visitors, there among them was little Eva—supposed to be eaten, and she even retained her right hand. Thus another newspaper libel upon the poor old black bear—the buffoon of the forest—was shown to be devoid of truth; yet that story was published in the Toronto papers, and, no doubt, was copied all over ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... principally cognizable in this court were forgery, perjury, riot, maintenance, fraud, libel, and conspiracy. But, besides these, every misdemeanor came within the proper scope of its inquiry; those especially of public importance, and for which the law, as then understood, had provided no sufficient punishment; for the judges interpreted the law ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... Nonconformist ministers are never seen in the slums; well, that is a libel! But I should like to ask why it is that the Roman Catholic priest is seen there more than the Nonconformist minister? Because the one man's congregation is there, and the other man's is not—which, being translated into other words, is this: the religion ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and the State—the King and his advisers—was perpetually arraigned by them. To "reject" them, "and despise their ministry and exhortation" (as when Catholics were not put to death on their instance), was to "reject and despise" our Lord! If accused of libel, or treasonous libel, or "leasing making," in their sermons, they demanded to be judged by their brethren. Their brethren acquitting them, where was there any other judicature? These pretensions, with the right to inflict excommunication (in later ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... that there wasn't a word of truth in it, that he wasn't in London on the date mentioned, and had never seen Crupper there or elsewhere. Crupper cabled from Carlsbad that he was ill, and had not been out of bed for a month. He would sue the Argus for libel, which, by the way, he never did. The reporters flocked to meet Fleming when his steamer came in, but of course he knew nothing about it; he had been across the ocean solely on private business that ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... excited, too frightened, to understand the relation between the bad management of the water-works, the bad water, and the fever. Tell them that relation. Only tell it carefully, by insinuation if necessary, so that you will avoid the libel law—for you have no proof as yet. Make them understand that the fever is due to bad water, which in turn is due to bad management of the water-works, which in turn is due to ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... desperado, whose face and mind are a libel upon human nature, has had the insolence to speak to his master's niece as one whom he was at liberty to admire; and when I turned on him with the anger and contempt he merited, the wretch grumbled ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... with Pope. Bolingbroke came over occasionally from Dawley; and Gay was often there to laugh with, and be laughed at by, the rest. Swift had "Gulliver's Travels"—the most ingenious and elaborate libel against man and God ever written—in his pocket, nearly ready for publication; and we may conceive the grim, sardonic smile with which he read it to his friends, and their tumultuous mirth. Gay was projecting his "Beggars' Opera," and Pope preparing some of his witty "Miscellanies." At the end of ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... ambiguity. Epigram breaks out the more for repressive legislation; it is like steam in an engine without a safety-valve.—The King, for example, does right; if a newspaper is against him, the Minister gets all the credit of the measure, and vice versa. A newspaper invents a scandalous libel—it has been misinformed. If the victim complains, the paper gets off with an apology for taking so great a freedom. If the case is taken into court, the editor complains that nobody asked him to rectify the mistake; but ask for redress, and he will laugh in your face and treat his offence ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... 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 views to Mr. Isaac Bird personally and privately, ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... detraction, disparagement, depreciation, vilification, obloquy, scurrility, scandal, defamation, aspersion, traducement, slander, calumny, obtrectation[obs3], evil-speaking, backbiting, scandalum magnatum[Lat]. personality, libel, lampoon, skit, pasquinade; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 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
... Daisy, as I don't want to figure in a libel action; but I should like to know why Miss Whichello went to the dead-house to ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... little doubt that she would have been regarded in society with less of the contempt which genius, and less of the dislike which virtue inspires in the foolish and wicked, and that fewer unreflecting readers would at this moment be whispering to themselves the concluding line of Pope's malignant libel— ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... a libel on any variety of independence and a joke on hope, but I waited for the rest of ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... worse. He ought to be sued for libel. By the way, did you know he has been having his professional eye ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... period Thomas Cooper was convicted of libel. He was thrown into prison. Priestley regarded him as a rising man in the Country.[7] He said the act was the last blow of the Federal party "which ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... two years had ruled the destinies of France as sovereign master. What means were not employed to mislead the opinion of the public respecting Moreau? The police published pamphlets of all sorts, and the Comte de Montgaillard was brought from Lyons to draw up a libel implicating him with Pichegru and the exiled Princes. But nothing that was ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... dieth." And a reverend clergyman of the city tells us that no citizen has a right to publish opinions disagreeable to the community! If any mob follows such publication on him rests the guilt. He must wait forsooth till the people come up to it and agree with him. This libel on liberty goes on to say that the want of right to speak as we think is an evil inseparable from republican institutions. If this be so what are they worth? Welcome the despotism of the Sultan ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... press. There is nothing peculiar in the law of libels to withdraw it from the jurisdiction of the jury. The twelve judges in their opinion in the House of Lords (April, 1792), admitted that the general criminal law of England was the law of libel. And by the general criminal law of England, the office of the jury is judicial. "They only are the judges," as Lord Somers observes (Essay on the Power and Duty of Grand Juries, p. 7), "from whose ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... prepared to march on Newbern for the rescue of Husbands, filling the governor with such alarm for the safety of his fine new palace that he felt it wise to release his captive. He tried to indict the sturdy Highlander for a pretended libel, but the Grand Jury refused to support him in this, and Husbands was set free. The Regulators thereupon dispersed, after a party of them had visited the Superior Court at Salisbury and expressed their opinion ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... I still say to you, Joseph's own weakness would have killed him in the end.—You, who are a great artist, who have labored through poverty, through injustice, through calumny, through the jealousy of friends and the libel of enemies, and have conquered them all, you know well in your heart that great ignorance, great vanity, great self-indulgence, belong not to the characters of the truly great.—Oh I, I, Irina, the outcast, know that well! Did I tempt you?—Those traits were Joseph's. I, who have loved ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter |
