"False witness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Swanhild came out to Iceland, and, having won Ospakar Blacktooth and Gizur to her side, had laid a suit against Eric at the Thing, and there bore false witness against him, so that Brighteyes was declared outlaw, being absent. She told, too, how Gudruda had betrothed herself to Ospakar, and how Swanhild had moved down to Coldback and seized the lands. Lastly she told of the rising of Saevuna from her deathbed, of her going to Middalhof, of the words she ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... The next competent false witness was the Rev. Charles Hawley, D.D., who proceeds to state that the story of the Rev. J.D. Wickham, D. D., is corroborated by older citizens of New Rochelle. The names of these ancient residents are withheld. According to these unknown witnesses, the account given by the deceased elder was entirely ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... McCrindle (op. cit. p. 43, note). The remark about the truthfulness of the Indians appears to be Arrian's addition. It is not in the Fragment of Megasthenes from which Arrian copies, and the falsity of the remark is proved by the statement (ibid., p. 71) that 'a person convicted of bearing false witness suffers mutilation of his extremities'. But in Fragment XXVII from Strabo (op. cit., p. 70) Megasthenes says, 'Truth and virtue they hold alike in esteem'; and in Fragment XXXIII (ibid., p. 85) he asserts that 'the ablest and moat trustworthy men' ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... what real happiness he had in this life came more from his religion than all other sources. My young friends if you still stand in doubt on this point I can only say make the experiment yourselves, and if you find what I have said not true, judge me a false witness. ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... the ignorant populace, it was not only by zealots in whom fanaticism had extinguished all reason and charity, that the Roman Catholic was regarded as a man the very tenderness of whose conscience might make him a false witness, an incendiary, or a murderer, as a man who, where his Church was concerned, shrank from no atrocity and could be bound by no oath. If there were in that age two persons inclined by their judgment and by their temper to toleration, those persons were Tillotson and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... young man, perhaps a thousand times as rich as any that lived in Palestine. This young man came to Billy and said: "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" And Billy told him to keep the commandments—"Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor thy father and thy mother." The young man answered; "All these have I kept from my youth up." And Billy said: "Yet lackest thou one thing; sell all that thou hast and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come follow me." And when he heard ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God; but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. He saith unto him, which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness. Honour thy father and thy mother: and Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet? Jesus said unto him. If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... persecutors, and slanderers—in ascending order of malignity. Similarly in the Commandments, where the worst sin of each sort is the one mentioned, we find false witness, or slander, named, in the ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... have you there! In all your life say, have you ne'er False witness borne, until this hour? Have you of God, the world, and all it doth contain, Of man, and that which worketh in his heart and brain, Not definitions given, in words of weight and power, With front unblushing, and a dauntless breast? Yet, if ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... oath is absolutely useless if its object is to prevent false witness. Should there be any likelihood of a persecution for perjury, a two-faced Testament-kisser will be on his guard, and be very careful to tell only such lies as cannot be clearly proved against him. He dreads ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... perjury; he was discharged amidst the hootings of the mob. Notwithstanding their prejudice against the Jews, and their rage against a Jew who had harboured, as they conceived, two concealed papists and a priest, yet the moment an attempt to bear false witness against Mr. Montenero appeared, the people took his part. In England the mob is always in favour of truth and innocence, wherever these are made clearly evident to their senses. Pleased with themselves for their impartiality, it was not difficult at this ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... "What has that to do with it? Because the man was rich he was not justified in ill-treating his wife. Did he not bring false accusations against her, in order that he might rob her after his death of all that of which you think so much? Did he not hear false witness against ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... eyes, robbeth the old of wisdom and the body of strength, it revealeth the secrets of friends, and raiseth dissension between brothers." The man's anger was roused. "Why blasphemest thou against wine, and bearest false witness against it? Wine bringeth joy; sorrow and sighing fly before it. It strengtheneth the body, maketh the heart generous, prolongeth pleasure, and deferreth age; faces it maketh shine, and ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... presence of witnesses and relatives is almost unheard of. I suppose that this marvel is to be attributed to the fear of the dire retribution that would infallibly overtake the false witness. ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... anything, that them folks will find it as easy to go to heaven, as for a camel to go through the eye of a needle?" Well, then, the rich think it all made for the poor—that they shan't steal nor bear false witness, but shall be obedient to them that's in authority. And as for them 'ere Unitarians,' and he always got his dander up when he spoke of them, 'why there's no doin' nothin' with them,' says he. 'When they get fairly stumped, ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the guilt; but evidently, for the bankruptcy, each member of the community is responsible in that degree and so far as he himself acquiesced in the duplicities of public dealing; every careless juror, every unrighteous judge, every false witness, has done his part in the reduction of society to that state in which the monster injustice has been perpetrated. In the riot of a tumultuous assembly by night, a house may be burnt, or a murder committed; in the eye of the law, all who are aiding and abetting there are each in his degree responsible ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... inconsistent with my idea of loyalty to criticise my friends. Besides, you know I am an old-fashioned person, and I disapprove of criticising people altogether. I think it is a violation of the ninth commandment; I do not think we are justified in bearing false witness against our neighbour." ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... expression of unutterable solemnity and command. "Behold!" he shouted with a voice which stilled the roar of the crowd; "behold the gods protect the guiltless! The fires of the avenging Orcus burst forth against the false witness of my accusers!" ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... against false witness is the Ninth," said McNiven, "But let's have a conference. This war in Europe might have been avoided by a little heart-to-heart talk beforehand. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... false witness!" cried both the girls. "We never laid hands on a thing, except in the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... witness,' &c.: let attention be drawn to two laws contained in this commandment:—the one, forbidding false witness; the other bidding, that removing all pretence and deceits, we should measure our words and deeds by simple truth, as the Apostle admonished the Ephesians of that duty in these words: 'Doing truth in charity, let us grow ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... you have shown me your goodwill for a long time. To be sure there is a Commandment that forbids us to bear false witness ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen
... pensieri stretti [It]. unfairness &c (dishonesty) 940; artfulness &c (cunning) 702; misstatement &c (error) 495. V. be false &c adj., be a liar &c 548; speak falsely &c adv.; tell a lie &c 546; lie, fib; lie like a trooper; swear false, forswear, perjure oneself, bear false witness. misstate, misquote, miscite^, misreport, misrepresent; belie, falsify, pervert, distort; put a false construction upon &c (misinterpret); prevaricate, equivocate, quibble; palter, palter to the understanding; repondre en Normand ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... well: and they knew Virgil. But partly from the instinct above referred to, of which more presently, partly from the craze for tracing Western Europe back to the "thrice-beaten Trojans," it pleased them to regard Homer as a late and unhistorical calumniator, whose Greek prejudices made him bear false witness; and to accept the pretensions of Dictys and Dares to be contemporaries and eyewitnesses of fact. Dictys, a companion of Idomeneus, was supposed to represent the Greek side, but more fairly than Homer; and Dares, priest of ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... neighbouring cities, and gives curious details as to pains and penalties and municipal regulations. The penalty for mutilation was a corresponding mutilation unless the fine prescribed was paid. The making of false money was punished with death. The false witness, if insolvent, lost his right nostril, and his name was published as a perjurer on the stair of the communal palace. He who destroyed the property of another lost his right hand. But there was no public executioner; and there are many records of the flight of guilty persons, ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... business? How will you be able to correct him, if he acts improperly in reference to some office, or marriage, or the state? For I cannot indeed assent to the remark of Pericles to his friend, who asked him to bear false witness in his favour even to the extent of perjury, "I am your friend as far as the altar." He went too far. But he that has long accustomed himself never to go against his convictions in praising a speaker, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... all unrighteousness; inordinate affection, and love of money; from evil. speaking; false witness; not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing, or striking for striking, ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... we must keep the seventh day, by resting from all sorts of work. The fifth, that we must honor our parents. The sixth that we must abstain from murder. The seventh that we must not commit adultery. The eighth, that we must not be guilty of theft. The ninth, that we must not bear false witness. The tenth, that we must not admit of the desire of any thing ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good." In the 7v he quotes from the decalogue. Again, he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. How? Why thou shalt not steal, nor commit adultery, nor bear false witness, nor covet, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. Rom. xiii: 8, 10.—This then is what the Saviour taught the young man to do—to secure "eternal life." Matt. Once ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign - 1847 edition • Joseph Bates
... behoof; so unmercifully did he tear him, and lacerate him; twenty times did he make him declare his own shame in twenty different ways. Oh! what a prize for a clever, sharp, ingenious, triumphant Counsellor Allewinde, that wicked false witness, with his shallow, detected device. He played with him like a cat does with a mouse—now letting him go for a moment, with the vain hope that he was to escape—then again pouncing on him, and giving him a fresh tear; till ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... absolutely wrong. It passes another act punishing perjury. The mere lawyer looks at this solely as a facility for getting at the truth before a jury. It is vastly more. It is a moral decision. The Nation binds the Ten Commandments on the popular conscience, and declares, 'Thou shalt not bear false witness.' It declares, 'There are everlasting distinctions, things absolutely right, and things absolutely wrong. So far has the conscience of the Nation made things clear. The good citizen knows all this without the Statute Book, and much more. But there must be a limit somewhere. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... before Moses, and before this law was made, intimates that adultery is a heinous crime, yea, it is an iniquity to be punished by the judges, Job xxxi. 9,11. The thief, sinning against the eighth commandment, was to be punished by restitution, Exod. xxii. 1, 15, &c. The false witness, sinning against the ninth commandment, was to be dealt withal as he would have had his brother dealt with, by the law of retaliation, Deut. xix. 16, to the end of the chapter, &c. Yea, the magistrate's punitive power is extended also to offences against ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... that they have borne false witness against me, and, behold, I must die; whereas I never did such things as these men have maliciously invented ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... you all know that many who make terrible accusations have at once been convicted of falsifying so evidently, that they leave the court and become mistrusted for all they do. Some again have been convicted of false witness and of seeking to ruin men, when there was nothing more to their advantage. 5. Since, as I hear, there are many such cases, gentlemen of the jury, do not trust the words of the prosecution until I speak. For I hear, and I think many of you know that slander is most difficult ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... sin, and making darts with God's blessings to shoot against God. Because men are unholy and heady, and make many covenants, and keep none. Because they are (as the Greek word diaboloi signifieth) devils, acting the devil's part, in accusing the brethren, and in bearing false witness one against another. Because they have a "form of godliness, denying the power thereof." Hence it is that these times are so sad and bloody. These are thy enemies, O England, that have brought thee into this desolate condition! If ever God ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... habitations and livelihoods by building of parks and in-closures; tenants taking leases over their neighbor's head, and the like. It is, moreover, to be bewailed that many ministers, who should be examples of charity and good works, are ringleaders in this sin of oppression. Much lying and bearing of false witness, defaming one another's good name, reproaching persons for their adherence to the truths and cause of Christ, or for discovering any piece of zeal and affection that way. Much covetousness and worldly-mindedness, repining, murmuring and discontentment ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... conscience that you hear. And what cries would not that conscience send forth, how fiercely would it not rise upon you, did you contribute to the destruction of innocence by invoking Heaven itself as a false witness against it?" ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... had I but lost my earing corn And saved the cause once prized! O Saints, why such false witness had I borne When late ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... that had borne false witness against Caeso, was found guilty of perjury, and went into exile. And when Cincinnatus saw that justice had been done to this evildoer, he resigned his dictatorship, having held ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... was thought that the presence of the head of the supreme court at Calcutta would impart a dignity to the proceedings, and give a fair colouring to the act. It was not difficult in India to obtain a conviction; for men who would perjure themselves by giving false witness were to be met with on every hand. A host of such were brought forward, therefore, with affidavits ready drawn in their hands, to testify against the victims. The result was certain: a partial judge and false swearing convicted ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... sovereign commanded him to bear false witness against an honourable man, under penalty of death, whether he would hold it possible to conquer his love of life. He might not venture to say what he would choose, but he would certainly admit that it is possible to make choice. Thus, he judges that he can choose ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... of hearsay evidence is equally unfounded. Its uses are said to be threefold, to convince in affairs of the world, to serve as the basis of action for business men, and to prevent opportunity for false witness. Yet it is not admissible in a court of justice to prove or disprove either a cause or a defence. The rules of evidence have been worked out by centuries of experience of courts in jury trials, and are admirably adapted to avoid the danger of error as to fact. I fully agree that in ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... beggar in my old age, a man you are not worthy to serve under, a man that served his country by sea and land before you were whelped, ye black hypocrite. You a Christian! you? If I thought that I'd turn Atheist or anything, you poor, backbiting, tale-telling, sneaking, undermining, false witness bearing—" ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... his lust, whether he could not then control his passion; we need not be long in doubt what he would reply. Ask him, however- if his sovereign ordered him, on pain of the same immediate execution, to bear false witness against an honourable man, whom the prince might wish to destroy under a plausible pretext, would he consider it possible in that case to overcome his love of life, however great it may be. He would perhaps not venture to affirm whether he would do so or ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... and there is no man in the world so low or so base as not to be able to do mischief. The power of mischief is given to every one of us. It is the true, the only Equality of Man—we can all destroy. What? a shot in the dark; the striking of a lucifer match; the false accusation; the false witness; the defamation of character;—upon my word, it is far more dangerous to be hated by a woman than by a man. And this excellent and faithful Fanny, devoted to her mistress, hates you, my lord, even more"—he paused and laughed—"even more than the charming Mrs. Vimpany ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... either bore false witness against his neighbour, a poor artisan, or (taking his own word for it) saved the nation from great disaster and ruin by putting out a fire that ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... may; he is alive, and in the house. Susanna had been condemned, if Daniel had not cried out, 'Will you condemn an innocent Israelite, without examination or knowledge of the truth?' Remember it is absolutely the Commandment of God: If a false witness rise up you shall cause him to be brought before the Judges; if he be found false, he shall have the punishment which the accused should have had. It is very sure for my lord to accuse me is my certain danger, and it may be a ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... enactments, there were the ordinary laws against robbery, theft, murder, adultery, and false witness. The penalties for these offenses were generally severe. The punishment for stealing cattle was death. For petty thefts the criminal was to be beaten with a stick, the number of the blows being proportioned to the nature and aggravation of the offense. He could, however, ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... women of good repute; and the Church for a long time maintained that no one should be admitted as an accuser who was a heretic, was excommunicated, a homicide, a thief, a sorcerer, a diviner, or the bearer of false witness. But her hatred of heresy led her later on to set aside this law, when the faith was in question. As early as the twelfth century, Gratian had declared that the testimony of infamous and heretical witnesses might be accepted ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... ninth commandment is the one about false witness, you know. And sich a gal as you used to be for slashing a character, or trying to make your kindest friends ridiculous, there wasn't in all the city. You were always so tremendously witty, you never had a good word for any body; for witty gals, as you used to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... she have no husband, she may also bring an action. A slave, male or female, and a child may witness and plead only in case of murder, but they must give sureties that they will appear at the trial, if they should be charged with false witness. Such charges must be made pending the trial, and the accusations shall be sealed by both parties and kept by the magistrates until the trial for perjury comes off. If a man is twice convicted of perjury, he is not to be required, ...
— Laws • Plato
... me from Baba, who liveth upon the entrails of the mighty ones, on the day of the Great Judgment. Let me come to you, for I have not committed offences [against you]; I have not done evil, I have not borne false witness; therefore let nothing [evil] be done unto me. I live upon truth. I feed upon truth. I have performed the commandments of men, and the things which make the gods contented. I have made the god to be at peace [with me by doing] that which is his will. ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... mind. Stranger things than this have happened; but one prefers to believe that the poet of the "Canterbury Tales" remained master of himself to the last. He had written much which a dying man might regret; but it would be sad to have to think that, "because of humility," he bore false witness at the last against an immortal part ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... of Asia Minor, over St. Peter, the patron of Rome. Others have held that it was added to exalt St. Peter. Those who deny the authenticity of the whole Gospel are compelled to regard ch. xxi. 24 as deliberate false witness.) ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... that nothing is evil.[152] The members of the society did not practise good and evil, it appears, with equal indifference, for the magistrates of the republic took alarm, and smothered, by a free employment of death and imprisonment, a focus of murders, violations, false witness, and forged signatures. This fact reveals, with ominous clearness, a movement of thought on the nature of which ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... him to observe the laws of the Lord's table. A man, however, who does not keep the laws of his table, which are all referable to love for the neighbor, cannot do the laws of the Lord's table, which are all referable to love for the Lord. How can a murderer, thief, adulterer, or false witness love God? Does reason not insist that to be any of these and to love God is a contradiction? Is not the devil such? Must he not hate God? But a man can love God when he abhors murder, adultery, theft and false witness, for then he turns his face away from the devil to ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... had probably been mistaken, and being relatively honest—and being also about to get his money—and not wishing to bear false witness, particularly if he might later be sued for false imprisonment, he decided to duck and pass the buck to Delany, who was definitely committed. He was shrewd enough, however, not to give his real reason to the policeman, but put it on the ground of being so confused that he couldn't ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. 9. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 10. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... accusation against him. They tampered with all the monks in the convent, to induce them to find some fault in him, but each answered that he was a saint in every thought, word, and deed; until at last Payssi, the prior who had succeeded him, was induced, by the hope of a bishopric, to bear false witness ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bearing false witness upon oath, is punished with the pillory, called Callistrigium, burnt in the forehead with a P, his trees growing upon his ground to be rooted up, and his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... go to the Dreier woman. That don't do no harm. She c'n tell you a story ... He wanted to get her into givin' false witness.... That shows the kind o' man ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... his welfare, or concernment in any kind, out of malignity, vanity, rashness, ill-nature, or bad design. That which is in Holy Scripture forbidden and reproved under several names and notions: of bearing false witness, false accusation, railing censure, sycophantry, talebearing, whispering, backbiting, supplanting, taking up reproach: which terms some of them do signify the nature, others denote the special kinds, others imply the manners, others suggest the ends of this practice. But it ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... the amputation of a limb. Had they enquired however, they would have heard that, in Egypt, the man deprived of his hand was a convicted forger, the woman of her nose, an adulteress; that the man without a tongue had been found guilty of high treason or false witness; that the loss of the ears denoted a spy, and that the pale, idiotic-looking woman yonder had been guilty of infanticide, and had been condemned to hold the little corpse three days and three nights in her arms. What woman could retain ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... where I had acted well; he then voted for my acquittal. Brother Cummings, who had been a member of the Council when I was first tried in the summer, and who then took my part, now thought he would make himself popular with the people, so he volunteered his evidence and bore false witness against me. This man's action was wrong and uncharitable. I had been more than a brother to him in the past; I had supplied his family with food when they would have suffered but for the help ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... head, were all dainty and accordant; if she was not beautiful, she was vivid, changeful, coloured, and pretty with a thousand various prettinesses; and her eyes, if they indeed rolled too consciously, yet rolled to purpose. They were her most attractive feature, yet they continually bore eloquent false witness to her thoughts; for while she herself, in the depths of her immature, unsoftened heart, was given altogether to man-like ambition and the desire of power, the eyes were by turns bold, inviting, fiery, melting, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... turning-point in the history of Judaism—the birth-hour of religion as it has come down to us—is marked by that great dimly-seen personality, Moses, who taught that the worship of Yahveh forbade murder, adultery, theft, false witness, covetousness. ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... it," says Njal, — "all matters of contempt of the Thing, such as if men bear false witness, or utter a false finding; hither, too, shall come all those suits in which the judges are divided in opinion in the Quarter Court; then they shall be summoned to the Fifth Court; so, too, if men offer bribes, or take them, for their help in suits. In this court all the oaths shall be of the ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... proportions of the fact he had asserted. And, further, if the telegram had not been his, why should the photographic distortion be trusted as a phase of his existence? But after a while it seemed so improbable to her that God's sun should bear false witness, that instead of doubting both evidences she was inclined to readmit the first. Still, upon the whole, she could not question for long the honesty of Somerset's denial and if that message had indeed been ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... imperative necessity and wholesome effect, has been befouled by language which no careful historian would apply to Tiberius or Louis XV. But enough of this. We should be glad to believe that these utterers of false witness were boorish men, in dark and desperate ignorance of the true bearing of our current affairs. We are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... Calli seeks the young man's life by bearing false witness against him; and with it that of my old friend, Sir Karl de Pitti. It is Burgundy's shame, my lord, that these treacherous mercenaries should be allowed to murder strangers and to outrage Your Grace's loyal subjects in the name of Your Lordship's ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... borne false witness against them; the emigrants were indeed cutting down trees. More, they were industriously hauling the logs to the immediate vicinity of their camp, which was chosen with an eye to many advantages; shade, water, ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... a man that's a man should do annything for, was it havin' the heart cut out uv him, or givin' the last drop uv his blood. Shure, for such as her, murder, or false witness, or givin' up the last wish or thought a man hugged to his boosom, would be ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sind zollfrei. (No toll is levied on thought.) When weak consciences are driven by force to lie, deceive, and say otherwise than they believe in the heart, they burden themselves also with a heavy sin; for all the lies and false witness given by such weak consciences rest upon him ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... their offspring were hunted down like wild beasts; and made of the king's daughter a servant, that she might be allowed to go free. I counterfeited certificates of baptism, registers, passports, in order to save the king's daughter from her enemies. I bore false witness—committed perjury in order to hide ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... infest the highway, So Mat may be killed, and his bones never found; False witness at court, and fierce tempests at sea, So Mat may yet chance to be hanged ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... speak, so that of other sorts of memories occasions other functional disturbances. A patient may forget objects, and so not know how to use his penknife or to put on his shoes. He may forget events, and so give false witness as to the past. ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... confession was a fresh wile of the devil to save her master Grandier. She then made an urgent appeal to the bishop and to M. de Laubardemont, asking to be sequestered and placed in charge of other priests than those who had destroyed her soul, by making her bear false witness against an innocent man; but they only laughed at the pranks the devil was playing, and ordered her to be at once taken back to the house in which she was then living. When she heard this order, she darted out of the choir, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE |
