"Calumny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... passion for M—— M—— was on the wane, I felt my heart gripped as by a hand of ice, and it was with the greatest difficulty that I made no sign. Notwithstanding, I took the story for an atrocious calumny, but yet the matter was too near my heart for me to delay in bringing it to light at the earliest opportunity. I therefore replied to Righelini in the calmest manner possible, that one or two nuns might be had for money, but that ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... not only he himself, but every one who knows him, believes that he will accomplish whatever he sets out to do. People know that it is useless to oppose a man who uses his stumbling-blocks as stepping-stones; who is not afraid of defeat; who never, in spite of calumny or criticism, shrinks from his task; who never shirks responsibility; who always keeps his compass pointed to the north star of his purpose, no matter what storms ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden
... miserable screws that it was ever your misfortune to behold; but you had better refrain from expressing your feelings, for if you use violent, uncomplimentary language, it may turn out that you have been guilty of gross calumny. I have seen many a team composed of animals which a third-class London costermonger would have spurned, and in which it was barely possible to recognise the equine form, do their duty in highly creditable style, and go along at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour, under no ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... suspicions find a place? Once more I issue this announcement; if you, my fellow countrymen, do indeed place the safety of China before all other considerations, it behooves you to be large-minded. Beware of lightly heeding the plausible voice of calumny, and of thus furnishing a medium for fostering anarchy. If evilly disposed persons, who are bent on destruction, seize the excuse for sowing dissension to the jeopardy of the situation, I, Yuan Shih-kai, shall follow the behest of my fellow-countrymen in placing such ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... tried to anger her with abuse and calumny to such an extent that she would be driven to the deed by sheer rage. Failing in this, he resumed his wheedling tactics. It would be impossible, he argued, for any one to know that she had given ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... the first place to tell, that he was Don Quixote, known as the hero in the celebrated Spanish romance or fable called Don Quixote. A similar fiction was also the speech of the demon by whom that medium was possessed, only that those who do not know me, might take the calumny of the devil for truth. After the confession that he was Don Quixote, to make which he was compelled by a higher power, he added according to his lying propensity, that he was Thomas Paine, although ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... many bottles of wine were drunk. His pleasure is to make his guests tipsy, and to tell everybody how and when the period of inebriation arose. And Miss Clapperclaw tells me that he often comes over laughing and giggling to her, and pretending that he has brought ME into this condition—a calumny which I ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dog-hostlers, who, after all, are the better judges in such a case, know what credit they should attach to my medicaments. I call you to witness, worshipful Master Tressilian, that nought, save the voice of calumny and the hand of malicious violence, hath driven me forth from a station in which I held a place alike useful ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... respond. How many pure, innocent children not only inherit a wicked heart of their own, claiming life-long scrutiny and restraint, but are heirs also of pa- rental disgrace and calumny, from which only long years of patient endurance in paths of recti- tude can ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... Dost thou so little fear calumny, and so little [fear] false reports? When people shall know my crime, and that thy passion [for me] still continues, what will not envy and deception spread abroad? Compel them to silence, and, without debating more, save thy fair fame by causing me ...
— The Cid • Pierre Corneille
... he could afford to take a wife if a woman learned to love him, and what wealth of tenderness and devotion was he not ready to lavish on one who would! But he would offer no one a tarnished name. First and foremost he must now stand up and fight that calumny,—"come out of his shell," as Waldron had said, and give people a chance to see what manner of man he was. God helping him, he would, ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... confident spirit of youth and strength. In his portrait of Pippo Spana, now in S. Apollonia, Florence, Andrea di Castagno also imitated and emphasised it, as also did Botticelli in his carved background of the "Calumny," and Perugino in many of his paintings. But Botticelli's painted statue and Perugino's "S. Michael" and "Warriors" of the Cambio seem to spread their legs because they are too puny to bear the weight ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... known my master these thirty years. Neither calumny, nor disaster, nor death itself has any terrors for him. Nothing could have saved me, born as I was into the traditions of this family of ours, but that he has established his own life in the centre of mine, with its peace and truth and spiritual vision, thus making it possible for me to ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... the more valuable; they are the frank overflowings of the heart, the outcropping of impulse, the key to genuine motives. They prove the motive to have been pure, and if they shall help to stifle the voice of calumny, I am content. I do not forget, before the public journals vilified Mrs. Lincoln, that ladies who moved in the Washington circle in which she moved, freely canvassed her character among themselves. They gloated over many a tale of scandal that grew out of gossip in their ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... Valkenburgh, "I will have the body exhumed to-morrow, and when we have disproved the calumny, this scheme of your enemies will do you more ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... hardly conceive such a tableau of savagery as that presented by these Arabs of the great American desert. Arabs! The similitude is a calumny on the descendants of Ishmael; the fiercest Bedouin are refined and mild compared with the Apaches. Even the brutal and criminal classes of civilization, the pugilists, roughs, burglars, and pickpockets of our large cities, ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... The modern Venetians (Laugier, tom. ii. p. 119) accuse the emperor Manuel; but the calumny is refuted by Villehardouin and the older writers, who suppose that Dandolo lost his eyes by a wound, (No. 31, and Ducange.) * Note: The accounts differ, both as to the extent and the cause of his blindness According to Villehardouin and others, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... an impulse of heart-break that followed what she believed to be a revelation of my true character as something far worse than that of idler. I married the woman whom he had made the object of his well-managed calumny. My wife knew where my heart was and why I had married her. It is from her that Mary gets her dark hair and the brown of her cheeks which make her appear so at home on the desert. Soon after Mary's birth she chose to live apart from me—but I will not speak further of ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... confessed in words her love for him as he had done to her. But now? Well, now only this horrible tale of theft and untruth hung between them like a veil; now even with his arms locked about her, his eyes drowned in hers, his ears caught the whispers of calumny, his thoughts were perforated with the horror of his Bishop's censure, and these things rushed between his soul and hers, like some bridgeless deep he might not cross, and so his lonely life ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... having chosen to proceed by the way of information, which is deemed a grievance; but if he lays an action for damages, he must prove the damage, and I leave you to judge, whether a gentleman's character may not be brought into contempt, and all his views in life blasted by calumny, without his being able to specify the particulars of ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... Hooker was so besotted as to be incapable of command. What I have written of his marching the army to this field and to the field of Gettysburg is a full answer to such unnecessary perversion. Let these would-be friends of Hooker remember that this calumny is of their own making, not mine. I am as sorry for it, as they ought to be. If the contempt expressed in the resolutions they passed had been silent, instead of boisterous, Hooker's memory would have suffered far ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... of calumny and lies: Men gloat on evil—even woman's hand Will dabble in the mire, nor heed the cries Of the poor victim whom she seeks to brand In thy sweet name, Religion, through the land! Like the keen tempest she doth strip her prey, Tossing him bare and wrecked upon the strand, While vaunting ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... Lord, Thou knowest how cruelly I am calumniated! I pray Thee, therefore, to show by a miracle the whole truth as to this matter. If I deal in iniquity may this pulpit sink with me seven fathoms below the earth, but if what is said be false let the author of the calumny be punished, so that all present may be convinced ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... anecdotes spring like mushrooms in a forcing-pit. But gossip is not evidence, nor does it become evidence because it is in Latin and has been repeated through many generations. The strength of a chain is no greater than the strength of its first link, and the adhesive character of calumny proves only that the inclination of average men to believe the worst of great men is the same in all ages. This particular accusation against Caesar gains, perhaps, a certain credibility from the admission that it was the only occasion on which anything of the kind could ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... possessing himself of that small reward for my services which, I since find, he had a very small share in procuring for me. After, or, indeed, rather during his negotiations, he endeavoured to stain my character and injure my future fortune, by every calumny his malice could suggest. This is the case of my ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... darkened by frauds which she could expose, but others, even of candid listeners, perhaps, could not; it was through that imperishable grandeur of soul which taught her to submit meekly and without a struggle to her punishment, but taught her not to submit—no, not for a moment—to calumny as to facts, or to misconstruction as to motives. Besides, there were secretaries all around the court taking down her words. That was meant for no good to her. But the end does not always correspond to the meaning. And Joanna might ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... that no endeavors have been left untried to injure me in your opinion. But the use of character is to be a shield against calumny. I could wish, undoubtedly, (if idle wishes were not the most idle of all things,) to make every part of my conduct agreeable to every one of my constituents; but in so great a city, and so greatly divided as this, it ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in the Speak House and debate: and the king's chief superiority is a form of closure—"The Speaking is over." After the long monocracy of Nakaeia and the changes of Nanteitei, the Old Men were doubtless grown impatient of obscurity, and they were beyond question jealous of the influence of Maka. Calumny, or rather caricature, was called in use; a spoken cartoon ran round society; Maka was reported to have said in church that the king was the first man in the island and himself the second; and, stung by the supposed affront, the chiefs broke ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to excuse himself on so base a calumny as that Marion preferred me? Major M'Toddy, I am here to receive your message; pray deliver it, and let us settle this matter as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... the prince of modern novelists, who says: "There is in calumny a rank poison that, even when the character throws off the slander, the heart remains diseased beneath the effect." And this is the exact condition in which Maria finds herself. The knaves who have sought her ruin ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... the Hesychian edition. See Montfaucon, Praelim. in Hexapla; Kennicott, diss. 2. 3. [Greek: Aposunagwgos emo ne.] 4. [Greek: Arxontos] 5. 2 B. 2, c. 12, 13. 6. The Arians boasted that Arius had received his impious doctrine from St. Lucian: but he is justified with regard to that calumny by the silence of Saint Athanasius; the panegyrics of St. Chrysostom and St. Jerom; the express testimony of the ancient book, On the Trinity, among the works of St. Athanasius, Dial. 3, tom. 2, p. 179; his orthodox confession of faith in Sozomen, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... to maintain his mind in a frame befitting the posture and the occasion; and when he heard the speaker return thanks for the downfall and devastation of his family, he was strongly tempted to have started upon his feet, and charged him with offering a tribute, stained with falsehood and calumny, at the throne of truth itself. He resisted, however, an impulse which it would have been insanity to have yielded to, and his patience was not without its reward; for when his fair neighbour arose from her knees, the lengthened and prolonged prayer being at last concluded, he observed ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... a great while ago foreseen this calumny of Corah, and had seen the people were irritated, yet was he not affrighted at it; but being of good courage, because given them right advice about their affairs, and knowing that his brother had been made partaker of the priesthood at the command of God, and not by his own favor ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... men were employed by Ferdinand to administer justice in Bohemia? Comenius gave them fine sarcastic names. He called the judges Nogod, Lovestrife, Hearsay, Partial, Loveself, Lovegold, Takegift, Ignorant, Knowlittle, Hasty and Slovenly; he called the witnesses Calumny, Lie and Suspicion; and, in obvious allusion to Ferdinand's seizure of property, he named the statute-book "The Rapacious Defraudment of the Land." He saw the lords oppressing the poor, sitting long at table, and discussing lewd and obscene matters. He saw the rich idlers with bloated faces, with ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... to the crowd of spectators: "Gentlemen," he said, "I am the victim of a most monstrous calumny, and I call on you to treat this scoundrel with his trumped-up ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... great favor if you will allow the accompanying documents to appear in the "Times." Its universal circulation affords me an opportunity of annihilating a calumny recently revived, which has for nine years harassed my friends ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... probably the one that has been described by foreigners as the most unfit for singing. Greater calumny has never been uttered. I contend for just the opposite: That English is the very best language for an artistic singer to use, for it contains the greatest variety of vocal and aspirate elements, which afford an artistic singer the strongest, most natural and expressive means of dramatic reality. ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... intents, And endeavoured to sully your fame? Has the venomous tongue With its calumny stung Your proud heart, and ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... word at any time to the family of the deceased Jacek of the offence that he long since atoned for, that man will be liable, as a penalty for such a taunt, to gravis notae macula,195 according to the words of the statutes, which thus punish both militem and skartabell196 if he spread calumny against a citizen of the Commonwealth—and since general equality before the law has now been proclaimed, therefore Article 3 is likewise binding on townsfolk and serfs.197 This decree of the Marshal the Scribe will enter in the acts of ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... his wooing by Helen's horror of his rival's lapse from the standard every pure minded woman sets up in her ideal lover. Ethically, he might be wrong; in his conscience he was justified. He had suffered too grievously from every species of intrigue and calumny during his own career not to be ultra-sensitive in regard to the use of ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... world who can cure me of the past. I have had to do, up to this time, with women who deceived me, or who were unworthy of love. I have led the life of a libertine; I bear on my heart certain marks that will never be effaced. Is it my fault if calumny, if base suggestion, to-day planted in a heart whose fibers were still trembling with pain and prompt to assimilate all that resembles sorrow, has driven me to despair? I have just heard the name of a man I have never met, of ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... infrequently alone. Considerate hostesses seated them next each other at dinners: it was deemed an evidence of being "in the know" thus to accommodate them. The openness of their intimacy went far to rob calumny of its sting. And Banneker's ingrained circumspection of the man trained in the open, applied to les convenances, was a protection in itself. Moreover, there was in his devotion, conspicuous though it was, an air of chivalry, a breath of fragrance from a world of higher romance, which rendered ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... man, Unwearied yet by all thy useful toil! Whom num'rous slanderers assault in vain; Whom no base calumny can put to foil. But still the laurel on thy learned brow Flourishes fair, and shall ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... case of slavery: How has the anti-slavery cause been received? Not argumentatively, not by reason, not by entering the free arena of fair discussion and comparing notes; the arguments have been rotten eggs, and brickbats and calumny, and in the southern portion of the country, a spirit of murder, and threats to cut out the tongues of those who spoke against them. What has this indicated on the part of the nation? What but conscious guilt? Not ignorance, not that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Calumny and all the agitations about her did not disturb Louise in her prayers. "The waves of the angry ocean broke at the foot of the altar as the queen knelt; but Huguenots and Catholics, leaguers and royalists, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... faithless. Toward her, indeed, he had been guilty of treachery, and it had really weighed on his soul. Their eyes met, and she gave him to understand in the plainest way that she had heard him stigmatized as Caesar's spy, and had believed the calumny. The mere sight of him seemed to fill her with anger, and she did her utmost to show him that she had quickly found a substitute for him; and it was to Alexander, no doubt, that Ktesias, her young kinsman, who had long paid her his addresses, owed the kindliness ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... by the arm, and made him rise and go out. [The expelled man] said to himself: "Since the rabbis present at this scene did not protest, it must be that it pleased them. Very well! I shall go and eat the morsel [of calumny] upon them in the presence of the governor." He went to the governor and said to Caesar: "The Jews are revolting against thee." Caesar replied: "Who told it thee?" "Send to them," replied the other, "a victim [to sacrifice it upon the altar; for we deduce from the repetition ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... close of the case. The popular view of the trial was then represented fairly enough by a large print called "The Last Scene of the Manager's Farce," in which Hastings was represented as rising in glory from the clouds of calumny, while Burke and Fox are represented witnessing with despair the failure of their protracted farce, and the crafty face of Philip Francis peeped from behind a scene where he was supposed to be playing the part of the prompter—"no character in the farce, but very useful behind the scenes," a description ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... pursue what we deem to be true glory. We are maligned; but our soul acquits us. Could it do more in the scandal and the prejudice that assail us in private life? You are silent; but note how much deeper should be the comfort, how much loftier the self-esteem; for if calumny attack us in a wilful obscurity, what have we done to refute the calumny? How have we served our species? Have we 'scorned delight and loved laborious days'? Have we made the utmost of the 'talent' confided to our care? Have ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... others awakens in our hearts? We feel kindly to them, but they draw back their hand from us; an antipathy estranges them, they pass us by. What avail is it to tell them that appearances deceive, that calumny has done us wrong? What good is it to defend ourself, when no one cares to listen? when we are condemned before we have spoken? Nothing is so cruel as prejudice; she is blind and deaf; she shuts her eyes purposely, that she may stab boldly; for she knows, if she were to look ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... virtue, is often its own reward, and the enthusiasm some experience in the permanent enjoyments of a vast library has far outweighed the neglect or the calumny of the world, which some of its votaries have received. From the time that Cicero poured forth his feelings in his oration for the poet Archias, innumerable are the testimonies of men of letters of the pleasurable delirium of their researches. Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, and Chancellor ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... again, he made a vehement harangue, the substance of which has been preserved by Thucydides. In this speech he appears as a practised rhetorical bravo, whose one object is to vilify his opponents, and throw contempt on their arguments, by an unscrupulous use of the weapons of ridicule, calumny, and invective. He reproaches the magistrates for convening a second assembly, in a matter which had already been decided; and this was, in fact, strictly speaking, a breach of the constitution. He laughs ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... believe thee, Isabel? My unsoil'd name, the austereness of my life, 155 My vouch against you, and my place i' the state, Will so your accusation overweigh, That you shall stifle in your own report, And smell of calumny. I have begun; And now I give my sensual race the rein: 160 Fit thy consent to my sharp appetite; Lay by all nicety and prolixious blushes, That banish what they sue for; redeem thy brother By yielding up thy body to my will; Or else he must not only die the death, 165 But thy unkindness ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... broken, and by whom, still remains buried in mystery, but that Poe was guilty of any "outrage" at her house upon the eve of their intended marriage was emphatically denied by Mrs. Whitman. She pronounced the whole story a "calumny." In a letter before me she says: "I do not think it possible to overstate the gentlemanly reticence and amenity of his habitual manner. It was stamped through and through with the impress of nobility and gentleness. I have seen him in many moods and phases in those 'lonesome, latter years' which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... he is not dead, he doth not sleep! He hath awakened from the dream of life. 'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife, He has outsoared the shadows of our night. Envy and calumny, and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch him not and torture not again. From the contagion of the world's slow stain He is secure, and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... says: "He is traduced and abused for his supposed motives. He will remember, that obloquy is a necessary ingredient in all true glory; he will remember, that it was not only in the Roman customs, but it is in the nature of human things, that calumny and abuse are essential parts ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... do nothing of the kind. Whether the calumny be true or false, you have seen the effect of it this evening. This is a sample of the pleasures in store for you. What can you expect, mon cher? You have thrown away your crutches too soon, and thought to walk by yourselves. ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... contemplate from thence the general happiness which he had given to his country. Courage—those who have carefully studied his private life, and have learnt what he endured, and dared to do in overcoming the enemies Of his system, can hardly doubt his courage. Calumny or error has thrown an unmerited disgrace over his last wretched days. He has been supposed to have wounded himself in an impotent attempt to put an end to his life. It has been ascertained that such was not the fact, ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... with whom drenching slander and cutting calumny gain no currency may well be called enlightened. Ay, he with whom such things make no way may well be called enlightened ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... Taddeo, was employed by Pope Gregory XIII. in the Pauline chapel. While proceeding with his work, however, he fell out with some of the Pope's officers; and conceiving himself treated with indignity, he painted an allegorical picture of Calumny, introducing the portraits of all those individuals who had offended him, decorated with asses' ears. This he caused to be exhibited publicly over the gate of St. Luke's church, on the festival day of that ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... This horrible calumny embittered the last days of the dainty chevalier all the more because, as the present Scene will show, he had lost a hope long cherished to which ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... Gentlemen, depends on you. You have fought gloriously;—act honourably towards your fellow-citizens and the world, and it will then no more be said, as has been repeated for two thousand years with the Roman historians, that Philopoemen was the last of the Grecians. Let not calumny itself (and it is difficult, I own, to guard against it in so arduous a struggle,) compare the patriot Greek, when resting from his labours, to the Turkish pacha, whom ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... that I argue to show that my duty to my client was paramount to my "duty as Commissioner of the State of New York, in a question involving constitutional principles." This is an idle calumny. My note can be read as well as theirs; and in general will be read by the same persons, and there is not a word in it to justify or excuse their assertion. I never thus argued. I claimed that I had two duties to perform, and that I performed both. I did not claim that my duty to my State ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... The personal calumny of the enemy showed how hard hit the big bosses were, how beneath their feet they felt the ground of public opinion shift. It had been only a year since Big Tim O'Brien, boss of the city by permission of the public utility ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... gravity. One very black mark he had to his name; but the matter was hushed up at the time, and so defaced by legends before I came into these parts that I scruple to set it down. If it was true, it was a horrid fact in one so young; and if false, it was a horrid calumny. I think it notable that he had always vaunted himself quite implacable, and was taken at his word; so that he had the addition, among his neighbours of "an ill man to cross." Here was altogether a young nobleman (not yet twenty-four in the year 'Forty-five) who had made a figure ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... detraction, disparagement, depreciation, vilification, obloquy, scurrility, scandal, defamation, aspersion, traducement, slander, calumny, obtrectation[obs3], evil-speaking, backbiting, scandalum magnatum[Lat]. personality, libel, lampoon, skit, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... details, and by that means break down his whole argument. Instances also must be brought forward which were overruled in a similar discussion; and you must wind up with the complaints of the condition of the general danger, if the life of innocent men is exposed to the ingenuity of men devoted to calumny. ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... witness, nor belie Thy neighbor by foul calumny; Defend his innocence from blame, With charity hide his ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... upon the most affectionate terms with his family, and it was due to her that Balzac's mother was able to spend her last years in comfort. These facts speak for themselves, and, to my mind at least, dispose better than volumes on the subject could do of the conscious or unconscious calumny cast by Victor Hugo on my aunt's memory. It must here be explained that the real reason why he did not see her, when he called for the last time on his dying friend, and concluded so hastily that she preferred remaining in her own apartments than at her husband's side, ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... new moral world to begin; for his late access of devotional feeling had, in reality, disposed him to adopt benign and clement measures. But to arrest carnage was now beyond his power; he had invoked a demon which would not be laid. Assailed by calumny, he made the Convention resound with his speeches; spoke of fresh proscriptions to put down intrigue; and spread universal alarm among the members. In spite of the most magniloquent orations, he saw that his power was nearly gone. Sick at heart, he began ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... crude taunts as that, "After this Captain Mahan will not undertake," etc. What Captain Mahan will or will not do is of no particular importance; but when the repute of such an one as Nelson is at stake, burdened by the weight of calumny laid upon him by Southey's ill-instructed censures, it is right to repeat that nothing I have seen since I last wrote, about 1900, has appeared to me to call ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... and the possibility of a new French loan, and still held on—as cautiously as he could, but ever boldly and skilfully—his anxious way through the rocks and shoals that menaced him on every side. He was rewarded, as such men too often are, by calumny and suspicion. But when men came to look closely at his acts, comparing his means with his wants, and the expenditure of the Treasury Board with the expenditure of the Finance Office, it was seen and acknowledged that he had saved the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... increasing indignation, "will add another link to the chain of slander. If a Vorkler and her companions repeat the calumny, who can wonder? But that the magistrates should believe such shameful things about the brothers ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... transaction—a clever fellow whom I really despised—was going around telling people that I was a consummate hypocrite. He could know nothing of it. It suited his humour to say so. I had given him no ground for that particular calumny. Yet to this day there are moments when it comes into my mind, and involuntarily I ask myself, 'What if it were true?' It's absurd, but it has on one or two occasions nearly affected my conduct. And yet I was not an impressionable ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... falsehoods thrown upon himself, his spouse, and his kinswoman. There was a general answer, utterly refusing to defend the Baroness of Steinfeldt's words in so bad a cause, and universally testifying the belief of the company that she spoke in the spirit of calumny and falsehood. 'Then let that lie fall to the ground which no man of courage will hold up,' said the Baron of Arnheim; 'only, all who are here this morning shall be satisfied whether the Baroness Hermione doth or doth not share the rites of Christianity.' The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various
... right to accuse is beneficial in a republic, so calumny, on the other hand, is useless and hurtful, as in the following Chapter I shall ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... here is an opportunity for an accomplished writer to apostrophize calumny, to quote Virgil, and to show that he is acquainted with the most ingenious things which have been said on ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... give nothing. It is evident we cannot depend on Spain to obtain the welfare we all desire. A country like Spain, where social evolution is at the mercy of monks and tyrants, can only communicate to us its own instincts of calumny, infamy, inquisitorial proceedings, avarice, secret police, false pretences, humiliation, deprivation of liberties, slavery, and moral and material decay which characterize its history. Spain will ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... transport of anger he ran to the princess Badoura his mother, shewed her the letter, told her the contents of it, and from whom it came. Instead of hearkening to him, she fell into a passion, and said, "Son, it is all a calumny and imposture; queen Haiatalnefous is a very discreet princess, and you are very bold to talk to me against her." The prince, enraged at his mother, exclaimed, "You are both equally wicked, and were it not for the respect ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... rules in heaven, he who arranges, is thyself. 5 He who establishes truth in the thoughts of the nations, is thyself. 6 Thou knowest the truth, thou knowest what is false. 7 Sun, justice has raised its head; 8 Sun, falsehood, like envy, has spoken calumny. 9 Sun, the servant of Anu and Bel [2] is thyself; 10 Sun, the supreme judge of heaven and earth is ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... WILLIS would have considered it utterly beneath his notice. As it was, however, he deemed it not amiss at one and the same time to punish skulking envy and impotent malignity; to vindicate his reputation with his townsmen against unprovoked calumny; and to render the repetition of any obnoxious remarks from the same source altogether 'of none effect' and unworthy of heed. This he accomplished by his 'Defence' and the 'terrors of the law,' which speedily produced a satisfactory sample of wholesale word-eating. . . ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... lie upon this bed, and a grave for my sins before I come to my grave; and when I have deposited them in the wounds of thy Son, to rest in that assurance, that my conscience is discharged from further anxiety, and my soul from further danger, and my memory from further calumny. Do this, O Lord, for his sake, who did and suffered so much, that thou mightest, as well in thy justice as in thy mercy, do it for me, thy Son, our Saviour, ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... double severity on her as a woman. Her door was besieged by a troop of professional beggars, impostors, impertinent idlers, and inquisitive newsmongers. Jealousy and ill-will, inevitably attendant on sudden good fortune such as hers, busied themselves with direct calumny and insidious misrepresentation. No statement so unfounded, so wildly improbable about her, but it obtained circulation and credit. Till the end of her life she remained the centre of a cloud of myths, many, to the present day, accepted as gospel. People insisted on identifying her ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... a moments time in refuting so base a calumny; by searching for argument and demonstration while it must be rendered useless by conviction. Another year has rolled away; another convention have met—have made a nomination for Congress and Assembly—They were unanimous—Mr. Young is not nominated, nor even named for the year 1816. ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... sledge, and dragged before the King to receive judgment. Erik himself cast his sister's fair name and fame into slander's babbling pool, and high dames and citizens' wives washed unspotted innocence in calumny's impure waters. ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... with artful calumny, Accuse of scatt'ring the pale cherry-flow'rs? 'Tis your own pinions flitting through these bow'rs That raise the gust which makes ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... glorious pre-eminence by the Revolution, we must recollect that the foreigners who have visited the country have contrived to bury there all the fame they brought with them. Singular too as it may appear, a love of quarrelling and a passion for calumny have been found to be as decidedly characteristic of the foreigners in Greece, as of the natives. The Philhellenes were notoriously a most insubordinate body; the English in Greece have never been able to live together in amity and concord; the three European powers ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... another nation by the individuals and by the Government. Now it is no calumny to say that, taking them en masse, the English who travel abroad, whether it be from indifference, from indolence, from a rooted confidence in their own superiority, or from some defect in character, neither win favour for themselves, nor affection for ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... "A calumny, doubtless," said Winthrop. "But touching the principle involved in matters of government, I will deliver my opinion. Of things coming within the scope of government, I judge there are two classes; whereof, the one class may be said to consist of things mala in se—that is, of those which, by an ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... record. This might have shown that if he erred it was on the side of enthusiasm and extravagant expressions of reverence for the American people during the heroic years just passed. He denounces the accusations as pitiful fabrications and vile calumny. He blushes that such charges could have been uttered; he is deeply wounded that Mr. Seward could have listened to such falsehood. He does not hesitate to say what his opinions are with reference to home questions, and ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... victims would disappear without his being called to account. Obliged to leave hold of his prey, he endeavoured to bewilder him in a labyrinth where all trace of truth might be lost. Already, as he had arranged beforehand, he had called calumny to his help, and prepared the audacious lie which was to vindicate himself should an accusation fall upon his head. He had hoped that Monsieur de Lamotte would fall defenceless into his hands; but now a careful examination of his position, showing the impossibility of avoiding an explanation ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Brandt placed her hand with a slight but tender pressure on his. "There is one way," she whispered, "a way to reassure, not only my husband, but the whole world, which will cast a veil over our love, and protect us from the wickedness and calumny ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... mighty wrongs to petty perfidy, Have I not seen what human things could do,— From the loud roar of foaming calumny, To the small whispers of the paltry few, And subtler venom of the reptile crew, The Janus glance of whose significant eye, Learning to lie with silence, would seem true, And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh, Deal round to happy ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... well-away for blamer's calumny! * Whether or not I make my moan or plead or show no plea: O spurner of my love I ne'er of thee so hard would deem * That I of thee should be despised, of thee my property. I wont at lovers' love to rail and for their passion chide, * But now ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... statement is erroneous is clearly proved by "the absence of interest of the rulers themselves in the moral and material advancement of the poorer classes." Not content with uttering this prodigious falsehood, Mr. Mallik adds a further and fouler calumny. He alludes to the rudeness at times displayed by Englishmen towards the natives of India—a feature in Indian social life which every right-thinking Englishman will be prepared to condemn as strongly as ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh—that is to say, over fear: fear of poverty, of suffering, of calumny, of sickness, of isolation, and of death. There is no serious piety without heroism. Heroism is the dazzling and ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the 31st January last has thought fit to insinuate that I, Elia, do not write the little sketches which bear my signature, in this Magazine, but that the true author of them is a Mr. L——b. Observe the critical period at which he has chosen to impute the calumny!—on the very eve of the publication of our last number,—affording no scope for explanation for a full month,—during which time I must needs lie writhing and tossing under the cruel imputation of nonentity.—Good heavens! that a plain man must not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... me, Lourdois. The neighborhood has its eye upon me; successful men incur jealousy, envy. Ah! you will soon know that, young man," he said to Grindot; "if we are calumniated, at least let us give no handle to the calumny." ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... too much confidence in you, and far too much esteem for you, to reproach you with anything, for I know that you have too much tact ever to give rise to calumny or scandal. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... went round in circles. He was observed to close one eye, and to assume a clock-work sort of expression with the other; this has been considered as a wink, and it has been reported that Agnes was its object. We repel the calumny, and challenge contradiction. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... his wife?" and lastly, it was affirmed that Bumpkin "really did beat his wife." And the scandal spread so rapidly that it soon reached the ears of plaintiff himself, who would have treated it with the contempt it deserved, knowing the quarter whence it came, but that it was so gross a calumny that he determined to give the lying Snooks no quarter, and to press his action with all ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... verse, and lit His Friar Bacon's little magic lamp At the Promethean fire of Faustus. Jove, It was a faery buck, indeed, that Will Poached in that greenwood." "Ben, see that you walk Like Adam, naked! Nay, in nakedness Adam was first. Trust me, you'll not escape This calumny! Vergil is damned—he wears A hen-coop round his waist, nicked in the night From Homer! Plato is branded for a thief, Why, he wrote Greek! And old Prometheus, too, Who stole his fire from heaven!" "Who printed ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... nothing has been found against us, except in the matters of our God. Conscious of the most cordial attachment to the British Government, and of the liveliest interest in its welfare, we might well endure reproach were it cast upon us; but the tongue of calumny itself has not to our knowledge been suffered to bring the slightest accusation against us. We still worship at Calcutta in a private house, and our congregation rather increases. We are going on with the chapel. A family of Armenians ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... and to hear what they had to say; and if their counsel turned out ill, not to look coldly upon them for that. The same in war, or in any other undertaking: his agents must not have to fear punishment for failure, nor calumny for success: "for there were many persons who, to avoid the envy of their superiors, sought rather to lose a victory than to gain it," (Here Ferdinand ought to have looked a little ashamed, being conscious that his own practice ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... Mosheim has traced the origin of monasticism to the early Christian fathers. The earliest impulses to monasticism are contained in such writings as the Epistle to Zenas, found among the writings of Justinus, the tracts of Clement of Alexandria on Calumny, Patience, Continence, and other virtues, the tracts of Tertullian on practical duties, such as Chastity, Flight from Persecution, Fasting, Theatrical Exhibitions, the Dress of Females, Prayer, etc. These writings "would be perused with greater ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... solemn assertion, but it failed to convince the crowd before him. As by one impulse men and women broke into a tumult. Mr. Sutherland was forgotten and cries of "Never! She was too good! It's all calumny! A wretched lie!" broke in unrestrained excitement from every part of the large room. In vain the coroner smote with his gavel, in vain the local police endeavoured to restore order; the tide was up and over-swept everything for an instant till silence was suddenly restored ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... evades the discussion of the question whether women shall be entitled to vote, by raising false issues. The editor asserts that "many of the advocates of suffrage have thrown scorn upon marriage and upon the Divine Word." That assertion we denounced as an unfounded and wicked calumny. We also objected to it as an evasion of the main question. Thereupon the Watchman, instead of correcting its mistake and discussing the question of suffrage, repeats the charge, and seeks to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... to whom she was well suited. On account of some pecuniary questions, and, because my character was then haughty, I lost the good will of a distant relative, and he threw in my face one day my dark birth and my infamous ancestry. I thought it a calumny and demanded satisfaction. The tomb in which so much grief was sleeping was opened again and the truth came out. I was confounded. To make the misfortune greater, we had had for some years an old servant who had always suffered all my caprices without ever leaving us. ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... the king lived surrounded by a miasma of intrigue. At court there was an endless whispering of lies and calumny, and much plotting and planning among the conspiring courtiers to manipulate the king as the instrument ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... let the occasion slip to speak insistingly as the world opined of Alvan and his baroness. He forced her to swallow the calumny, and draw away with her family against herself through ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... removing her hands from her face with a jerk. "That is a calumny, a calumny, a lie!... My unsullied, unapproachable Katya ... Katya! ... and an unhappy, rejected love? And would not I have known about that?... Everybody, everybody fell in love with her ... but she.... And whom could ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... upon well known real characters, concealed under fictitious names; thereby not only exciting in the multitude a keener relish for their slanders, but giving a more wide and extensive scope to the operation of their malice. When the name of the object was openly told, the calumny rested upon him alone—but when a fictitious name was held up, however well known the real object might be, the slander was applied to many, and each spectator fixed it upon that particular person whom stupidity, malice, or personal hatred first ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... interesting frogs were. It was not true that they spat venom, as people said, that they crept into sleepers' mouths, sucked the milk of cows, nor that they burst with poison if you held a spider to them—all this was pure calumny and stupid superstition. They are our best friends, which guard us at night; those little soft foot-prints which are visible on the smooth sand round the house, are the consoling sign of their nightly patrol: it would be ungrateful to fear them. ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... disgraced statesman, that he found leisure to complete and put in final order for posterity, those noble works, through which we have already learned to love and honour him, in the face of this calumny. It was as a disgraced and baffled statesman and courtier—all lurking jealousies and suspicions at last put to rest—all possibility of a political future precluded; but as a courtier still hanging ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... bounds of probability, and ascribed to people such proclivities as even the beasts do not possess, accusing them of such crimes as are not, and never have been. And since he named in this connection the most honoured people, some were indignant at the calumny, while ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... realism has the human touch in it, and that constitutes the second impossibility in the invitation tendered us. Que messieurs les assassins commencent! The anti-Irish legend is not dead nor even sleeping, nor are the resources of calumny yet exhausted. An instance is immediately at hand. I have, at this moment, on my desk a volume lately issued—"The School History of England." It is published by the Clarendon Press, Oxford; Mr Rudyard Kipling contributes ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... Woolston was his successor. At the Court he was the gayest of the gay, without the taint of immorality, in a period of the grossest licentiousness; he defended the honor of his friends, frequently at the expense of calumny and danger. In witty repartees he was equal to Rochester; while for abstruse learning he was superior to many of the most learned theologians. Daintily brave and skilfully alive to the requirements of friends and ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts |
