"Disavowal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this grievous affair is, that it is likely to call out so sincere a disavowal from collective Ireland, and from the most extreme of Irish politicians, that it may help to reconcile Irish patriots and the Liberal Ministry. To have a common grief is a moral cement. Also it seems to compel Mr. Gladstone to send as Irish Secretary an Irishman, ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... insolence and falseness, sent it to Paris to be published there with a prefatory note, stating that it was by a Genevese pastor whom he named. This landed him in fresh mortification, for the pastor disavowed the libel, Rousseau declined to accept the disavowal, and sensible men were wearied by acrimonious declarations, explanations, protests.[164] Then the clergy of Neuchatel were not able any longer to resist the opportunity of inflicting such torments as they could, upon a heretic whom they might more charitably ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... the United States Government "very earnestly and very solemnly renews the representations of its note" of May 15, and again asks for assurances that American lives and American ships shall not be endangered on the high seas. In other words, the United States still presses for an official disavowal of the acts of German submarine commanders, still demands reparation for the American lives lost in the Lusitania, and still calls for a promise that no similar outrage ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Washington: "If my appointment is productive of any inconvenience, or otherwise disagreeable to your Excellency, as I neither applied nor solicited for this place, I am very ready to return to France." The spice of this letter consists in the fact that Conway's disavowal was a plain lie; for he had been soliciting for the appointment "with forwardness," says Mr. Ford, "almost amounting to impudence." Conway did not enjoy his new position long. Being wounded in a duel with an American officer, and thinking ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... modern times and in communities claiming to be free, political disabilities, social reprobation, and the stigma of disqualification as witnesses have been imposed upon persons entertaining certain views on theological questions. But these persecutions may have compelled the suppression or disavowal of obnoxious opinions, and may have made hypocrites; they never changed belief, or produced any other conviction than that of wrong and outrage. The soul itself is beyond the reach of any human authority, not to be conquered by any device of terror ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... ignore the collision of wills, and to go on as if nothing had happened, but to do this and remain in the house with my father, in the perpetual danger of another conflict, was impossible. The question had to be settled, and all I could do was to insist on father's making a distinct disavowal of any right or intention to demand my services in the shop at any future time, and leaving me free to follow the programme agreed on in the family council. It was in effect a frank apology that I wanted, but I knew him too well to suppose ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... from this point. In the expectation that the Confederate government would disavow the action of their commanding general at the Fort Pillow massacre, I have forborne to issue any instructions to the colored troops as to the course they should pursue toward Confederate soldiers. No disavowal on the part of the Confederate government having been made, but, on the contrary, laudations from the entire Southern press of the perpetrators of the massacre, I may safely presume that indiscriminate slaughter ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... Russian, "is the disavowal of Christianity. In its eyes, men are no longer equal before God. Their God is interested only in the strong, and favors them with his support so that they may dare anything. Those born weak must either submit or disappear. Neither are nations equal, but are ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... pretensions and claims; and when he found public sentiment turning against the ambitious schemes he seems secretly to have cherished, he would present some excuse or explanation for his conduct plausible enough to answer the purpose of a disavowal. When he received the Senate, sitting like a king, on the occasion before referred to, when they read to him the decrees which they had passed in his favor, he replied to them that there was more need of diminishing ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... informed that Mr. Moore published at the time a disavowal of the statements in the newspapers, as far as regarded himself; and, in justice to him, I mention this circumstance. As I never heard of it before, I cannot state the particulars, and was only made acquainted with the fact ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... body, perhaps the majority of citizens, disapprove, but I fear there will not be public disavowal. Even N. Wright but faintly opposes, and Dr. Fore has been exceedingly violent. Mr. Hammond (editor of the 'Gazette') in a very dignified and judicious manner has condemned the whole thing, and Henry has opposed, but otherwise the papers have either been silent or in favor of mobs. We shall see what ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... (assent) 488; I'll warrant, I'll warrant you, I'll engage, I'll answer for it, I'll be bound, I'll venture to say, I'll take my oath; in fact, forsooth, joking apart; so help me God; not to mince the matter. Phr. quoth he; dixi[Lat]. 536. Negation. — N. negation, abnegation; denial; disavowal, disclaimer; abjuration; contradiction, contravention; recusation[obs3][Law], protest; recusancy &c (dissent) 489; flat contradiction, emphatic contradiction, emphatic denial, dementi[Lat]. qualification &c 469; repudiation &c 610; retraction &c 607; confutation &c 479; refusal &c 764; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... lances and of swords, she might be seen from every part of the market-place. There was reason to suppose that being slowly, tediously burned, before the eyes of a curious crowd, she might at last be surprised into some weakness, that something might escape her which could be set down as a disavowal, at the least some confused words which might be interpreted at pleasure, perhaps low prayers, humiliating cries for mercy, such as proceed from ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... carefully his disavowal of any thought that her gift was a penitential act. He confessed that he had been concerned for Phil's future; and that so far he had not been able to provide for her in case of his death. This brought him to Amzi, whose devotion ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... ever. "I loved the man," says Ben, "this side idolatry, as well as any." Now why in the name of common sense should he have made that qualification unless there had been, not only idolatry, but idolatry fulsome enough to irritate Jonson into an express disavowal of it? Jonson, the bricklayer, must have felt sore sometimes when Shakespear spoke and wrote of bricklayers as his inferiors. He must have felt it a little hard that being a better scholar, and perhaps a braver and tougher man physically than Shakespear, he was not so ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... state of irreconcilable dislike, and the door was for ever barred against her. This exclusion she resented with so much bitterness as to refuse any legacy from Pope unless he left the world with a disavowal of obligation to Allen. Having been long under her dominion, now tottering in the decline of life, and unable to resist the violence of her temper, or perhaps, with the prejudice of a lover, persuaded ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... end. Sainte-Beuve speaks of it as an attempted suicide of the hero—the most justifiable of all his actions, if he had succeeded. Prevost himself, in the Preface to the Doyen de Killerine, repeats an earlier disavowal (which he says he had previously made in Holland) of a fifth volume, and says that his own work ended with the murder of Cleveland by one of the characters. Again, this is a comprehensible and almost excusable action, and might have followed, though it could ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... that he did not hasten, behind pyramidal blushes, into the shelter of a general disavowal. The cassock seemed to cover an obligation ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the spirit in which his book is written, and of his unfitness for the ambitious task he has undertaken. He quotes the following passage from Collins's "Historical Sketches of Kentucky":—"Before Mr. Clay took any active part as the counsel of Burr, he required of him an explicit disavowal, [avowal,] upon his honor, that he was engaged in no design contrary to the laws and peace of the country. This pledge was promptly given by Burr, in language the most broad, comprehensive, and particular. He ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... of a vote for this professorship, passed by the university of Oxford 'upon all that congeries of opinions which the rude popular notion associates with the Tracts for the Times.' Such a sentence would be a disavowal by the university of catholic principles in the gross; the association between catholic principles and the church of England would be miserably weakened; and those who at all sympathised with the Tracts would be placed in the position of aliens, corporally ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... injured beauty, reft from her faithful adorer by her stern aunt or duenna, and that he considered himself to be doing her a kindness by keeping her informed of her hero's vicinity, while he denied it to her companion; but she scorned to enter into an explanation, or make any disavowal, and found the few displeased words she spoke were received with compassion, as at the dictation ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the troubles of Montluc did not terminate. When they presented certain articles for his signature, the bishop discovered that these had undergone material alterations from the proposals submitted to him before the proclamation; these alterations referred to a disavowal of the Parisian massacre; the punishment of its authors, and toleration in religion. Montluc refused to sign, and cross-examined his Polish friends about the original proposals; one party agreed that some things ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... language can state it, that there are no grounds for believing that pregnancy does exist, or ever has existed. Lord Hastings, though, at the time very ill from influenza, went to London immediately, and demanded, and obtained, from Lord Melbourne, a distinct disavowal of his participation in the affair; and demanded, and obtained, an audience of Her Majesty, in which, while he disclaimed all idea that the Queen had any wish to injure his sister, he plainly, though respectfully, stated his opinion of those who had ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton |
