"Mendacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... splendid mendacity, "it's the best thing that can happen for you, for if they collar him you git the ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... antiquity. Or rather: in order that Christianity itself might remain, it had to let itself be overcome by the spirit of antiquity—for example, the idea of empire, the community, and so forth. We are suffering from the uncommon want of clearness and uncleanliness of human things; from the ingenious mendacity which Christianity has brought ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... in his replies. He knew that it was not necessary to say more, for Giuseppi had plenty of shrewdness, and would, he was sure, invent some plausible story without the least difficulty, possessing, as he did, plenty of the easy mendacity so general among the lower classes of the races inhabiting countries bordering on the Mediterranean. Their fare came down to the gondola a few minutes after the clock had ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... waxes exceedingly wroth with Don Blas Nasarre for the assertion, that Naharro first taught the Italians to write comedy, taxing him with downright mendacity; and he stoutly denies the probability of Naharro's comedies ever having been performed on the Italian boards. The critic seems to be in the right, as far as regards the influence of the Spanish dramatist; but he might ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... gay attire, with their accompaniments of tents, carts, horses, dogs, and fires, added picturesqueness to the scene. With the characteristic of their race - which appears to be a shrewd mixture of mendicity and mendacity - they at once abandoned their business of tinkering and peg-making; and, resuming their other business of fortune-telling and begging, they judiciously distributed themselves among the various divisions ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... in the winter I think of 1837, I heard of an association of gentlemen formed to investigate this terrible subject of mendacity in our city, and to find some way of methodizing our chari-[93] ties and protecting them from abuse. I went down immediately to Robert Minturn, who, I was told, took a leading part in this movement, and told him that I had come post-haste to inquire ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... serve as a memorable example of the cant and mendacity of an editor! and that total absence of critical judgment that could assert such matured reflection, in so exquisite a style, could ever have been "first conceptions, just as they came into the mind of Lady ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... advertisements. I have since learned that the most truthful people are apt to indulge a slight vein of exaggeration in describing their own possessions, as though the mere circumstance of going into print were an excuse for a certain kind of mendacity. But I did not fully awaken to this fact until a much later period, when, in answering an advertisement which described a highly advantageous tenement, I was referred to the house I then occupied, and from which a thousand inconveniences were ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... I should like to know myself," I confessed candidly. Then I added with pardonable mendacity: "I think I must have been taken for somebody else, if it was anything more than a ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... innumerable pamphlets, Carlyle commands the fervent adhesion of the honest, the brave, and the good; while in other parts of his writings his infatuated admiration of force, however clothed with brutality, and of strength, however marred with mendacity, are calculated as deeply to alienate the urbane man of the world as the ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... Bartlett," said Yates, "that I am the innocent cause of Miss Kitty's mirth. You see, madam—it's a pathetic thing to say, but really I have had no home life. Although I attend church regularly, of course," he added with jaunty mendacity, "I must confess that I haven't heard grace at meals for years and years, and—well, I wasn't just prepared for it. I have no doubt I made an exhibition of myself, which your daughter was quick ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... he were dead, or not. For it was not by any means hard to suppose that Sam Fry, being John's first cousin, might have inherited either from grandfather or grandmother some of those gifts which had made our John so famous for mendacity. At Porlock I found that it was too true; and the women of the town were in great distress, for the King had always been popular with them: the men, on the other hand, were forecasting what would ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... is notorious. It is exceeded only by their mendacity. But Angels have up to this time stood in good repute. Your conduct, sir, is scandalous. I am amazed ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... encounter misrepresentation and antagonism. I do not wish to make too much of that. I have no doubt been exposed to much criticism and some abuse. There has, I sometimes think, been an exceptional display of mendacity at my expense. But this is the fate of every public man who is forced by circumstances into a somewhat prominent position in a great crisis. And, after all, praise and blame have a wonderful way of balancing one another if you only ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... deceived, to live in a twilight of fiction, under clouds of false witness, inventing according to convenience, and glad to welcome the forger and the cheat.[14] As time went on, the atmosphere of accredited mendacity thickened, until, in the Renaissance, the art of exposing falsehood dawned upon keen Italian minds. It was then that history as we understand it began to be understood, and the illustrious dynasty of scholars arose to whom we still look both for method and material. Unlike the dreaming prehistoric ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... just the shade of irony necessary to rob the assertion of its mendacity. "But go on, go on. You have not begun to satisfy me yet. You did not stop with finding a motive for the crime ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... unprofitable to examine in detail Tasso's use of the phrase to which so much importance has been assigned in the foregoing paragraph. We meet it first in the episode of Olindo and Sofronia. Sofronia, of all the heroines of the Gerusalemme, is the least interesting, notwithstanding her magnanimous mendacity and Jesuitical acceptance of martyrdom. Olindo touches the weaker fibers of our sympathy by his feminine devotion to a woman placed above him in the moral scale, whose love he wins by splendid falsehood equal ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... deceiving the reader. Let any person compare the relations of our Protestant missionaries with those of the Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, or any other Romish order, and the difference which he cannot fail to perceive between the plain truth of the one and the audacious and elaborate mendacity of the other may lead him to a just ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... thoroughly baked, and life had been breathed into them, hallowed Truth moved on with modest gait; but her imperfect copy remained fixed on the spot. Thence the spurious image, the result of the stealthy work, was called Mendacity,[4] because they say, she has no feet,—an assertion with which I ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... and he saw mendacity in her eyes' furtive fleeing under cover. He held her tighter. His arm shook her, not brutally, but with a nervous movement that he ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... almost amusing to note the frankness with which he avows his treachery. It evidently did not occur to him that there was such a thing as national good faith, or that there was the slightest impropriety in any form of mendacity when exercised in dealing with the ministers or inhabitants of a foreign State. In this he was a faithful reflex of his superiors at the Spanish Court. At the same time that they were solemnly covenanting for a definite treaty of peace with ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... purchasable favors he offered prices which utterly deranged the market; the judges found at his hospitable board entertainment for man and beast, the like of which had never been spread in the Territory; with mendacious witnesses he confronted witnesses of superior mendacity. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... that he did not bear away with him a high appreciation of the benefits which he owed to his alma mater. "Mendacity and insincerity—- in these I found the effects, the sure and only sure effects, of an English university education." He wrote a Latin ode on the death of George II., which was much praised. In later years he himself said of it, "It was a mediocre ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the family of a real major-general—albeit he was dead—was a famous windfall, for the widow had social ambitions which hitherto she had never been able to gratify. Hence she smiled sweetly at the veteran in a way which stimulated him to further flights of mendacity. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... enemies by accusing him. An Indian government has only to let it be understood that it wishes a particular man to be ruined; and, in twenty-four hours, it will be furnished with grave charges, supported by depositions so full and circumstantial that any person unaccustomed to Asiatic mendacity would regard them as decisive. It is well if the signature of the destined victim is not counterfeited at the foot of some illegal compact, and if some treasonable paper is not slipped into a hiding-place in his house. Hastings was now regarded ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that mendacity is an organized body, a kind of association of those who have nothing against those who have everything; an association in which every one takes his share; ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... agreed, with one final effort of mendacity, 'he's fine to look at, but he has no grit in him. Any mongrel from a kraal can make him turn tail. Besides, he is a born fool and can't find his way home. I'm thinking of ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... he went hobbling down the row. There were the ladies and they accosted him to know if anything were wrong,—if they had not better go to Mrs. Truscott? et caetera, et caetera; but he answered with unaccustomed brilliancy and mendacity that he had a scare for nothing because he could not read her fine Italian hand. She was only getting some things ready to send to Captain Truscott by the stage to Fetterman. All the same he slipped into his room, got his revolver, gave a quiet twirl ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... any more in the bunks would mean a struggle for life an' death. Thar's plenty of bunkless gents, however, besides him, an' as he sinks into them sound an' dreamless slumbers which is the her'tage of folks whose consciences run trop, he hears 'em drinkin' an' talkin' an' barterin' mendacity, an' ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... and necessary means for attending the wounded; all these Slavonic, pompous, senseless, and blasphemous prayers, the utterance of which in various towns is communicated in the papers as important news; all these processions, calls for the national hymn, cheers; all this dreadful, desperate newspaper mendacity, which, being universal, does not fear exposure; all this stupefaction and brutalization which has now taken hold of Russian society, and which is being transmitted by degrees also to the masses; all this is only a symptom of the guilty consciousness ...
— "Bethink Yourselves" • Leo Tolstoy
... word Mr. Tutt rolled Bibby up and threw him away, while his master shuddered at the open disclosure of his trusted major-domo's vulgarity, mendacity and general lack of sportsmanship. Somehow all at once the case began to break up and go all to pot. The jury got laughing at Bibby, the footmen and the cops as Mr. Tutt painted for their edification the scene following the arrival of Mrs. Witherspoon, when Schmidt was discovered asleep, as Mr. ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... for the establishment of facts largely within the knowledge of the claimants alone, and there can be no doubt that the race after the pensions offered by this bill would not only stimulate weakness and pretended incapacity for labor, but put a further premium on dishonesty and mendacity. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... grin. If he is refused, he remarks, likewise with a grin, that he will come again to-morrow with three thousand light horsemen, and he gallops away; but in many cases he does not return. The secret of the fellow's success lies mainly in his unblushing impudence, his easy mendacity, and that intimate knowledge of every highway and byway of the country which, thanks to the military organisation of the Prussian army, he has acquired in the regimental school. He gives himself out to be the precursor of an ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... enormous number she has exported to Belgium. Germany, however, does not only export pigs; her trade in "canards" with neutrals grows and grows, chiefly with the United States, thanks to the untiring mendacity of Bernstorff and Wolff. Compared with these efforts, the revelations of English governesses at German courts, which are now finding their way into print, make but a ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... blue, in compliment to the marquise; and they entered the next day upon duty, at La Venerie, where the Duchess of Savoy gave a grand entertainment. De Grammont, with his native tact and unscrupulous mendacity, played his part to perfection; but his comrade, Matta, committed a hundred solecisms. The very second time he honoured the marquise with his attentions, he treated her as if she were his humble servant: when he pressed her hand, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... portions of my Diary which may be interesting, and in which are recorded traits and incidents which will bear strongly upon the commentaries I shall subsequently make;" notwithstanding which the reviewer has the mendacity to assert that, "not until the last paragraph of the last volume, does he learn for the first time that the work is not complete." I will be content with quoting his own words against him—"An habitual story teller ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... parties have had any part in the matter. He does not seem to know that the attitude of British Labour has done a great deal to make a first-class war against Russia impossible, since it has confined the Government to what could be done in a hole-and-corner way, and denied without a too blatant mendacity. ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... of conscientiousness upon conversation. Nowhere does conversation seem to have flourished as brilliantly as in France during the last century. But, if we read old French memoirs, we see how many brakes of scrupulosity which tie our tongues to-day were then removed. Where mendacity, treachery, obscenity, and malignity find unhampered expression, talk can be brilliant indeed. But its flame waxes dim where the mind is stitched all over with conscientious fear of violating the moral and ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... names change hourly. A camp rumour is a wonderful thing. Generally speaking, there are two varieties, cook-shop rumours and officers' servants' rumours. Both are always false, but there is a slightly more respectable mendacity about the latter than the former. The cooks are always supposed to know if we are changing camp by getting orders about rations in advance. Having this slight advantage, they go out of their way to make rumours on every sort of subject. How many ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... their yard," he responded, with prompt mendacity. "I was in the neighborhood and heard the shot fired, so I ran in to have a look around and see if anyone was hurt, and I came across this poor little chap yowling on the doorstep. I won't want any supper to-night, Mrs. Quinlan. I'm ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... very happy," he said. "Your caring so much for me as to wish me to marry your sister, I shall never forget it. You see, I've never thought of her in that way. I suppose I don't think of women at all in that way," he went on, with a certain splendid mendacity. "It's a case of cog-wheels instead of corpuscles. I'm just a heathen bit of machinery, with my ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... to her bosom, declared that of all the gifts and honours conferred upon her by the loyalty of the people this was the most acceptable. Yet Green,[51] in describing Elizabeth's reign, says: "Nothing is more revolting in the Queen, but nothing is more characteristic, than her shameless mendacity. It was an age of political lying, but in the profusion and recklessness of her lies Elizabeth stood ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... bearing every evidence of the grossest mendacity, was lightly passed over, and the men walked ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... Austria in 1798-9 which gave Napoleon his pretext for crushing her. Her recent struggle for independence, though fruitless, was respectable, and protracted beyond the verge of Hope; and not even Royalist mendacity has yet pretended that her revolt from Austria, or her prolonged defence under bombardment and severe privation was the work of foreigners. But the Croat again lords it in her halls; Trieste is stealing away her remnant of trade; and the Railroads which should regain or replace it ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... Hume.[418] This leads to an application of the methods expounded in the 'Introduction,' in order to show how the various motives or 'springs of action' and the 'sanctions' based upon them may affect the trustworthiness of evidence. Any motive whatever may incidentally cause 'mendacity.' The second book, therefore, considers what securities may be taken for 'securing trustworthiness.' We have, for example, a discussion of the value of oaths (he thinks them valueless), of the advantages and disadvantages of reducing evidence to writing, of interrogating witnesses, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... can open my mouth, except in the presence of a woman," observed Vivian, with impudent mendacity; and he looked ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Breaking into the Spotlight; Dukes of Eden; Disciples Militant of the Hidden Faith; Knights-Champions of the Domestic Dog; the Holy Gregarians; the Resolute Optimists; the Ancient Sodality of Inhospitable Hogs; Associated Sovereigns of Mendacity; Dukes-Guardian of the Mystic Cess-Pool; the Society for Prevention of Prevalence; Kings of Drink; Polite Federation of Gents-Consequential; the Mysterious Order of the Undecipherable Scroll; Uniformed Rank of Lousy Cats; Monarchs ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... admission—how many faults you might redeem! Really, you are far less intelligent than I supposed!" In vain, however, did Swann expound to her thus all the reasons that she had for not lying; they might have succeeded in overthrowing any universal system of mendacity, but Odette had no such system; she contented herself, merely, whenever she wished Swann to remain in ignorance of anything that she had done, with not telling him of it. So that a lie was, to her, something to be ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... offer myself as a substitute for the rest of this dance? Bob, the chief wants to see you a second," was the best that Barker could think of. They praised him later for his "mendacity," yet what he said was true to the letter. It took little more than a second for the ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... marvel that this hag of hatred works[sf] Eternal evil latent as she lurks, To make a Pandemonium where she dwells, And reign the Hecate of domestic hells? Skilled by a touch to deepen Scandal's tints With all the kind mendacity of hints, While mingling truth with falsehood—sneers with smiles— A thread of candour with a web of wiles;[sg] A plain blunt show of briefly-spoken seeming, To hide her bloodless heart's soul-hardened scheming; 60 A lip of lies; a face formed to conceal, And, without feeling, mock at all who ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... are fighting us in order to restore to the world the freedom, the Kultur, which we threaten. What monstrous mendacity! Reproduce if you can the German national school teacher, the German upper-master, the German university professor! You have lagged far behind us, you are hopelessly inferior! Hence your chagrin, your envy, your fear! Powerless to rival us, you foam with hate and ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... halls without one recognition, after all. It was our old waiter of all those years ago, who, with an almost paternal gladness, was telling me how good it was to see me again, and, with consolatory mendacity, was assuring me that I had hardly changed a bit. God bless him—he will never know what good it did me to have his honest recognition. The whole world was not yet quite dead and buried, after all, nor was I quite such an unremembered ghost as ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... but a commonplace appearance, but continued literary labour has swept away such charm as my person ever possessed, has reduced me to a lean habit of body, sucked away all the freshness of life, destroyed my complexion and impaired my vigour. As to my hair, which they with unblushing mendacity declare I have allowed to grow long as an enhancement to my personal attractions, you can judge of its elegance and beauty. As you see, it is tangled, twisted and unkempt like a lump of tow, shaggy and irregular ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... equivalent to assuming that no author ever lied or was deceived; and this spontaneous credulity seems to possess a high degree of vitality, for it persists in spite of the innumerable instances of error and mendacity which daily experience brings ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... favor. Winterborne's apparent strength, during the last months of his life, must have been delusive. It had often occurred that after a first attack of that insidious disease a person's apparent recovery was a physiological mendacity. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Vallombrosa'; but my pedigree does not happen to link me with Sapphira, and deceit is not charged to me in the real Doomsday Book. Theft would be more possible for me than falsehood, for while both are labelled 'wicked,' I could never dwarf and shrivel my soul by the cowardly process of mendacity. Mr. Minge, had I been a trifle less honest and true than I find myself, I might have ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... Mendacity follows the flag. There never yet was an invader who did not, in obedience to a kindly human instinct, lie abundantly respecting the people whose country he had invaded. The reason is very plain. In all ages men delight to acquire property by expedients other than that of honest ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... or assisting the police, or hauling a mitrailleuse if he could help it. Yet the War dog worships the Army; it represents a square meal and a "cushy" bed. The new draft takes him for a mascot; but the old hand knows him better. A shameless blend of petty larceny, mendacity, fleas, gourmandism, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... with him. 'I am struck by your grip on these difficult problems, Mr Brand,' he told me. 'There is much I can tell you, and you may be of great value to our cause.' He asked me a lot of questions about my past, which I answered with easy mendacity. Before we parted he made me promise to come ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... ill-favor in many ways, for which he can offer no defence." Against such a pressure of public opinion the archbishop of Trondhem dared no longer stand, and on the 22d of September despatched Sunnanvaeder to the king, adding, with the mendacity of a child, that he had detained him in Norway only in order that he might not flee. Gustavus, with grim humor, thanked him for his solicitude, and begged him now to return all other refugees. Sunnanvaeder was kept in jail till the 18th of February, 1527. He was then brought ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... my folly, Mr. Lee," said Kate, with swift mendacity; "he was all the time looking after something for you, when I begged him to shoot a bird to get a feather for my hat. And that wing ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... suffers for want of vraisemblance, and loses by being related by a very young girl who has had no opportunity of becoming familiar with the world she describes. He is constantly guilty of that splendid mendacity which fiction loves, but which is nearly impossible to actual life. Self-sacrifice as depicted in 'Christowell,' involving much suffering to little purpose, is unsatisfactory; and it is a sin against the verities to make unreasonable ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the discovery that a man has the power to lie that shakes my confidence in him; it is loss of confidence in his mendacity that I find it impossible to get over. I forgive him for telling me lies, but I cannot forgive him for not telling me the same lies, or nearly so, about the same things. This shows he has a slipshod memory, which is unpardonable, or else that he tells so many lies that he finds it impossible ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... must remark that some cases of apparent mendacity or inaccuracy on the part of a President—especially if he were as voluble and busy as Roosevelt—must be attributed to forgetfulness or misunderstanding and not to wilful lying. A person coming from an interview with him might construe as a promise ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... artist, and the artist alone, who never takes account of ethics, but uses right and wrong indifferently as colours of his palette. "The Decay of Lying" seemed to the ordinary, matter-of-fact Englishman a cynical plea in defence of mendacity. To the majority of readers, "Pen, Pencil and Poison" was hardly more than a shameful attempt to condone cold-blooded murder. The very articles which grounded his fame as a writer, helped to ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... well done; needless work, and ineffectual or imaginary workers, to be rigorously pitched out of doors. What a blessing on this Earth; worth purchasing almost at any price! The money saved is something, nothing if you will; but the amount of mendacity expunged, has any one computed that? Mendacity not of tongue; but the far feller sort, of hand, and of heart, and of head; short summary of all Devil's-worship whatsoever. Which spreads silently along, once you let it in, with ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... notice on the mainmast, carefully and neatly painted on a sheet of copper. And as I read it, I could but laugh at Captain Hayes's natural American business instincts, combined with his usual humorous mendacity— ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... case under consideration, the guilty man, I will assume, lies hard and fast, but, when he fancies that all that is left him will be to reap the reward of his mendacity, behold, he will succumb in the very place where such an accident is likely to be most closely analyzed. Assuming even that he may be in a position to account for his syncope by illness or the stifling atmosphere of the locality, he has none the less given rise to suspicion! He ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... neither here nor there. I am not speaking of men who lie with an object. There is some excuse for that: indeed, it is sometimes to their credit, when they deceive their country's enemies, for instance, or when mendacity is but the medicine to heal their sickness. Odysseus, seeking to preserve his life and bring his companions safe home, was a liar of that kind. The men I mean are innocent of any ulterior motive: they prefer a lie to truth, simply on ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... and rejoicing devilry of Glengarry, and from Charles's increasing distress and degradation, it is almost a relief to pass for a moment to the harmless mendacity of a contemporary spy, Rob Roy's son, James Mohr Macgregor, or Drummond. This highland gentleman, with his courage, his sentiment, and his ingrained falseness, is known to the readers of Mr. Stevenson's 'Catriona.' Though unacquainted with the documents which we shall ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... refuge for them except in supreme power, and no other means for maintaining this but in the excesses of despotism, dishonesty, mendacity and violence. In the Constitution they manufacture, they desire to remain the sovereigns of France and they decree[5112] at once that, willingly or not, France must select two-thirds of its new representatives from amongst them, and, that she may make a good selection, it is prudent to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... home," she answered, with glib mendacity. And then she wondered why it was that Weldon's pallor turned from white to gray, as he went away ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... Without a bible? Why didn't He give a few leaves to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden? Take from the bible the miracles, and I admit that the good passages are true. If they are true they don't need to be inspired. Miracles are the children of mendacity. Nothing can be more wonderful than the majestic, sublime, and eternal march of cause and effect. Reason must be the final arbiter. An inspired book cannot stand against a demonstrated fact. Is a man to be rewarded eternally for believing without evidence or against evidence? Do you tell me ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... ludicrous which he was accustomed to use in the furtherance of some purpose which he had at heart. It was his practice to clothe things most revolting with an assumed grace and dignity, and to add to the weight of his condemnation by the astounding mendacity of the parody thus drawn. There was a grim humour in this which has been displeasing to some, as seeming to hold out to vice a hand which has appeared for too long a time to be friendly. As we are ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... to attempt the conversion of Del Ferice to the reactionary view, than to order his expulsion because his views were over liberal. Even if old Saracinesca had possessed a vastly greater diplomatic instinct than he did, coupled with an unscrupulous mendacity which he certainly had not, he would have found it hard to persuade the Cardinal against his will; but Saracinesca was, of all men, a man violent in action and averse to reflection before or after the fact. That he should ultimately be revenged upon Del Ferice and Donna Tullia for the part ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... slatternly mother. Brought up in a comfortless, poverty-stricken home, without any religious teaching or influences, what wonder that they became addicted to most of the petty vices,—that they acquired an unenviable reputation for mischief, mendacity, and thieving in a ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... were capsized into the river six months ago. This put him on his guard, and he prepared to meet further questions with evasion or defiance. But he would flavour them with substantial facts. It would confuse issues and make it more difficult to convict him of mendacity. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... sharp, pertinacious chin, and a smile which was as brilliant as a prolonged flash of lightning. She smiled at everything in life, especially the things she did n't like and which kept her talent for mendacity in healthy exercise. A glance, a word, a motion was sufficient to make her show her teeth at you like a cheerful she-wolf. This inexpugnable smile constituted her whole vocabulary in her dealings with her melancholy mistress, to whom she ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... appears to have been a new experience for Hawthorne, but those who are much concerned in the affairs of the world soon become accustomed to it, and pay little attention to either the malice or the mendacity ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... of Russia have already frequently attempted to sow discord in these good and sincere relations, but such efforts are vain. The Russian truth-loving national soul, sensitive of any display of mendacity or insincerity, was able to sift the chaff from the wheat, and faith in our friends is unshaken. There is not a single cloud on the clear horizon of our lasting allied harmony. Heartfelt greetings to you, true friends, rulers of the waves and our companions in arms. May victory and ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... will have pressed upon their attention and patronage, by every device and artifice of the energetic and more or less unscrupulous publisher, other papers equally able and brilliant and comprehensive, but bringing also their burden of needless sensationalism and mendacity, undue expansion of all manner of scandal, amplification of every detail and kind of crime, and every phase of covert innuendo or open attack upon official doing and private character—the whole infernal mass procured, and stimulated ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... of mine," he replied, with prompt mendacity. "When I said that international marriages presented more difficulties to the imagination than others, I was thinking of your marriage and mine, and that, I knew from the first moment I saw you, would be ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... Europe." In Italy I never began to see the cruelty to animals which English tourists report, and in Spain I saw none at all. If the reader asks how with this gentleness, this civility and integrity, the Spaniards have contrived to build up their repute for cruelty, treachery, mendacity, and every atrocity; how with their love of bull-feasts and the suffering to man and brute which these involve, they should yet seem so kind to both, I answer frankly, I do not know. I do not know how the Americans are reputed good and just and law-abiding, although they ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... conscience, or a desire to protect herself from all reproach of mendacity on the part of the customers, had made the owner of the inn place a wire cupboard upon the sill of one of the windows near the door; in which receptacle were some eggs on a plate, a bit of bread with which David might have loaded his sling, a white glass bottle filled with a liquid of some ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... in answer to his neophyte's half fearful question. Fitly underlined and sufficiently spaced, it was a statement calculated to awe, if only by its mendacity. I wonder if that chapter of Bulwer's would impress one now as it used to do then. It were better, perhaps, ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... by necessity from the paths of truth, but I am not an accomplished liar. It is not my fault. Mere providence has guided my life through such gentle pastures that I have had no practice worth speaking of. Barbara, too, is an amateur in mendacity. Both of us were sorely put to it under Doria's indignant ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... at home,' answered Louise, with bold mendacity. 'And a very good thing too. I should be sorry for her to see you in the ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... (just expected to break out), which might have recovered him some favor from his Majesty: does not tell clearly where his money came from; shy extremely of elucidating Katte and Keith;—in fact, as we perceive, struggles against mendacity, but will not tell the whole truth. "Let him lie in ward, then; and take what doom the Laws have appointed for the like of him!" Divine Laws, are they not? Well, yes, your Majesty, divine and human;—or are there perhaps no laws but the human sort, completely explicit in this case? "He is ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... Christians will gather together again in the Catacombs, because of the persecution of the faith—a persecution less brutal, perhaps, than that of Nero's day, but not less refined in its severity, consummated by mendacity, ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... to une jeune fille honnete. For he had at once detected the girl's reckless temper. From what social stratum did she come—she and the brother? In her, at least, there was some wild blood! When he sounded Madame Cervin, however, she, with her incurable habit of vain mendacity, had only put her lodger in a light which Montjoie felt certain ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... never felt this so deeply as when we finished the last chapter of the above-named extravagant work. Macaulay died too soon; for none but he could mete out complete and comprehensive justice to the insolence, the impudence, the presumption, the mendacity, and, above all, the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... is doubly guilty of a most heinous crime. And we suspect, we know, and for the welfare of the community we hope to be able soon to point out openly, who and where this vile one is. Yes, only an atheist and anarchist is capable of such villainous mendacity, such unutterable wickedness and treachery. Now, we would especially call upon our readers in Baalbek to be watchful and vigilant, for among them is one, recently come back from America, who harbours under his bushy hair the atheism and anarchy of ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... instead of the Anabasis or the Ars Poetica, he would have reduced the extent of the falsehood, and would have furnished a ready reply which would have been equally effective with his Sunday-school teachers and their disputants. Hence we conclude this prodigality of misstatement, this exuberance of mendacity, is an effervescence of zeal in majorem gloriam Dei. Elsewhere he tells us that "the idea of the author of the 'Vestiges' is, that man is the development of a monkey, that the monkey is the embryo man, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... great joy, for she knew that while he was there no questions would be asked of her. He was always very gentle to her, treating her with an old-fashioned, polished respect—except when compelled on that one occasion by his sense of duty to accuse her of mendacity respecting the purveying of victuals—, but he had never become absolutely familiar with her as his wife had done; and it was well for her now that he had not done so, for she could not have talked about Lady Lufton. In the ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... so," she replied quietly, with that gentle mendacity which can scarcely be grudged to women, because they are so poorly armed. "I should think so. You know what these men are. Every hour they have in Loango demoralises ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... I'm aware, Sir, how ruthless rapacity Loves to take shelter, with cunning mendacity 'Neath an old saw; But well says the scribe that such "business" is crime, Sir, And such would be but for gaps half the time, Sir, 'Twixt ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... then own all this supernormal information. If on the other hand the supernormal information be the key to the phenomenon, it ought to be superior; and then how ought we to account for the "wicked partner," and for the undeniable mendacity and inferiority of so much of the performance? We are thrown, for our conclusions, upon our instinctive sense of the dramatic probabilities of nature. My own dramatic sense tends instinctively to picture ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... deceived into subservience?—By the pretence of indifference to them. An impostor is always supposed to be in earnest. The commonplace impostor is so: he has staked everything on the appearance of being sincere. He, on the other hand, who is reckless in mendacity, who cheats with a laughing eye; who, while silently strenuous in a given cause, appears to take seriously neither it, himself, nor those on whom both depend, irresistibly strikes the vulgar as moved by something greater than himself or they. A "quack" he may be, but like the spiritualistic ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... expression,—the consul spent a somewhat uneasy evening under the fire of questions that assailed him in reference to the fair deserter. But he kept loyal faith with her, adhering even to the letter of her instructions, and only once was goaded into more active mendacity. The conversation had turned upon "Debs," and the consul had remarked on the singularity of the name. A guest from the north observed, however, that the name was undoubtedly a contraction. "Possibly it ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... fate of ghost-seers is mine," she said, resignedly. "My privileged encounter with a spirit is attributed to lobster salad or mendacity. Well, I have, at least, one memory left from the wreck—a kiss from the unseen world. Was Captain Kinsolving a very brave man, ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... Standard and Diggers' News, Johannesburg, dated 22nd November, 1899, and in the Pretoria Volksstem, dated 20th November, 1899.[10] There one sees the mask off, in language of defiant insult and of scurrilous mendacity against all that is English, avowing that the present Anglo-Boer War has been the outcome of preparations during the past thirty years. That letter is not all suitable reading for the tender sex, but should serve as evidence to the still unconvinced sceptic that the Boers are fighting for something ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... Parisians in Paris, I cannot help feeling a good deal of sympathy for them, notwithstanding their childish vanity, their mendacity, and their frivolity. I sincerely trust, therefore, if they do seriously resist their besiegers, that the assurances of the Government that there are ample supplies of food and of ammunition, are not part of ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... impotent attempts to arouse him as indifferently as a gentleman in our own state of society regards the vituperative terms of a blackguard: the one party feeling that the tongue of an old woman could never injure a warrior, and the other knowing that mendacity and vulgarity can only permanently affect those who resort to their use; but he was spared any further attack at present, by the interposition of Rivenoak, who shoved aside the hag, bidding her quit the ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... worthy Bishop Eusebius was, like other enthusiasts, liable to be at times carried by his enthusiasm beyond the limits of veracity, or else was the victim of imperial mendacity, is evident. For Eusebius tells us in the Life of Constantine he wrote after the death of his patron, that the night after this miraculous "cross" and motto were seen in the sky above the Sun, the Christ appeared to Constantine, and, showing ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... for the Protection of the Young had put up a Howl because the Game diverted the Attention of Urchins from their Work in the Public Schools and tended to encourage Mendacity among Office Boys. ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... of the three had honestly and openly withdrawn from the position that Henry would be able to go to the prize-giving. They seemed to have silently agreed to bury the futile mendacity of the ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... asked, 'Have your family been long in England?' 'Yes,' I said, 'they have been there for some time. But why do you ask?' 'Perhaps the number refers,' he replied, 'to the number of generations, just as they recite them in the Old Testament, you know?' 'Yes,' I unhesitatingly and with prompt mendacity replied, 'that is exactly it, and I don't see how you hit it so cleverly.' He smiled all over with delight as the train rushed up, and waved kind farewells to me as long ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... simply everything would go, if only men would stick to truth! Here's this letter—how much time and trouble it costs me—how much opportunity possibly sacrificed, simply by reason of the incurable mendacity of men.' And he knocked the back of his finger ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... appreciate the vast possibilities of their profession, should bear testimony against those who deeply discredit it. Offenses against taste and morals, which are bad enough in a private citizen, are infinitely worse if made into instruments for debauching the community through a newspaper. Mendacity, slander, sensationalism, inanity, vapid triviality, all are potent factors for the debauchery of the public mind and conscience. The excuse advanced for vicious writing, that the public demands it and that the demand must be supplied, can no more be admitted than if ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... words. To cite Dryden as a witness for any purpose against Shakspeare,—Dryden, who of all men had the most ransacked wit and exhausted language in celebrating the supremacy of Shakspeare's genius, does indeed require as much shamelessness in feeling as mendacity in principle. ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... demoralization had begun. From that minute, to the long and entirely false story she told the red-bearded man in Thunder Cloud Glen several days later, she trod, as Aggie truthfully said, the downward path of mendacity, bringing up in ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... truth will not come to light through the mists conjured into life by the mendacity of subsidized newspapers, until the material wherewith to oppose all the mysteries of the Bund (Frankfort) shall be supplied to the Prussian press, with unrestricted liberty to ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... finds it simpler to suppose that the testimony is untrue and that he is being wilfully deceived. There is, so far as I can see, no theoretical criterion by which the patient can decide, in such a case, between the two equally satisfactory hypotheses of his madness and of his friends' mendacity. ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... sense of pride, her firm belief that there was some mysterious merit of birth in the Carter blood, and that to friendship with the Carters a mere upstart, a secretary, a working-woman, could not with any justice aspire. In a thousand ways, many of them approaching actual mendacity, she undermined Harriet's usefulness, and annoyed and distracted the domestic force. If Harriet decided that the weather was too warm for an out-of-door luncheon, Madame Carter pleasantly overruled ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... Angleterre, 1835, I, 129 f. The Athenian laws (?), that fixed prices should be asked, and that sellers should not sit down that that they might sell more rapidly, points to something similar. (Athen., VI, 226 f. Plato, De Legg., XI, 916 f.) Athenian law prohibiting mendacity in the markets. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... accept a second creation, I thank the Omnipotent for his kind protection. From my minority, I profess the mendacity, Passed days in poverty, From my minority. Perpetually my duty, Sobbing under perplexity. Nothing least prosperity, But sad ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... men, and talk in a social way face to face, and yet continue intrinsically invisible to them. An art no less essential to Royalty than that of the Domain Sciences itself; and,—if at all consummately done, and with a scorn of mendacity for help, as in this case,—a difficult art. It is the chief feature in the Two or Three Thousand LETTERS we yet have of Friedrich's to all manner of correspondents: Letters written with the gracefulest ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... has ever succeeded in compressing a greater amount of concentrated mendacity into one set of human bodies, above every other description, it is in the advertising quacks. Pacific Medical ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... speaks, blushes. He is ashamed of the misery whence he comes, whither he must return. He lowers his head and lies, perhaps without realizing the extent of his mendacity: "No, after all, we're not unhappy, it isn't ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... who paddles for port as if the devil were after him whenever a capful of wind threatens a storm of exposure; but a bold, sea-going liar, who spurns a continent, striking straight out for blue water, with his eyes fixed upon the horizon of boundless mendacity. ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... subsided as she listened, breathlessly, to Maitland's story of his adventures; and the joy that leaped in her for his frank mendacity in suppressing every incident that involved her, was all but overpowering. She could have wept for sheer happiness; and at a later time she would; but not now, when everything depended on her maintaining the very silence ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... she was much too young to die. As a matter of fact, she was little more than a bride. That probably accounts for the brand-new mink coat and muff she was sporting. Moreover, it accounts for Mort's surprising mendacity and even more amazing humility in relation to the taking-off of Mike. No doubt in similar circumstances, he would have told his second wife, who died when she was pretty well along in years, that he'd show her who ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... for a real walk of her own. He had told her, in simple truth, that he would enjoy being left to himself for a while. She had taken this assurance for an altruistic mendacity, but she had yielded at last to his insistence and gone, under an exacted promise not to come back for at least ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... party had broken up late, and then there had been the excitement of opening the presents he had brought back from Terra. Nobody had had a chance to talk about Merlin, or about what he was going to do, now that he was home. That, and his career of mendacity, would start at breakfast. He wanted to let his father get to the table first, to run interference for him; he took his time with his toilet and dressed carefully and slowly. Finally, he zipped up the short waist-length ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... formal, public, and impudent piece of mendacity, we might expect Knox to protest in his "History"; to denounce it as a cause of God's wrath. On the other hand he states, with no disapproval, the childish quibbles by which his party defended ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... feeling beyond that of humanity, and a right to expose the mendacity of those who have power to exercise it over the prisoners in Charleston. That mendacity has existed too long for the honor of that community, and for the feelings of those who have ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... traditions which are connected with Falstaff that give him his perennial attraction. It is the personality that owes nothing to history with which Shakespeare's imaginative power clothed him. The knight's unfettered indulgence in sensual pleasures, his exuberant mendacity, and his love of his own ease are purged of offence by his colossal wit and jollity, while the contrast between his old age and his unreverend way of life supplies that tinge of melancholy which is inseparable from the highest manifestations of humour. The Elizabethan public recognised ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... "Mr. Nixon should have avoided that trap of an empty leadership. Mr. Nixon is no stripling; he knew Tammany and those elements of mendacity and muddy intrigue which are called its 'control'; he knew Mr. Croker, who in these last days was faithful to no promise and loyal to no man. Why did he permit himself to be flattered, cozened and destroyed? Why? He added inexperience to vanity and betrayed himself. It was the old story—the ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... a wrong move, of course. Sidney must hear about England; and she marveled politely, in view of his poverty, about his being there. Poor Le Moyne floundered in a sea of mendacity, rose to a truth here and there, clutched at luncheon, ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... vices,—the important group which fall under the general head of untruthfulness. Insincerity, disingenuousness, shiftiness, trickery, duplicity, chicanery, evasion, intrigue, suppressio veri, suggestio falsi, fraud, mendacity, treachery, hypocrisy, cant,—their name is Legion. That externalism, whether in school or out of school, is the foster-mother of the whole brood, is almost too obvious to need demonstration. In school the child lives in an atmosphere ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... to cover their confusion, doubted his veracity and instanced his many well-known and notorious guilts of mendacity. The girl at the piano, Ernestine, his sister-in-law, insisted that pearls of truth fell from his lips, that she had seen him from the moment he began to look, and that as she estimated the passage of time he had been looking much longer than ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... forgave him all his mendacity for the sake of a new accomplishment he had brought back with him, and which beat all his others. He could actually turn a somersault backwards with all the ease and finish of a professional acrobat. How ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... transports, riotous proceedings, angry conflicts, and intemperate controversies," of Luther's "contempt of all the accepted forms of human right and all authority, human and divine," of "his unscrupulous mendacity," "his perverse principles," "his wild pronouncements." He calls Luther "a lawless one," "one of the most intolerant of men," "a revolutionist, not a reformer." He says that Luther "attempted reformation and ended in deformation." He charges Luther ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... correct. Mendacity was not outside of Miss Forbes's easy code when enlisted in a good cause, such as appeasing her own impish curiosity. Never had Io so much as mentioned that quaint and lively romance with which vague gossip had credited her, after her return from the ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... unaccountable aversion. When "Monsieur Parolles, the gallant militarist, that had the whole theory of war in the knot of his scarf, and the practice in the shape of his dagger," was convicted of mendacity and cowardice, Bertram exclaimed, "I could endure any thing before this but a cat, and now he's a cat to me." The fores of censure could ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... from which spring the continual calamities that they are obliged to endure. Is it not the ambition of kings and of the great, their negligence, their vices, their oppression, to which are generally due sterility, mendacity, wars, contagions, bad morals, and all the multiplied scourges ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... looking to the sea and one along the coast, though not directly on it, windows sunk deep in massive walls built for a more bickering age than this. Count Victor took all in at a glance and found revealed to him in a flash the colossal mendacity of all the Camerons, Macgregors, and Macdonalds who had implied, if they had not deliberately stated, over many games of piquet or lansquenet at Cammercy, the magnificence of ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... well described by the record, that there is no possibility of mistaking them. Hence you must suppose that they were due to devils in A.D. 30, and to nervous disorders in A.D. 1894. On the other hand, if you choose the other horn, you must accept either the hypothesis of the ignorance or that of the mendacity of Christ.' ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... teachings, which the credulous peasantry imbibe like mother's milk. The peripatetic patriots who invade the rural communities seem to be easy, extemporaneous liars, having a natural gift for tergiversation, an undeniable gift for mendacity, an inexhaustible fertility of invention. Such liars, like poets, are born, not made, though doubtless their natural gifts have been improved and developed by constant practice. Like Parolles, they "lie with such volubility that you would think Truth were a fool." The seed has been industriously ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... self-respecting client trespasses. Madame Draga's establishment was a meeting-ground for naked truths and over-dressed fictions, and it was here, the Woman felt, that she might make a final effort to recall the artless mendacity of past days. Madame herself was in an inspiring mood, with the air of a sphinx who knew all things and preferred to forget most of them. As a War Minister she might have been celebrated, but she was ...
— Reginald • Saki
... morality compares so unfavourably with intellectuality, which is the product of the upper sections of society and flashes out new lights every moment. But even morality changes. The Spartans, a highly moral people, thought it positively indecent not to steal. A modern vice, such as mendacity, was accounted a virtue by the greatest nation of antiquity. A modern virtue, like that of forgiving one's enemies, was accounted a vice proper to slaves. Drunkenness, reprobated by ancients and moderns alike, became the mark of ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... stolen pearl had been sold to a firm of jewellers, who had recorded the numbers of the Bank of England notes with which they paid for it. One of these notes was produced in court, and lo! it was endorsed with the name of the plaintiff.[3] In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the whole edifice of mendacity and perjury fell to pieces. The thief was arrested and imprisoned; but the peripety for her was less terrible than for her husband, who had married her in chivalrous faith ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... adopted nation was there to see fair play. Under these circumstances the defendant lied with an assurance that must have helped to convince himself; his friends arrived in the full number required by the law, and testified with cheerful mendacity in their companion's favour. The Basha listened with attention while the litigants swore strange oaths and abused each other very thoroughly. Then he silenced both parties with a word, and gave judgment for ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... one day, after he had been kept out with the loud, stolid "Not at home" of practiced mendacity, he watched, and saw ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... so, Ndabezita. My 'Spider' told me that these were all the time alive," rejoined Laurence, with mendacity on a truly ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... "of whom the sceptics were greatly proud" who has of late years been converted to Christianity. It is easy enough to impose on an ignorant congregation, and Dr. Hitchens is probably aware of the lengths to which a reckless pulpiteer may carry his mendacity. But candid investigators will conclude that "converted infidels" cannot be very plentiful, when the majority of them are so ancient; nor very important, when an obscure youth has to be advertised as "a leader" of whom the sceptics (nine ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... genius for mendacity and he was already beginning to repent of his daring fiction. But Mrs. Bornholm, suddenly possessed with some luminous idea, proceeded mercilessly in her cross-examination, feeling that her position, as the wronged party, gave her a right ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... the telephone, if one may use such a simile, and you have, no assurance as to who is at the other end. You may have wildly false messages suddenly interpolated among truthful ones—messages so detailed in their mendacity that it is impossible to think that they are not deliberately false. When once we have accepted the central fact that spirits change little in essentials when leaving the body, and that in consequence the world ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tell me what you think of Mr. Disraeli. I once met him at a ball at the Duke of Sutherland's in the long picture gallery of Stafford House. I was walking with Lord Shrewsbury, and without a word of warning he stopped and introduced him, mentioning with reckless mendacity that I had read every book he had written and admired them all, then he coolly walked off and left me standing face to face with the great statesman. He talked to me for some time, and I studied him carefully. I should say he was a man with one ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... that in a brief time on our shores can build the finest temple to God which this country has yet seen? What will the people, to whom we have described this race as sunk in papistical stupidity, debased, unenterprising, think, when they gaze on this absolute proof of our mendacity?" ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... so." Again he lied, and something in the frank eyes which were raised to his made him ashamed of his mendacity. "Of course—it's possible I may be prevented, but in any case, Miss Wayne, please remember my best wishes ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... fully met! I understand the whole matter like an eye-witness! Now there is another demand to be met, the demand of friendship! In here, candor; outside, friendship; in here, one of our brethren has been adventurous and unfortunate; outside"—the old man smiled a smile of benevolent mendacity—"outside, ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... his people were not to be abandoned to their own destruction? If it is an axiom of diplomacy that the people must not be told the truth, that is not in the least because, for example, Sir Edward Grey has a personal taste for mendacity; it is a necessity imposed by the fact that the people are incapable of the truth. In the end, lying becomes a reflex action with diplomatists; and we cannot even issue a penny bluebook without ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... followers that they had to do with dogs who did not believe in God, on which they fired two volleys against the enemy, then dropped their guns and charged with the knife in one hand and the war-club in the other. According to their own story, which shows every sign of mendacity, they drove back the Outagamies into their village, killed seventy warriors, and captured fourteen more, without counting eighty women and children killed, and a hundred and forty taken prisoners. In short, they would have us believe that they ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... denominated heraldic zoology. And why not? For these hideous creatures, however visionary[8], have a real traditionary ground in medieval belief—sincere and partly reasonable, though adulterating with mendacity, blundering, credulity, and intense superstition. But the dream-horror which I speak of is far more frightful. The dreamer finds housed within himself—occupying, as it were, some separate chamber in his brain—holding, perhaps, from that station a secret and detestable commerce ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... ship-shape as you can. Watch the papers, or they may do us more harm in a single fool story than can be remedied by wise counter-mendacity in a year. Especially watch the Times, although there's mighty little choice between them. You and Alice ought to spend as much time at the Trescotts' as you can spare. You'll hear from me almost daily. Wire anything of importance fully. Keep the L. ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... about the age of Oliver Twist at the time Bill Sykes shoved him through the window, Hiram Hanway caused him to be appointed page in the State Senate. There, for eight years, he lived in the midst of all that treason and mendacity and cowardice and rapacity and dishonor which as raw materials are ground together to produce laws for a commonwealth. He learned early that the ten commandments have no bearing on politics and legislation, and was taught that part of valor which, basing ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... when talking quietly and alone, she had repeated her false assertion. This much I knew, but why she had done if, I did not know. Not until I was forced to do so, would I believe that even her falsehood in the matter meant that she herself was guilty. There must be some other reason for her mendacity. ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... is a little struck at Eugene's way of confessing to his sweetheart, she does not betray any suspicion of mendacity. She can truly say she likes Pauline, and that she is glad of the engagement, that she and Polly are certain to be the best of friends. The warms arms around her are so fond, the kisses so delicately sweet, the exaggerations of feeling are ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... "rocks the boat" of happiness at least once during a love affair—usually by trying to leap out of it before it lands in the port of Matrimony. All a man needs in order to win any woman is a little audacity, a little mendacity ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... office without a stain upon his ermine. Millions might have been amassed by venality. He retires as poor as when he entered, owing nothing and owning little, except the title to the respect of good men, which malignant mendacity cannot wrest from a public officer who has deserved, by a long and useful career, the grateful appreciation of his fellow-citizens. We think that we may safely predict that, in his new place, Justice Field will fulfill the ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham |
