"Untrue" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... untrue word to my aunt in my life,' said Gillian, in proud anger; 'but if you think so, Miss White, I had better have no ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "Ah, traitor, untrue," said King Arthur, "now hast thou betrayed me twice. Who would have thought that thou that hast been to me so lief and dear, and that art named a noble knight, wouldest betray me for the riches of the sword. But now go again ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... demoniac drama produced very opposite results to Schiller's reputation. Among the young men of Germany it was received with an enthusiasm absolutely unparalleled, though it is perfectly untrue that it excited some persons of rank and splendid expectations (as a current fable asserted) to imitate Charles Moor in becoming robbers. On the other hand, the play was of too powerful a cast not in any case to have alarmed his serenity the Duke of Wurtemberg; for it argued a most revolutionary ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... named Macy, tells the following story of an incident which, for the sake of English manhood, one trusts is untrue. Among others who went to see Joan of Arc in her prison came one day the Earl of Warwick, with Lord Stafford and Ligny—Joan's former jailer. The latter told her in a jeering way that he had come to buy her back from the English, ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... rather than the fact that it has been taken. The position of the old servant wiping the woman's feet is not very intelligible, and the drawing of the bather's legs is distinctly defective. The light and shade of the picture, though obviously untrue to natural effect, are managed with ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... there was some connection between electricity and magnetism, and it was this idea that instigated the investigations of Ampere. It was imagined that the phenomena of electricity were to be explained by magnetism. This was not untrue, but it was only a part of the truth. Ampere proved that magnetism could also readily be produced by a current of electricity. From this idea, practically carried out, grew the ELECTRO MAGNET, and to Ampre we are ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... This is evidently untrue; but, false or true, it has the effect of pacifying his judges, so far, that the lariat is left ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... analogies in them are fortuitous, depending not on the nature of the things themselves, but on the private fancy of the writer, having no more real and logical coherence than a conundrum or a pun; in plain English, untrue, only allowable to Juliets or Othellos; while their self-possession, almost their reason, is in temporary abeyance under the influence of joy or sorrow. Every one must feel the exquisite fitness of Juliet's "Gallop apace, ye fiery-footed ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Vicarage window and ran down the Vicarage stairs and into the Vicarage kitchen, and fainted as soon as she had explained to the man-servant and the cook and the cook's cousin that she had seen a ghost. It was quite untrue, of course, but I suppose the girl's nerves were a little upset ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... Crawley's possession of it. When that gentleman declared that he had received it from Mr Soames, Mr Soames had been forced to contradict and to resent such an assertion. When Mr Crawley had afterwards said that the money had come to him from the dean, and when the dean had shown that this also was untrue, Mr Soames, confident as he was that he had dropped the pocket-book at Mr Crawley's house, could not but continue the investigation. He had done so with as much silence as the nature of the work admitted. But by the day of the magistrates' meeting at Silverbridge, ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... Scotch and English history are widely invoked: now it is the time of the Georges, now of the Stuarts, now Elizabethan, again back to the Crusades. Scott, in fact, ranges from Rufus the Red to the year 1800, and many are the complications he considers within that ample sweep. It would be untrue to say that his plots imitate each other or lack in invention: we have seen that invention is one of his virtues. Nevertheless, the motives are few when disencumbered of their stately historical trappings: hunger, ambition, love, hate, patriotism, religion, the primary passions ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... Atheism is very bad metaphysics, while the materialism which goes with it is utterly condemned by modern science.[1] But our feeling toward Atheism goes much deeper than the mere recognition of it as philosophically untrue. The mood in which we condemn it is not at all like the mood in which we reject the corpuscular theory of light or Sir G.C. Lewis's vagaries on the subject of Egyptian hieroglyphics. We are wont to look upon Atheism with unspeakable horror and ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... the womb and the long gestation of progressive history, so the American Constitution is so far as I can see the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man."[1] Note that Gladstone does not name a single or an individual man, which would have been wholly untrue, for the American Constitution was struck off by the wisdom and foresight of fifty-five men collectively. There were among them two or three who might be called transcendent men. It gained its peculiar value from the fact that it represents the composite of many divergent ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... a unit in a unified universe. Eight or ten years of study had led Adams to think he might use the century 1150-1250, expressed in Amiens Cathedral and the Works of Thomas Aquinas, as the unit from which he might measure motion down to his own time, without assuming anything as true or untrue, except relation. The movement might be studied at once in philosophy and mechanics. Setting himself to the task, he began a volume which he mentally knew as "Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres: a Study of Thirteenth-Century Unity." ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... yourself, should have a like reason with yourself to believe him innocent. Can you do this, Miss Munro? Can you show anything, in this chain of circumstances, against him, which, of your own knowledge, you can say to be untrue? Speak out, young lady, and rely upon every indulgence from ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... know anything about the matters which are here referred to, the part of this passage which I have italicised is absolutely untrue. I believe that I am intimately acquainted with all Mr. Darwin's immediate scientific friends: and I say that no one of them, nor any other man of science known to me, ever could, or would, have given such advice to any one—if for no other reason than ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... the hermits in Egypt, and a great part of the Eastern Church fell into the heresy. Then, in 361, reigned his cousin, Julian the Apostate, who, from being a Christian, had turned back to be a heathen, and wanted to have the old gods worshipped. In hopes to show that the prophecies were untrue, he tried to build up the Temple at Jerusalem, and the foundations were being dug out, when balls of fire came bursting out of the ground; and thus God's will and power were made known, so that the workmen were forced to leave off. Julian was very severe towards the Catholics, ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... manners, or you will get into trouble," said Giovanni, sternly. "I see through the whole thing. There has been no fraud, and yet the deductions are entirely untrue. In the first place, Donna Tullia, how do you make the statements here given to coincide with the fact that during the whole summer of 1863 and during the early part of 1864 I was in Canada with a party of gentlemen, who are all alive to testify ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... specimen of that invariable concomitant of all screen journalism, the long-haired poet with his flowing tie and neatly ribboned manuscript. Even the office "boy," lethargic, neutrally polite, busy writing on half-sheets of paper, was profoundly untrue to the pictured type. Banneker wondered what the managing editor would be like; would almost, in the wreckage of his preconceived notions, have accepted a woman or a priest in that manifestation, when Mr. Gordon appeared and was addressed by ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... succeed much better in Comedy, and in those serious and pathetic pictures which occupy a middle place betwixt Comedy and Tragedy. Their characters are often arbitrarily drawn, and, when it suits the momentary wants of the poet, become even untrue to themselves; in external matters they are tolerably in keeping. Beaumont and Fletcher employ the whole strength of their talents in pictures of passion; but they enter little into the secret history of the heart; they pass over the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... drawn prizes in what is called the lottery of life would not be untrue; but just as true is it that one of those very prizes was the determined conviction that life is no lottery at all, but a serious business worth taking infinite pains upon. To one of his sons at Oxford he wrote a little paper of suggestions that are the actual description ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... which it has been received. Mathematical axioms are not axioms of general truth. What is true of relation, of form and quantity, is often grossly false in regard to morals, for example. In this latter science it is very usually untrue that the aggregated parts are equal to the whole. In chemistry, also, the axiom fails. In the consideration of motive it fails; for two motives, each of a given value, have not, necessarily, a value, when united, equal to the sum of ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... with its violent dislocations, both of bones and impressions, conveys the idea of anything but repose, although a mouse on the floor bids us notice, that notwithstanding appearances, the ungainly lady stretches herself in silence. There cannot well be anything more inelegant and untrue than this piece; yet there is clever painting here and there; and some of the accessories, if taken without reference to the design, in which they are blots, are models of their kind. The thought belongs to the middle ages; the mechanical ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... possible patient was sent away to Moscow or Petrograd to make room for the rush of wounded that must be coming from the Lodz direction. But no patients arrived, and we heard that the railway communications had been cut. But this proved to be untrue. ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... falsity we have had a recent example from a man who knows far better—Tolstoi's "Powers of Darkness." Here is a piece full of force and truth, yet quite untrue. For before Mikita was led into so dire a situation he was tempted, and temptations are beautiful at least in part; and a work which dwells on the ugliness of crime and gives no hint of any loveliness in the temptation, sins against the modesty of life, and, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... letter was untrue, false; it was penned under compulsion. I wrote you again, later, but you had gone, disappeared utterly. I wanted to explain, but your own people even did not know where ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... of all that, by imposing upon them a duty they do not feel as such, you set them against your tyranny, and dissuade them from loving you; you teach them to be dissemblers, deceitful, willfully untrue, for the sake of extorting rewards or of escaping punishments. Finally, by habituating them to cover a secret motive by an apparent motive, you give them the means of constantly misleading you, of concealing their true character from ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... which prompt you to this,' said the gentleman who had spoken first, 'but let me warn you, not to persist in what you know to be untrue, until it is too late. It ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... may perhaps be untrue, but with that I am not concerned. If it is not true of them, it is true of somebody else. 'That is satisfactory so far as Mr. Lydgate is concerned,' says Mrs. Farebrother in 'Middlemarch,' with an air of precision; 'but ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... Taaoa. For months he had poured at her feet all his earnings, and faithfully he had labored at copra-making to gain money for her. He had lavished upon her all his material wealth and the fierce passion of his Malay heart, only to find her disdainful, untrue, and, at last, a runaway. While he was in the forest, he said, climbing cocoanut-trees to provide her with luxuries, she had fled his hut, carrying with her a certain "Singaire" and a trunk. He was in ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... fatigue, no nothing in short, matters, so long as she gets to him in time. I don't approve of such a state of mind, and yet"—Honoria wheeled round, facing the glory of colour dyeing all the west—"and yet, I'm untrue enough to my own principles rather ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... suspicion, open to doubt; staggering, hard to believe, incredible, unbelievable, not to be believed, inconceivable; impossible &c. 471. fallible &c. (uncertain) 475; undemonstrable; controvertible &c. (untrue) 495. Adv. cum grano salis[Latin: with a grain of salt]; with grains of allowance. Phr. fronti nulla fides[Lat]; nimium ne crede colori [Lat][Vergil]; "timeo Danaos et dona ferentes" [Latin: I fear the Greeks even when bearing gifts][Vergil], beware of Greeks bearing gifts; credat ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... stand there and tell me that Gordon Wade has not only been untrue to me, but that he came here at night to steal from you; broke in here like a common thief?" Her breast heaved violently, and in her eyes shone a veritable ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... the slightest doubt of its performer's rank incompetence. That he had failed was, therefore, easily understood; in no way did it indicate that all he said about the chances of a real musician in the land of skyscrapers and mighty distances (which he also told about at length) was of necessity untrue. It had been the talk of this man which had fascinated Kreutzer; it was the city of this man's wild fancy which the flute-player expected to encounter when he reached ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... for your ears. And for him you will die in this horrible place unless you consent. For him you have thrown away everything,—name, fame, and happiness,—unless you will take all these from me. Oh, I know you will cry out that it is untrue; but my eyes are good, though you call me old! For this treacherous boy, with his curly hair, you have lost the only thing that makes woman human,—your reputation!" And Benoni laughed that horrid laugh of his, till the court rang ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... necessity of philosophical reform, I am irrelevantly charged by Dr. Royce, in effect, with being a false pretender, a plagiarist, and an impostor. The charge is just as true in one case as in the other. But, be the charge true or untrue, the attention of keen and candid minds is not to be diverted by this perfectly transparent device from the main ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... this public meeting of the citizens of Lawrence, that the allegations and charges against us, contained in the aforesaid proclamation, are wholly untrue in fact and in the conclusion which is drawn from them. The aforesaid Marshal was resisted in no manner whatever, nor by any person whatever, in the execution of said writs, except by him whose arrest the Deputy Marshal was seeking to make. And that we now, as we have done heretofore, ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... untrue that Sharp concealed a letter from the king commanding that no blood should be shed (Charles detested hanging people). If any one concealed his letter, it was Burnet, Archbishop of Glasgow. Dalziel now sent Ballantyne to supersede Turner and to exceed ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... could not find the courage to tell Peggy of these picturesque extravagances. To satisfy her curiosity he blandly informed her that he was getting off much more cheaply than he had expected. He laughingly denounced as untrue the stories that had come to her from outside sources. And before his convincing assertions that reports were ridiculously exaggerated, the troubled expression in the ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... people say that if only they lived in the country they would take up the study of birds with great interest, but that a city life prevented any nature study. To show how untrue this is, I once made a census of wild birds which were nesting in the New York Zoological Park, which is situated within the limits of New York City. Part of the Park is wooded, while much space is given up to the collections of birds and animals. Throughout the year thousands ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... vice which has yet been exposed, and that the vice alleged argues gross ignorance of every thing oriental. Lord Auckland might err, as heavily we believe him to have done, in his estimate of Affghanistan and the Affghan condition: he had untrue notions of what the Affghans needed, and what it was that they could bear: but his critics, Indian and domestic, were not in error by default merely of philosophic views as to the state of society in Affghanistan; they erred by want of familiarity with the most prominent usages of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... to do it again, I would!" she said quickly, just like that, without reflecting, in the way one says a thing to one's self which one knows to be untrue. ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... rises, falls, rises, and then sinks again asbestos and all, and the play is over. The lights are on, the audience rises in a body and puts on its wraps. All over the theater you can hear the words "perfectly rotten," "utterly untrue," and so on. The general judgment seems to be that it is a perfectly rotten play, ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... moral element in any story he shrunk visibly. She tried the German tales collected by the brothers Grimm, so popular with children of all ages; but on the very first attempt she blundered into an awful one of murder and vengeance, in which, if the drawing was untrue, the colour was strong, and had to blunder clumsily out of it again, with a hot face and a cold heart. At length she betook herself to the Thousand and One Nights, which she had never read, and found very dull, but which with Leopold served ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... philosophical monitor," said the Chevalier de Grammont, "you talk here as if you were the Cato of Normandy." "Do I say anything untrue?" replied Saint Evremond: "Is it not a fact, that as soon as a woman pleases you, your first care is to find out whether she has any other lover, and your second how to plague her; for the gaining her affection is the last thing in your ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... responsible. He spoke of these trials with some fullness in commenting upon libel suits in his "Recollections of a Busy Life." But Greeley's life was too busy for him always to recollect accurately. While he had not the slightest intention to say anything untrue, what he said was in some instances of this character; though more often it was misleading rather than false. (p. 181) But outside of what Greeley has written, there are several erroneous assertions current. ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... on that night, if so it be that I have the opportunity, I shall arise, and, against all flatteries, take my stand. I then and there will proclaim in clear-cut words my loyalty to Washington. He is the cause; in him it stands or falls; to gain a world for self, my heart could never be untrue to him. Day after day, month after month, year after year, he leads the imperiled way, yet holds his faith in God and man. The hireling Hessians roll their drums through ports and towns; the wily Indian joins the invader; his army is famine-smitten and thinned with fever, and drill ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... as soon as I discovered that he had annexed my revolver. He says he hasn't taken it. That's untrue of course. A Chinaman would not see the sense of confessing under any circumstances. To deny any charge is a principle of right conduct; but he hardly expected to be believed. He was a little enigmatic at the ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... has had the impertinence to attack me with both venom and vulgarity in your columns, I hope you will allow me to state that the assertions contained in his letter are as deliberately untrue ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... some guards in the ante-room where they were waiting themselves, so that they could take her away by force if necessary, should she refuse to come willingly, or should her servants want to defend her; but it is untrue that the two barons entered her room, as some have said. They only set foot there once, on the occasion which we have related, when they came to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... and the woman pays." The cynical saying, which, after all, is not wholly untrue, took shape in her thought and said itself—aloud. Yet it was not altogether impossible that he might yet be made ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... good maker will not wrench his word to helpe his rime, either by falsifying his accent, or by untrue orthographie. ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... ago, and told me that he did not believe a single word of what was said against me, and wished me to know that he considered me quite innocent, and the victim of a hideous plot. I burst into tears at what he said, and told him that while there was much amongst the definite charges that was quite untrue and transferred to me by revolting malice, still that my life had been full of perverse pleasures, and that unless he accepted that as a fact about me and realised it to the full I could not possibly be ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... of death had entered the world," Mrs. Crapps said impressively, "it spread like the plague until it had infected all mankind. Even those who had lived for ages to prove it false were not able to resist the prevalence of the thing they knew to be untrue,—any more," she added, dropping her eyes, and speaking in a tone sad and patient, "than we who to-day understand that there is no such thing as death can resist the overwhelming power of the belief of the masses ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... lieutenant-general. As the case stood at present, it appeared as if the latter was kept out of the way designedly, lest he might assert in person the same things which he had written in his letters; and, face to face, either substantiate his charges, or, if he had alleged any thing untrue, be convicted of misrepresentation, until the truth should be clearly discovered. For this reason he was of opinion, that the senate should not, at present, assent to either of the decrees demanded by the consul." When he, however, persisted with undiminished energy ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... world all that was worst in him. There are few chapters that will not recall defects publicly shown by the preacher and author. The reader can scarcely miss a corroboration of a shrewd observation of Macaulay, that there is no proposition so monstrously untrue in politics or morals as to be incapable of proof by what shall sound like a logical demonstration from admitted principles. Theodore Parker was a strong and honest man. Yet few strong men have so lain at the mercy of some narrow bit of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... can rely, of several similar instances. But to prevent misconstruction as to the incident which mainly gives rise to the remark, he thinks it necessary to declare, that the account, which appeared in some of the news-papers, of an entertainment having been given by Mr. Pitt on the Fast Day, is untrue; and he is glad of the opportunity, which the mention of this subject affords him, of contradicting a statement which he can positively affirm to have been false. This is one of the many instances which should enforce on the readers of news-papers, ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... reject his abject plea, but my hands were tied by my devotion to the welfare of the company. Besides, he annoyed me by his palpably untrue reference to what had been a legitimate transaction, never giving a thought to my generosity in not exposing his chicanery, nor the fact that the dummy he manipulated bore no resemblance whatever to the firm I had brought by my own effort ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... untrue, for he was as far off his quarry as ever, he being at the front of the vinery, and the boy on the top of the wall right at the ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... everywhere. Everything so broken and confused from this terrible War. At the beginning how they said all would be made new; East and West firmly united. But here, at home, while the best were fighting, the worst were too busy with ugly whispers and untrue talk. Even holy men, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... whose childish eyes looked out on nothing but paved streets and brick walls or whose young ears heard nothing but the harsh rumble of the city, for his early conceptions from which to interpret his later life is artificial and therefore largely untrue." ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... granted by the advocates of Homoeopathy that there is a resemblance between the effects of the vaccine virus on a person in health and the symptoms of small-pox. Therefore, according to the rule, the vaccine virus will cure the small-pox, which, as everybody knows, is entirely untrue. But it prevents small-pox, say the Homoeopathists. Yes, and so does small-pox prevent itself from ever happening again, and we know just as much of the principle involved in the one case as in the other. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... long lost sight o' he turned up at Cullew, wi' what looked to simple folk a fortune in his pouches, and half a dozen untrue stories about how he made it. He had come to make a show o' himsel' afore his mither, and I dare say to give her some gold, for he was aye ready to give when he had, I'll say that for him; but she had flitted to some unkent place, and so he bade on some weeks at the Cullew public. ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... been laying down a great principle—viz. that if the main direction of a life be right, God will reveal to a man the points in which he is wrong. But that principle is untrue and dangerous, unless carefully guarded. It may lead to a lazy tolerance of evil, and to drawing such inferences as, 'Well! it does not much matter about strenuous effort, if we are right at bottom it will all come right by-and-by,' and so it may become a pillow for indolence and a clog ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was able in 1770 to set up on his own account in Paris, and in 1772 he married. Among the grocer's many friends and acquaintances this marriage created something of a sensation, for Derues let it be known that the lady of his choice was of noble birth and an heiress. The first statement was untrue. The lady was one Marie Louise Nicolais, daughter of a non-commissioned artillery officer, turned coachbuilder. But by suppressing the S at the end of her name, which Derues was careful also to erase in his marriage contract, the ambitious ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... cells" can help us but little. For how can neighboring cells direct others placed in a new position? The expression, if not positively misleading and untrue, is at the best only a restatement of fact. It certainly offers no explanation. Flood-tide is not due to the interaction of particles of water, though this may influence the form ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... the records of our Lord's life in the Gospels are not a tissue of falsehoods from beginning to end, this account of things is absolutely untrue. The miracles of Jesus awakened the greatest astonishment, betokening a time as unfamiliar with the actual performance of such ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... brutal insolence, and subjects the rich to the paltry expediency of sanctioning the falsehood, however deep their conviction that it is such. It cannot, I think, be denied that the great men of America attain to power and to fame, by eternally uttering what they know to be untrue. American citizens are not equal. Did Washington feel them to be so, when his word outweighed (so happily for them) the votes of thousands? Did Franklin think that all were equal when he shouldered his way from the printing press to the cabinet? True, ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... on her face, and encircled her form, when after confession Homeward serenely she walked, with God's benediction upon her. When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music." [Footnote: Longfellow: Evangeline.] Francesca's daily life was as perfect as a child's could be. No untrue words sullied her pure lips; no gross thought dwelt in her mind. She seldom laughed, though a sweet smile was often on her lips. Up to the age of eleven, her life was one long continual prayer. Every ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... through you and come out on the other side. Respectable platitudes, you go maundering on about Cobden and Gladstone, and the liberty of the individual, and the rights of nationality, and government by the people. What you say is not precisely untrue, but it is unreal and uninteresting." So far in chorus. "It is not up to date," finished the Imperialist, and the Socialist bureaucrat. "It is not bread and butter," finished the Social democrat. Opposed in everything else, these two parties agreed in one thing. They were to divide the ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... cause; that he was charged with moneys received from the king of Persia, and condemned for bribes from Harpalus. And should we grant that all those (and they are not few) who have made these statements against him have spoken what is untrue, yet we cannot assert that Demosthenes was not the character to look without desire on the presents offered him out of respect and gratitude by royal persons. But that Cicero refused, from the Sicilians when he was quaestor, from ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... next morning, and had to make up its page of dispatches from matter sent by post in advance and by expansion of the 150 words received. Edmund Yates, in his autobiography, tells a story of the affair which is in every important detail untrue, and he probably knew nothing of it except what Young had admitted, and that was certainly very little, for Young was a very reticent man, and not likely to tell his defeat ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... lively incidents in the course of the political warfare; such, for instance, as the appearance of a neat little pamphlet which purported to give a full and complete account of Mutimer's life. In this pamphlet nothing untrue was set down, nor did it contain anything likely to render its publisher amenable to the law of libel; but the writer, a gentleman closely connected with Comrade Roodhouse, most skilfully managed to convey the worst possible impression throughout. Nor did the vicar hesitate to express his ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... unless they happen to be his political antagonists, inclines him to overlook what does not fit into his own scheme of existence. And yet no one can say that, as presentations of Norwegian peasant life, "Synnoeve," "Arne," "The Bridal March," etc., are untrue, though, indeed, one could well imagine pictures in very much sombrer colors which might lay a valider claim to veracity. Kielland's "Laboring People," and Kristian Elster's "A Walk to the Cross" and "Kjeld Horge," give the reverse of the ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... that reverent induction from them is the way to obtain the deepest truths. Socrates and Plato were as little inclined to separate the man and the philosopher as Moses, Solomon, or Isaiah were. When Philo, by allegorising away the simple human parts of his books, is untrue to Moses's teaching, he becomes untrue to Plato's. He becomes untrue, I believe, to a higher teaching than Plato's. He loses sight of an eternal truth, which even old Homer might have taught him, when he treats Moses as one section of his disciples ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... saw there, and then, was confirmatory of the theory of the young Scotchman; and convinced not only Harry Blount, but Terence O'Connor, that the stories of Arab hospitality were not only untrue, but diametrically ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... New York were expected by the army in Charleston. This intelligence excited the more alarm, because the term of service for which the levies from Virginia were engaged was about expiring, and no adequate measures had been taken for supplying their places. It proved untrue; but such was its impression, that the general addressed a letter to the governors of South Carolina, in which, after taking a serious view of the state of his army, he recommended that it should be recruited from the slaves. The governor thought the proposition ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... tremble, saying: "After all, I have had enough of it as it is. I have seen it, that suffices, this is civil war, and I shall take my leave!" Should he abandon his friends who were expecting him? Who were in need of him possibly! who were a mere handful against an army! Should he be untrue at once to his love, to country, to his word? Should he give to his cowardice the pretext of patriotism? But this was impossible, and if the phantom of his father was there in the gloom, and beheld him retreating, he would beat him ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... very human in their way, as what else should they be, children of men and women as they are? Just as with human friends so with book friends, first impressions are often misleading; good literary coin sometimes seems to ring untrue, but the untruth is in the ear of the reader, not of the writer. For instance, Trollope has many odd and irritating tricks which are apt to scare off those who lack perseverance and who fail to understand that there must be something admirable ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Cape, that I accidentally witnessed the ferocity of this chief. Some trifling "country affair" caused me to visit the king; but upon landing at Toso I was told he was abroad. The manner of my informant, however, satisfied me that the message was untrue; and accordingly, with the usual confidence of a "white man" in Africa, I searched his premises till I encountered him in the "palaver-house." The large inclosure was crammed with a mob of savages, all in perfect silence around the king, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... told by a contemporary, but only as an on-dit, and may therefore be quite untrue. But Simon de Montfort, the hero of the crusade, employed like language. One day two heretics, taken at Castres, were brought before him, one of whom was unshakable in his belief, the other expressed himself open to conviction. "Burn them both," ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... mean to assert, my lord, that you intend to be untrue to your promise, and to throw over your own engagement because my cousin has expressed her wish to retain property which she believes to be her own!" This was said in a tone which made Lord Fawn surer than ever that Greystock was his enemy to the knife. Personally, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... not care for food prepared in the German style ... nor yet in the American. He forbids us champagne: "Champagne is not a wine. It is a beverage, lighter indeed than brandy and soda, but, like cologne, fit only for demi-reps." But he seems untrue to himself in an essay condemning the use of perfumes. His own books are heavily scented. With the rare prescience and clairvoyance of an artist he includes the German Kaiser in a chapter on hyenas (in 1906!); therein stalk the blood-stained shadows of Caligula, Caracalla, ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... it. A man has no right to know what people say about him. It unfits him for occupying his real position amongst them. He, least of all, has anything to do with it. If his friends won't defend him, he can't defend himself. Besides, what people say is so often untrue!—I don't mean to others, but to themselves. Their hearts are more honest than their mouths. But Janet doesn't want a strange story, ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... presents, his spacious domain Soon made her untrue to her vows: He dazzled her eyes; He bewildered her brain; He caught her affections so light and so vain, And carried ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... Irish either were or are a people remarkable for making bulls or blunders, is an imputation utterly unfounded, and in every sense untrue. The source of this error on the part of our neighbors is, however, readily traced. The language of our people has been for centuries, and is up to the present day, in a transition state. The English tongue is gradually superseding ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... the lie,' returned Vincent. 'I did write "Illusion." It is untrue that Mr. Ashburn's conduct in the matter does him anything but credit. May I tell my story here, ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... you are," said Mr. Prince. Untrue to assert that his glance was never wistful! It was ever so slightly ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... (Challemel-Lacour) came to see me in a great rage, and told me that his Government had heard that we had tried to raise Germany against France on the Tunis question by an alliance offered at Berlin, though not through our Ambassador. This particular story was untrue. I denied it, and I then went to Lord Granville, who denied it.... I then wrote to Challemel to ask him to give up names; but ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... the Earl of Warwick, and the Duke of Clarence, at his house, the Moor, in Hertfordshire. The King was washing his hands before supper, when some one whispered him that a body of a hundred men were lying in ambush outside the house. Whether this were true or untrue, the King took fright, mounted his horse, and rode through the dark night to Windsor Castle. Another reconciliation was patched up between him and the King-Maker, but it was a short one, and it was the last. A new rising took place in Lincolnshire, and the King marched to ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... strong box, to his victim, and requires from him such an ample security that it is as safe in his hands as remaining in the vault. That he has bought the service of the borrower as another bought the service of the horse or chattel slave is untrue. He has given no equivalent. He retains every farthing of his wealth safely deposited with his victim. The service he receives does not diminish the value of his property nor discharge any portion of ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... she had not slept would be untrue, but she had slept close to the surface of consciousness, as if a bright light were shining somewhere near, and she had waked with the definite knowledge that this light was the certainty of seeing him that very day. The morning had gone very well; she had even forgotten ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... compelled to be the pioneer among women by fear. The following day she had a paragraph to herself in both papers, and Grey Town was led to believe that she had made the passage merely from a love of adventure. This story was never contradicted, but, like many other tales of adventure, it is untrue. ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... seen the Bill for the first time in the newspapers. This he had from Lord C., who is a great friend of Lord Anglesey's, and who had seen Lord Grey's letter before he left Ireland; but the story appears to me quite incredible, and is probably untrue. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... And if so, I must maintain that Professor Huxley has shown—if indeed it was not obvious already—that the idea of a series of periods, and in each of which a certain kind of life began and culminated (if it was not fully completed) before another began, is untrue to nature. This, therefore, cannot have been intended by ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... her infidelity had broken his heart: and he called her a weed, that looked so fair, and smelled so sweet, that the sense ached at it; and wished she had never been born. And when he had left her, this innocent lady was so stupefied with wonder at her lord's untrue suspicion of her, that a weight-like sleep came over her, and she only desired her attendant to make her bed, and to lay her wedding-sheets upon it, saying, that when people teach their babes, they do it by gentle means and easy tasks, and Othello might have chid her so; for in good faith ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... offering my way of life to whomsoever desires to commit suicide by the scheme which has enabled me to beat the doctor and the hangman for seventy years. Some of the details may sound untrue, but they are not. I am not here to deceive; I am here ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... like sympathy shot into the man's eyes. The chambermaid who waited on Christine was voluble, and a friend of his, and he had heard a great deal from her that was untrue, mixed up ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... same is the practice with the Papuas of Kaimani Bay, who have a high reputation of honesty. "It never happens that the Papua be untrue to his promise," Finsch says in Neuguinea und seine Bewohner, Bremen, ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... while my passion I impart, You deem my words untrue, O place your hand upon my heart— Feel how ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... establish this marvelous proportion, so essential that without it a portion of human labor is lost,—that is, useless, inharmonious, untrue, and consequently synonymous with poverty ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... courtier; and besides, the new king had listened and believed the stories to his discredit brought by men whose fortunes had been ruined in their own country, and who sought to build them up in Holland! Charles soon found for himself how untrue were these tales, and though the two never could become friends, he recognised Montrose's loyalty and ability and appointed him commander-in-chief of the royal forces and lieutenant-governor of Scotland, and gave him leave to get what mercenaries he ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... steam-engine. In them there is not sufficient concentration, if I may use the term, of instruction; and the requirements of many arts and trades insufficiently carried out; the old schools and old colleges much too classical and mathematical. If this position is untrue, no popular scheme can be adopted at present; but it appears more than probable that before long the subject will be brought before the House of Commons, and education made accessible to all. As to the money for the purpose, the country will never grudge that. The ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... of the nineteenth century admitted, "Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art." [Footnote: Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying.] If poets complain that all charms fly At the mere touch of cold ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... father had retired. She was about to do so, she added. It was untrue, but she was not in the mood for a conversation with anyone, least ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln |
