"Falsehood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Truly the Kali Yug (iron age) has commenced, since which time falsehood has increased in the world and truth has diminished; people talk smoothly with their tongues, but nourish deceit in their hearts; religion is destroyed, crime has increased, and the earth has begun to give little fruit. Kings levy fines, Brahmans ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... distance of three miles. The Minnetarees frequently mentioned this noise like thunder, which they said the mountains made; but we had paid no attention to it, believing it to have been some superstition or perhaps a falsehood. The watermen also of the party say that the Pawnees and Ricaras give the same account of a noise heard in the Black mountains to the westward of them. The solution of the mystery given by the philosophy of the watermen is, that it is occasioned by the bursting of the ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... by Farmer and Moore is as follows, viz.:[A] "It is reported of Major Rogers, that while in London, after the French war, being in company with several persons, it was agreed, that the one who told the most improbable story, or the greatest falsehood, should have his fare paid by the others. When it came to his turn, he told the company that his father was shot in the woods of America by a person who supposed him to be a bear; and that his mother was followed several miles through the snow by hunters, who mistook ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... soul. He afterward had a famous controversy with this Faustus, and wrote against him thirty-three books. The results of Augustine's studies were that he was able to refute their attacks on Holy Scripture which they said had undergone serious changes, and to see the falsehood of their main postulate that good proceeds from a good principle and evil from an evil principle; and also to recognize the futility of their objection that the Christians spoke of a human form in God. Against this sect his principal writings are "On the Manners and Customs ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... "It is a falsehood!" raved Sibylla. "You are carrying on a secret intimacy with each other. I have been blind long ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... position to discover the truth, which of them would take any interest in it? Each one knows well that his system is not better founded than the others, but he supports it because it is his. There is not a single one of them who, if he came to know the true and the false, would not prefer the falsehood that he had found to the truth discovered by another. Where is the philosopher who would not willingly deceive mankind for his own glory? Where is he who in the secret of his heart does not propose to ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... two of them. "But let not this and this only vex you if he has his pleasure of you in dreams; for, when he shall be sound asleep, he will have joy of you in dreaming; and will quite surely think that he has his joy of you waking, nor will he imagine that it is a dream, or vision, or falsehood. He will delight in you so that he will think he is awake while ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... the private mark by which it was to be identified. That evening, at the inspection of arms, it was found in the hands of another cadet, who, when taxed with his offence, endeavoured to shield himself by falsehood. Jackson's anger was unbounded, and for the moment his habitual shyness completely disappeared. He declared that such a creature should not continue a member of the Academy, and demanded that he should be tried by court-martial and expelled. It was only ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... shine, Though Error glare and Falsehood rage; The cause of Order is divine, And Wisdom rules ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... King Ali Mardan was at first indignant, for he was madly in love with the stranger; but when the Jôgi insisted, he became alarmed, and at last promised to obey the holy man's orders, and so discover the truth or falsehood ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... They followed the accepted doctrine of the time—that every realm, through its rulers, had the sole right of determining what should be the form of religion within its bounds. What the Marian persecution was gradually pressing on such men was a conviction, not of the falsehood of such a doctrine, but of the need of limiting it. Under Henry, under Edward, under Mary, no distinction had been drawn between inner belief and outer conformity. Every English subject was called upon to adjust his conscience as well as his conduct to the varying ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... by the gods, You dare not. All your family combin'd In one damn'd falsehood, to outdo Castalio, ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway
... way to make me contented. He wished to make me say that I was happy there, that I liked to live with them as well as with my father. But I could never be persuaded to say this, for it was not the truth, and I would not tell a falsehood unless forced to do so. He said I must be a good girl, and he hoped I would sometime see better times, but I could never see my father again, and I must not desire it. He advised me, however hard it might be, to try and love all who came into the nunnery, ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... an accomplished fact. We can point to him as one who, though a politician by predilection and by profession, never stooped to disreputable practices, either to win votes or to maintain himself in office. Robert Baldwin was a man who was not only incapable of falsehood or meanness to gain his ends, but who was to the last degree intolerant of such practices on the part of his warmest supporters. If intellectual greatness cannot be claimed for him, moral greatness was most indisputably his. Every action of his life was marked ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... him as well as you; and died for him as well as for you; and wills his salvation as well as yours; and if you cheat him the Lord will avenge him speedily. If you give way to meanness, covetousness, falsehood, as Jacob did, you will rue it; the Lord will enter into judgment with you quickly, and all the more quickly because he loves you. Because there is some right in you—because you are on the whole on the right road—the Lord will visit you with disappointment and affliction, and make your ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... "Where there is not complete proof of guilt," said he, "there let there be no condemnation," a maxim observed in England, but not in France. "What is not full truth," is a saying of his, "is full falsehood." It was his hope, his prayer, that he might live to see the injustice of the French laws swept away. That he was not destined to see. He was a kind professor to all his scholars. When he found that some were needy, he assisted them with money and books. "I was once ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... "Falsehood!" roared Rosette. "Do you think I cannot see?" And peering down into the drawer which the Jew was vainly trying to close, he cried, "Heaps of money! French money! Five-franc pieces! the very thing I want! ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... exacting. After asking Joseph whether he felt himself strong enough to obey so severe a rule, he passed from father to teacher. Every one of us must love truth and make it his purpose to confute those who speak falsehood; to keep his hands from stealing and his soul from unjust gain. He must never conceal anything from a member of the order, nor reveal its secrets to others, even if he should have to suffer death by withholding them; and above all, while trying to engage proselytes he must ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... impiety; sin &c 945; irreverence; profaneness &c adj.; profanity, profanation; blasphemy, desecration, sacrilege; scoffing &c v.. [feigned piety] hypocrisy &c (falsehood) 544; pietism, cant, pious fraud; lip devotion, lip service, lip reverence; misdevotion^, formalism, austerity; sanctimony, sanctimoniousness &c adj.; pharisaism, precisianism^; sabbatism^, sabbatarianism^; odium theologicum [Lat.], sacerdotalism^; bigotry &c (obstinacy) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... about it. It is not necessary for me to accuse a girl of falsehood. I only say, let us have this wedding, and have it soon. I so agreed with ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... a splendid and delicate purity of heart, a respect for others and for self, of an indescribably keen sense of right and wrong, a wide charity, together with a justice so stern that it might well be called inexorable, and lastly, a perfect hatred of lies and of all the vices comprised by falsehood. ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... obligation to furnish horses is no doubt an actual loss to the farmer. Very often we would have willingly paid a small increase upon the legal rates if it had been asked for as a favour; but when it was boldly demanded as a right, and backed by a falsehood, we went not a stiver beyond ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... managing most things in the war by deceit, extolling what was just when it was profitable, and when it was not, using that which was convenient, instead of that which was good; and not judging truth to be in nature better than falsehood, but setting a value upon both according to interest. He would laugh at those who thought that Hercules's posterity ought not to use deceit in war: "For where the lion's skin will not reach, you must patch it out with the fox's." Such is the conduct recorded of him ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... much more serious one, is said to be, what I say of the illusions of the demon, leading some persons to doubt of the truth of the apparitions related in Scripture, as well as of the others suspected of falsehood. ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... fifth against trade unions. In these pretended works of imagination facts are joined in support of a crotchet or an antipathy with all the license of fiction; calumny revels without restraint, and no cause is served but that of falsehood and injustice. A writer takes offence at the excessive popularity of athletic sports; instead of bringing out an accurate and conscientious treatise to advocate moderation, he lets fly a novel painting ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... the conciseness of history far more frequently embodies falsehood than truth. Perhaps the following narration may approach ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... eager to congratulate Granoux, and shake hands with him. The story of the hammer had become known. By an innocent falsehood, however, of which he himself soon became unconscious, he asserted that, having been the first to see the insurgents, he had set about striking the bell, in order to sound the alarm, so that, but for him, the national guards would have been ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... Southerner; you know that my dearest relatives are now in a slave Slate. Can you for a moment believe I would prove so recreant to the feelings of a daughter and a sister, as to join a society which was seeking to overthrow slavery by falsehood, bloodshed and murder? I appeal to you who have known and loved me in days that are passed, can you believe it? No! my friends. As a Carolinian I was peculiarly jealous of any movements on this subject; and before I would join an Anti-Slavery Society, I took the precaution ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... if he have not the divine gift. Theories have hardly more effect on the actual value of his poetry than the colour of the ink in which he writes. The reason why it is interesting to read what Mr. Yeats says about his love of magic and of symbols is not because there is any truth or falsehood in these will-o'-the-wisps, but because he is such an artist that even when he writes in prose, his style is so beautiful, so harmonious that one is forced to listen. Literary art has enormous power in propelling a projectile of thought. ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... convinced that his enemies had been unjustly assailed, and that he himself had been well and courteously treated. In such a situation it was just possible that Mr. Chamberlain would escape from his position with flying colours; would have the Daily News censured for falsehood by a House of Commons that believed in its truth; and have himself declared chivalrous by a Parliament that knows him to be malignant, unscrupulous, and merciless. To prevent such a catastrophe it was a painful but necessary duty ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... great weapon. Without it he would fail, and failure meant desolation. So he spoke convincingly, for what he said came straight from the heart though it was born in the shadow of that one master-falsehood. His wonder was that Mary Josephine believed him so utterly that not for an instant was there a questioning doubt in her eyes or on ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... my dear; his lordship the judge is going to speak to you from the bench. That is all," said Mrs. MacDonald, as she helped the prisoner to her feet; for Mrs. MacDonald never hesitated to tell a falsehood for the sake of ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... cannot think that deceit forms any prominent trait in the Indian's character. They invariably act with the strictest honour towards those who never attempt to impose upon them. It is natural for a deceitful person to take advantage of the credulity of others. The genuine Indian never utters a falsehood, and never employs flattery (that powerful weapon in the hands of the insidious), in his communications ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... scene that strange old long-ago, Crowding my opened memory, presents Tumultuous, as in dreams, some dreadful state Wherein I knew not falsehood from the truth; Where hope ascending struck the star of Love, Then fell down headlong grovelling in despair; But rose at length and walked the beaten way. So dim and far these things; so worn and changed, I scarcely ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... Varro tells us, taking his date from the traditional foundation of the city in 754 B.C., 'the Romans worshipped their gods without images,' and he adds the characteristic comment, 'those who introduced representations among the nations, took away fear and brought in falsehood.' Symbols of a few deities were no doubt recognised: we have noticed already the silex of Iuppiter and the boundary-stone of Terminus, which were probably at an earlier period themselves objects of worship, and to these we may add the sacred spears of Mars, and the sigilla of the State-Penates. ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... with falsehood's blackness, And stained by the yoke of slavery, Full of godless flattery, of vicious ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... dream and falsehood, simple trust And pious hope we tread in dust; Lost the calm faith in goodness,—lost The baptism of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... that should prejudge every question, traduce every opponent; that should give no quarter to fair inquiry or liberal sentiment; that should be "ugly all over with hypocrisy", and present one foul blotch of servility, intolerance, falsehood, spite, and ill-manners. The Quarterly ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... to seize for his purposes whatever noble impulse comes over men, and this search for the divine of the mass becomes a sham, a fashionable craze. Hence the rage, the boom. This is the inevitable stage of falsehood through which every noble aspiration must pass. By and by the stage of truth must come, and come it shall, in due time. Russian authors will then be read not because it is the fashion and the craze, but because they have a message from the very heavens to deliver unto ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... There is no class of people in the world, who have such good memories as creditors. When the sixty days run out, you will have to pay. If you do not pay, you will break your promise, and probably resort to a falsehood. You may make some excuse or get in debt elsewhere to pay it, but that only involves ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... head, but she pushed him away with her hands against his chest. A horror of his beauty, his deliberate fascination, the falseness of him, came over her. For the first time she had been brought face to face with sin and falsehood, and hers was the unpardoning white condemnation of an angel to whom sin is unknown and falsehood impossible. That such knowledge should have come through him of all men made the thing more unbearable. Surprised and irritated by ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... the Rebels or the Rebellion, while it had not words enough, or words not strong enough, to employ in denouncing those whose sole offence consists in their efforts to conquer the Rebels and to put down the Rebellion. With a perversion of history that is quite without a parallel even in the hardy falsehood of American politics, the responsibility for the war was placed to the account of the loyal men of the country, and not to the account of the traitors, who brought it upon the nation by a fierce forcing-process. The speech of Mr. Horatio Seymour, who presided over the Belmont ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... one existed. It may be stated that we gave a faithful explanation to all his inquiries, which policy would have prompted us to do if a love of truth had not; for whenever these northern nations detect a falsehood in the dealings of the traders, they make it an unceasing subject of reproach, and their confidence is ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... "I am doing nothing of the sort. Your remark is tantamount to telling me that I am speaking a falsehood. But, of course, for all I know, the thing may be some ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... Newark, Trueman changes trains and goes to a public square where he addresses the populace. As he nears New York the enthusiasm of the crowds abates. In Newark the Plutocratic missionaries have spread the seeds of falsehood and have made such telling use of coercive threats that the people are actually hostile to Trueman and his party, deeming them Anarchists. The protection of the police is needed to prevent the most violent of ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... which by its unassisted strength is incapable of perceiving the mysteries of faith, had already obtained an easy triumph over the folly of Paganism; and when Tertullian or Lactantius employ their labors in exposing its falsehood and extravagance, they are obliged to transcribe the eloquence of Cicero or the wit of Lucian. The contagion of these sceptical writings had been diffused far beyond the number of their readers. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... proceeding on her part. She brought herself completely to the point where she could view her action with complacency. At first, there was an irritating, nagging fear that Mr. Wrandall had been genuinely soul-sacrificing in his effort to defend her; that his decisive falsehood was a sincere declaration of loyalty to her and not the transparent outburst of one actuated by a sort of fanatical selfishness, in that he dreaded the further dragging in the dust of the name of Wrandall, ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... same means that have supported every other belief, have supported Christianity. War, imprisonment, assassination, and falsehood; deeds of unexampled and incomparable atrocity, have made it what it is. The blood shed by the votaries of the God of mercy and peace, since the establishment of his religion, would probably suffice to drown all other sectaries now on the habitable globe. We derive from our ancestors ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... Church, he could not bring himself to believe that their history was imaginary. Billius thought that to doubt the concluding words of the author, who says that he received the story of "Barlaam and Josaphat" from men incapable of falsehood, would be to trust more in one's own suspicions than in Christian charity, which believeth all things. Bellarminus thought he could prove the truth of the story by the fact that, at the end of it, the author himself invokes the two saints Barlaam and Josaphat! Leo Allatius admitted, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... loyal herself in spite of the many deceptions and treacheries which she had witnessed in her life, she never looked for falsehood or for cant in others. Even now she only saw before her a woman who had been wrongfully persecuted, who had suffered and had forgiven those who had caused her to suffer. She bitterly accused herself for her original ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... herself by a lie, and had hazarded his further displeasure in her present situation, rather than she would forfeit her honour or integrity by betraying another, he had but little apprehensions that she would be guilty of falsehood towards himself. ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... whether it be tried by a judge or by a jury, must be decided upon evidence; which consists, in part, of circumstances, and, in part, of acts, but in part also, and very largely, of the sworn statements of individuals. While falsehood and corruption prevail among all classes of the community so extensively as they now do, it is useless to claim that decisions based upon human testimony are always or generally correct. Perjury is as rife as ever, and works as ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... will. It cloaks its offences against right in a thousand specious forms, and it enlists the support of every man under the pretence of a sacrifice for the common good. We often fancy ourselves simple dealers in some justifiable state intrigue, when in truth we are deep in sin. Falsehood is the parent of all crimes, and in no case has it a progeny so numerous as that in which its own birth is derived from the state. I fear I may have made sacrifices to this treacherous influence, I could ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... ancestors of blood or virtue, but were only conferred by the late queen and himself for some reasons of state. Therefore, he judged it needless to seek for many arguments 'to confirm whatsoever should be said of these men's corruption and falsehood, whose heinous offences remained so fresh in memory since they declared themselves so very monsters in nature, as they did not only withdraw themselves from their personal obedience to their sovereign, but were content to sell over their native country, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... never were the resources of all the world so accessible and counterfeits so plentiful; never was enlightenment so widely diffused and sound judgment so restricted; never were the avenues of truth so open, yet never was falsehood so widespread, as ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... longer dash than I had in mind at first," he told her. "It's important——" he hesitated, and a lie came to his lips. But it was not such a falsehood as would be marked, in ineffaceable letters, against him on the Book of Judgement. He spoke to save the girl any false hopes. "It's about my mine," he said, "and I'll not likely be back before to-morrow night. It might take even longer than that. ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... the King's councillor among gentlemen of honor—when he declared that he knew not the hiding-place of Caroline de St. Castin. It would cover him with eternal disgrace, as a gentleman, to be detected in such a flagrant falsehood. It would ruin him as a courtier in the favor of the great Marquise should she discover that, in spite of his denials of the fact, he had harbored and concealed the missing lady in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... so many who keep alive old and worn-out notions by means of deception and falsehood, these men are remembered only by the Twelve Mounds, which rise on the surface of the ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... and they stand proof against the cross-examinations they undergo, both the judge and the jury must determine the matter in dispute by their evidence. But the House of Commons was now called upon by our opponents, to adopt the preposterous maxim of attaching falsehood to poverty, or of weighing truth by the standard of rank ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... upon me! Mother of God, the glorified, protect me! Christ and the saints, be merciful unto me! Yet why should I fear death? What is it to die? To leave all disappointment, care, and sorrow, To leave all falsehood, treachery, and unkindness, All ignominy, suffering, and despair, And be at rest forever! O dull heart, Be of good cheer! When thou shalt cease to beat, Then shalt thou cease ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... forgotten in the satisfaction with which we hail the detection and punishment of the whining rascal, the sting of which is envenomed by the astounding revelation that all the while he has been weaving his web of falsehood around his intended victim, he himself has been the dupe of the man he had schemed so long to ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... dissimulation which endows a man with the power of lying with conviction; they allowed their motive to become apparent; and, seeing this, I disappointed them by laughing in their faces. Besides, whether what they said was truth or falsehood, I was not going to afford a trio of sable outlaws the satisfaction of boasting that they had succeeded ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... always troubled by their own lies. If he chooses to tell you that on a certain day he is about to be married, and afterwards springs a two-year old child upon you as legitimate, you are bound to think that there is some deceit. You cannot keep yourself from knowing that there is falsehood; and if falsehood, then probably fraud. Is it likely that a man with such privileges, and such property insured to a legitimate son, would allow the birth of such a child to be slurred over without due notice of it? You say that suspicion on our part without strong ground would be unworthy of us. ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... country had given to its Crown Prince, being in the streets of Troy, playing on a hurdy-gurdy, was a difficulty I did not reflect on for a moment. The idea of being thought by that sweet girl a mere uneducated boor, was intolerable to me; and I threw it off by this desperate falsehood—false in its accessories, but true in its main facts—as one would resent an insult. Fortune favoured me, however, far more than I had any ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... intellectual vigor unimpaired and a natural reaction toward the decalogue. Others of more casuistical temperament, unable all at once to throw over the traditions of a New England conscience to the exigencies of the game, do not burst at once into falsehood, but by a confusing process weaken their memories and corrupt their imaginations. They never lie of the events of the day. Rather they return to some jumbled happening of the week before and delude themselves with only ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... apart from the religious or marriage questions—a policy which would probably have benefited both English and European interests; but it was one understood neither in Spain nor in England, and proved impracticable. He was a man of high character, who refused to compound with falsehood and injustice, whose misfortune it was to serve two Stuart sovereigns, and whose firm resistance to the king's tyranny led the way to the great movement which finally destroyed it. Besides his Apology, he was the author of several printed speeches and poems, and translated A Defence of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... described as supreme controller of the order of nature—that is an attribute which these priestly poets ascribe with generous inconsistency to many others of their deities—but he is likewise the omniscient guardian of the moral law and the rule of religion, sternly punishing sin and falsehood with his dreaded noose, but showing mercy to the penitent and graciously communing with the sage who has found ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... not in reality the case. Allowing for a certain conventionality of tone, there is no flattery in it; that is, there is nothing that goes beyond truth. But Pliny has the unhappy talent of speaking truth in the accents of falsehood. Like Seneca, he strikes us in this speech as too clever for his audience. Still, with all its faults, his oratory must have made an epoch, and helped to arrest the decline for at least some years. It is on his letters that Pliny's fame now rests, and both in tone and style they are a ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Crusoe would not tell a falsehood," said Jack, indignantly; "and there were cannibals came to his island, and were going to eat Friday, if ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... business relations with them, in the field of consorted social work, I came face to face with the Jewish "problem" every single day,—and every single day of my life I felt with intolerable keenness all the falsehood and wretched ambiguity of my situation, that of an oppressor against one's will. In the doctor's office, at my desk, in the editorial room, in the street, finally in jail, where together with the Jew I fulfilled the all-Russian prison duty—everywhere I remained ...
— The Shield • Various
... cleft, When to the Promised Land their fathers passed. To his due time and providence I leave them." 440 So spake Israel's true King, and to the Fiend Made answer meet, that made void all his wiles. So fares it when with truth falsehood contends. ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... turning of the will into hate. Now when the body falls away the heavenly soul is thoroughly penetrated with the Love and Light of God, even as fire penetrates and enlightens white-hot iron, whereby it loses its darkness—this is heaven and this is the right hand of God. The soul that dwells in falsehood, lust, pride, envy, and anger carries hell in itself and cannot reach the Light and Love of God. Though it should go a thousand miles or a thousand times ten thousand miles—even climb beyond the spaces of the stars and the bounds of the universe—it would still remain in the same property ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... nothing but a living lie, and I can't stand it, and that's a fact. I tell you what it is: I think we had better just take the train to Paris and go off at once, or else give it all up. It is impossible to go on living in this atmosphere of continual falsehood." ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... at the prince who could not tell a lie once in his life, and I felt angry and bitter against truth and falsehood, which play such an elemental part in ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the "noblest Trojan of them all" will point a moral, and serve as an exemplar for generations to come. Wise in council, eloquent in debate, bravest and coolest among the brave in battle, and faithful to his convictions in adversity, he still lives to denounce falsehood and wrong. Truly the old hero, in all he says and does, "gives the world assurance of a man."—I allude to ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... can love; love better than all the world,—not the mariage de convenance, not the mariage de raison, but the mariage d'amour. All other marriage, with vows of love so solemn, with intimacy of commune so close,—all other marriage, in my eyes, is an acted falsehood, a varnished sin. Ah, if I had thought so always! But away regret and repentance! The future alone is now before me! Alban Morley! I would sign away all I have in the world (save the old house at Fawley), ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gained easy credence. Many, however, thought that the report had been concocted and disseminated by friends of Otho, who now mingled in the crowd and tried to lure Galba out by spreading this agreeable falsehood. At this point not only the 35 populace and the inexperienced mob but many of the knights and senators as well broke out into applause and unbridled enthusiasm. With their fear they had lost their caution. Breaking open the palace gates they rushed in and presented themselves ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... make the offer, when she had been waiting so anxiously for this opportunity of seeing her brother. To be in the same city with him, and not see him, was more painful than to be divided from him by half the earth, as she had been. It was harder still to have to plot and plan and stoop to falsehood in order to compass a meeting. But she remembered the stern cold look in her husband's face when she had spoken of Austin, and she could not bring herself to degrade her brother by entreating Daniel Granger's indulgence for his past misdeeds, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... were such as every man of honor and every good citizen must approve." Upon this paragraph Mr. Parton makes the following extraordinary comments:—"Mr. Clay, there is reason to believe, went to his grave in the belief that each of these assertions was an unmitigated falsehood, and the writer of the above adduces them merely as remarkable instances of cool, impudent lying. On the contrary, with one exception, all of Burr's allegations were strictly true; and even that one was true in a Burrian sense. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... to make up for his shortcomings. In all their practice Robert Sadler, one of the men-at-arms, was present. And both boys liked him very well. He was not a young man, being some sixty years old, and gray and withered. He was of Irish parentage, and short in stature; and he had a tongue to which falsehood was not so much a stranger as the truth. He was also as inquisitive as a magpie, and ready to put his own ignorant construction on all that he saw and heard. The two boys, however, had never stopped to think of his character. He was always praising their performances in the tilt-yard, and always ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... thoughts. She could bend the girl to her will, and send her to Mr. Keller. But he would certainly ask, under what influence she was acting, in terms which would place the alternative between a downright falsehood, or a truthful answer. Minna was truth itself; in her youngest days, she had been one of those rare children who never take their easy refuge in a lie. What influence would be most likely to persuade her to deceive ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... that he knew that the Miamis had a bad name on account of mischief done on the Ohio, but that this mischief was not occasioned by his young men, but by the Shawnees; that his young men had only gone out to hunt. This glaring falsehood was told in the face of the fact that the Little Turtle himself had been out on the warpath only the winter before, returning with captives ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... employed in speaking to them; and usurped the flattering titles of lordship, of eminence, and of holiness, which mere worms bestow on other worms by assuring them that they are with a most profound respect, and an infamous falsehood, their most obedient humble servants. It is to secure ourselves more strongly from such a shameless traffic of lies and flattery, that we 'thee' and 'thou' a king with the same freedom as we do a beggar, and salute no person; we ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... avoid disliking an unfortunate people who were the cause of that shameful falsehood enacted during the famous review at which all Paris declared its will to succor Poland? The Poles were held up to them as the allies of the republican party, and they never once remembered that Poland was a republic of aristocrats. From that day forth the bourgeoisie treated ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... everything. According to pantheism all things that exist, and all events that transpire, are expressions of the Divine will. The one only existent Being embraces all causes and all effects, all truth and all falsehood. He is no more the source of good than of evil. "I am immortality," says Krishna. "I am also death." Man with all his thoughts and acts is but the shadow of God, and moves as he is moved upon. Arjuna's divine counsellor says to him: "The soul, existing from eternity, devoid of qualities, ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... taste and see that the Lord is good." He cannot be good unless He is. A fancied Deity, an invention however beautiful of men's brain, supposed to be a living Being, cannot be a blessing, but, like every other falsehood, a curse. If our religion is a stained glass window we color to hide the void beyond, then in the name of things as they are, whether they have a God or not, let us smash the deceiving glass, and face the darkness or the daylight ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... With that smooth falsehood, whose appearance charms, And reason of each wholesome doubt disarms; Which to the lowest depths of guilt descends, By vilest means pursues the vilest ends. Wears friendship's mask for purposes of spite, Fawns in the day and ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... There was something at last that he could say without falsehood. "She sent a prayer for your forgiveness," he said. "She told me to tell you to think of her as little as might be; not to grieve for her too much, and to try to forget her, so that her sin also might ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... Evangelical Christianity could be effected only through a clean break with Rationalism, and he could not understand Mynster's apparent attempt to temporize and bring about a gradual transition from one to the other. There should be no compromise between truth and falsehood. All believers in the Gospel should stand up and proclaim it fearlessly, no matter ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... place, the letters were erased and the lesson was resumed. I was greatly perplexed; I had acquiesced in a cowardly falsehood. Carrots was a great friend of mine, and I could not bear to feel that he was humbugged, so when we were outside I went up to Carpenter and told him he was an infernal sneak, and we had a desperate fight, and I licked him, and blacked ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... have receiv'd, let the impartial reader judge, and how unwillingly, even in my own defence, I now enter the lists against falsehood, ignorance and envy: But I am exasperated, at length, to drag out this cacus from the den of obscurity where he lurks, detect him by the light of those stars he has so impudently traduced, and shew there's not a monster in the skies so pernicious and malevolent to ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... At this amazing falsehood Dickson started, and the man observed his surprise. The eyes were turned on him like a searchlight. They roused antagonism in his peaceful soul, and with that antagonism came an impulse to back up the Poet. "Ay," he said, "she's my auntie ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... is said to be false—a mere product of maya. The falsehood of this world-appearance has been explained as involved in the category of the indefinite which is neither sat "is" nor asat "is not." Here the opposition of the "is" and "is not" is solved by the category of time. The world-appearance is "is not," since ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... know that he is the pirate Durward!" said the widow in a voice and with a look so decided that Henry was silenced and sorely perplexed—yet much relieved, for he knew that his mother would rather die than tell a deliberate falsehood. ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... one there is who charms us with his spleen. But these plain characters we rarely find; Though strong the bent, yet quick the turns of mind: Or puzzling contraries confound the whole; Or affectations quite reverse the soul. The dull, flat falsehood serves for policy; And in the cunning, truth itself's a lie: Unthought-of frailties cheat us in the wise; The fool lies hid in inconsistencies. See the same man, in vigour, in the gout; Alone, in company; in place, or out; Early at business, and at hazard ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... says: "In order to use them, one must know fact from falsehood, and be able to discriminate between honesty and double-dealing." Wang Hsi in a different interpretation thinks more along the lines of "intuitive perception" and "practical intelligence." Tu Mu strangely refers these attributes to the ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... guilty'? Pertinent, indeed, was the ringing cry of that ancient prosecutor: 'Most illustrious Caesar! if denial of guilt be sufficient defence, who would ever be convicted?' You have been assured that inferences drawn from probable facts eclipse the stupendous falsehood of Ananias and Sapphira! Then the same family strain inevitably crops out, in the loosely-woven web of defensive presumptive evidence—whose pedigree we trace to the same parentage. God forbid that I should commit the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... in the midst. "Mon Dieu!" she cried. "Could I guess that you would come here, into the very noose of the gallows? Oh, how you do heap scorn on scorn upon me! Once you made me give silent consent to a falsehood you told; twice, nay, thrice, you have made me disloyal to the king; and now you come again to make me look the world in the face and tell a smiling lie to shield you! O Holy Mother, pity me!" And with this she put her face in her ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... amorous correspondence[1]. Indeed the first biographer of Mrs. Haywood[2] hints that "from a supposition of some improper liberties being taken with her character after death by the intermixture of truth and falsehood with her history," the apprehensive dame had herself suppressed the facts of her life by laying a "solemn injunction on a person who was well acquainted with all the particulars of it, not to communicate to any one the least circumstance relating to her." The success of her precaution is ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... first capital sin was committed in the church, in the conspiracy and falsehood {23} of Ananias and Sapphira, Peter's question is: "Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?" "How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Holy Ghost?" Not only is the personal presence of the Spirit in the body of believers ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... security against faction, envy, and mistaken opposition. I was at present in a state of warfare: and were judges like these to give the meed of victory? How many creatures had the powerful and the proud obedient to their beck; ever ready to affirm, deny, say and unsay; and, by falsehood and defamation, involve in ruin men whose souls were the most pure, and ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... his mind to ride Lord Pottlepot's horse for the great Leamington handicap, he would be sure to tell even his intimate friends that he was almost determined to take the "baronet's" offer of a mount. This he would do even where there was no possible turn in the betting to be affected by such falsehood. So that his companions were apt to complain that there was no knowing where to have Tifto. And then, they who were old enough in the world to have had some experience in men, had perceived that peculiar quality of his eyes, ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... distinction between untruth generally (objectively false) and untruth in communication (lie, deception) —> 544. Falsehood. — N. falsehood, falseness; falsity, falsification; deception &c. 545; untruth &c 546; guile; lying &c. 454; untruth &c 546; guile; lying &c. v. misrepresentation; mendacity, perjury, false swearing; forgery, invention, fabrication; subreption[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... Hilary of this, he at once pronounced it impossible, and nothing but one of Aaron's lies. On reflection, however, I am not so sure that it is impossible, nor can I see any reason why the old poacher should invent a falsehood of the kind. It was just a time of the year when hares are beginning to go 'mad,' and, as they were not feeding but playing together, they might have strayed up the line just as they do along roads. Most persons must have observed how quietly ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... Marlborough, at his return from Bath, as my Lord Vice-Chamberlain, my Lord Clifford, and myself, his son, and son-in-law, and many more can witness: but that the day before, he swooned on the way, and was taken out of his litter, and laid into his coach, was a truth out of which that falsehood concerning the manner of his death had its derivation, though nothing to the purpose, or to ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... inevitable that Man must ever build a state of society around him after the pattern and image of his own interior state. The whole futile and idiotic structure of commerce and industry in which we are now imprisoned springs from that falsehood of individualistic self-seeking which marks the second stage of human evolution. That stage is already tottering to its fall, destroyed by the very flood of egotistic passions and interests, of vanities, greeds, and cruelties, all warring with each other, which are the sure ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... and exactions. He had, indeed, expressed his anger at times against his traducers; but to hold this the cause of the judgment against him is to degrade the whole proceedings, and to convict Paul V, Urban VIII, Bellarmin, the other theologians, and the Inquisition, of direct falsehood, since they assigned entirely different reasons for their conduct. From this position, therefore, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... little curious, that in the very number of the Art Union which repeated this direct falsehood about the Pre-Raphaelite rejection of "linear perspective" (by-the-bye, the next time J. B. takes upon him to speak of any one connected with the Universities, he may as well first ascertain the difference between a Graduate ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... that Mr. Slope was visiting the vicar of Puddingdale, a discussion took place respecting her charms and wealth at Dr. Stanhope's house in the close. There had been morning callers there, and people had told some truth and also some falsehood respecting the property which John Bold had left behind him. By degrees the visitors went, and as the doctor went with them, and as the doctor's wife had not made her appearance, Charlotte Stanhope and her brother were left together. He was sitting idly at the table, scrawling ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... let such an appeal as he had made me go unanswered; no, though I knew the possibility remained of its being simply the offspring of a keen and calculating mind driven to its last resource. It was enough that I felt him to be true, however much my reason might recognize the possibility of his falsehood. Rather than slight a noble spirit struggling with a great distress, I would incur any penalty which a possible lapse of judgment might bring; my temperament being such that I found less shame in the thought that I might be deceived, than that, out of a spirit of too great caution ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... and it lacks no perfection that you could imagine, not even that smile of happy youth which was a falsehood ere the paint had yet dried on the canvas. Here, before this relic, which recalls it to my thoughts, I must confess that ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... eye to see and the mind to appreciate, you will behold an illuminated canvas whereon is depicted, within the limited area of your vision, everything that a great city holds of wealth and poverty, beauty and ugliness, joy and sorrow, luxury and squalor, purity and degradation, truth and falsehood. It is all there, in this narrow environment, with the lights and the shadows meeting and blending, as the noise from below ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... apparent bulk— insignificant, mere skin and bone covering a cavern. What right had they, or anything else, to assert themselves as so big, and prove so empty? And now this discovery of woman's falsehood was quite too much for him. The world itself was hollow, made up of shams and delusions, full of sound and ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... had been the shame of all his youthful years that his father should stoop to subterfuge, to falsehood, to everything that was foreign to his native sense of honor and honesty, for a taste of that which his abnormal ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... watch them, listening[21] to their keen, unconnected, and unreasoning, but not unreasonable talk. Men's argument, or rather arguing, and above all debating, he disliked. He had no turn for it. He was not combative, much less contentious. He was, however, warlike. Anything that he could destroy, any falsehood or injustice, he made for, not to discuss, but to expose and kill. He could not fence with his mind much less with his tongue, and had no love for the exploits of a nimble dialectic. He had no readiness either ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... recantation of his 'Social Statics' is the worst case of intellectual cowardice on record.... He went down with final contempt for the workers who served him, gave him his daily bread, made his ink, pen, and paper and bound the twenty volumes of his philosophy of falsehood! May ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... Weimar told his friends always to be of courage; this Napoleonism was unjust, a falsehood, and could not last. It is true doctrine. The heavier this Napoleon trampled on the world, holding it tyrannously down, the fiercer would the world's recoil against him be, one day. Injustice pays itself with frightful compound interest. I am not sure but he had better lost ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... distance of three miles. The Minnetarees frequently mentioned this noise, like thunder, which they said the mountains made; but we had paid no attention to it, believing it to have been some superstition, or perhaps a falsehood. The watermen also of the party say that the Pawnees and Ricaras give the same account of a noise heard in the Black Mountains to the westward of them. The solution of the mystery given by the philosophy of the watermen is, that it is occasioned ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... frontiers of sorrow and fear. And in the confused current of impotent thoughts that set unceasingly this way and that through bodies of men, Jimmy bobbed up upon the surface, compelling attention, like a black buoy chained to the bottom of a muddy stream. Falsehood triumphed. It triumphed through doubt, through stupidity, through pity, through sentimentalism. We set ourselves to bolster it up from compassion, from recklessness, from a sense of fun. Jimmy's steadfastness ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... of a moment of ill humour on the part of the King, to whom indeed they had again obtained access, to call his attention to the loss of authority which threatened him on account of Buckingham's combination with the leading men in the Parliament. But in what they said they mingled so much falsehood with the truth that they could be easily refuted; and Buckingham successfully ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... her lips. He had never in the slightest way incurred her displeasure, so even revenge could not be advanced. It was inexplicable. As for the testimony of Bishop, he did not care to discuss it. It was a tissue of falsehood cunningly interwoven with truth. It was true the man had gone into Alaska with him in 1888, but his version of the things which happened there was maliciously untrue. Regarding the baron, there was a slight mistake in the dates, ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... she, her eyes wide open in amazement—not at the fact, but at the audacity of what she conceived my falsehood. ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... this business," he said, rising, "and if it is not your fault you shall not be punished; but if I find you have been telling me a falsehood, Elsie, I shall punish you much more severely than if you had not ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... bondage to any man'? Then what about Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Syria? Was there not a Roman garrison looking down from the castle into the very Temple courts where this boastful falsehood was uttered? It required some hardihood to say, 'Never in bondage to any man,' in the face of such a history, and such a present. But was it not just an instance of the strange power which we all have and exercise, of ignoring ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren |
