"Mendacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has of late years been converted to Christianity. It is easy enough to impose on an ignorant congregation, and Dr. Hitchens is probably aware of the lengths to which a reckless pulpiteer may carry his mendacity. But candid investigators will conclude that "converted infidels" cannot be very plentiful, when the majority of them are so ancient; nor very important, when an obscure youth has to be advertised as "a leader" of whom the sceptics (nine out of ten ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... but this had not prevented her from saying a great deal. There had been enough in her questioners' manner to make her suspect that her guardian was being attacked, and to his defense she brought the mendacity and imagination of a clever child. What she had really said did not transpire except through her own comments to the colonel: "And of course you've killed people—for you're a kernel, you know?" (Here the colonel admitted, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Horror; Cooperative Association for Breaking into the Spotlight; Dukes of Eden; Disciples Militant of the Hidden Faith; Knights-Champions of the Domestic Dog; the Holy Gregarians; the Resolute Optimists; the Ancient Sodality of Inhospitable Hogs; Associated Sovereigns of Mendacity; Dukes-Guardian of the Mystic Cess-Pool; the Society for Prevention of Prevalence; Kings of Drink; Polite Federation of Gents-Consequential; the Mysterious Order of the Undecipherable Scroll; Uniformed Rank of Lousy Cats; Monarchs of Worth ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... is wholly incomprehensible that the female intelligence should admire mendacity in the opposite sex on the sole conditions that the said liar should present himself in some novel article of attire, and, previously to relating his untruth, remove from his cheeks any hirsute appendages. One of the boarders whom I consulted on the subject attempted to persuade ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... porch. He feigned anxiety lest I should find certain dishes (those which he knew were most delectable) not to my taste, but was obviously so distended with fatuous pride over the whole meal that it became a temptation to denounce at least some trifling sauce or garnishment; nevertheless, so much mendacity proved beyond me and I spared him and my own conscience. This puffed-uppedness of his was to be observed only in his expression of manner, for during the consumption of food it was his worthy custom to practise a ceremonious, nay, a reverential, hush, and he never offered ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... good-breeding as compared with acts and feelings which really concern the moral and social welfare of mankind. There is many a man, moving in good society, who would rather be guilty of, and even detected in, an act of unkindness or mendacity, than be seen in an unfashionable dress or commit a grammatical solecism or a broach of social etiquette. Vulgarity to such men is a worse reproach than hardness of heart or indifferent morality. In these cases, as we shall see hereafter, the social sanction requires to be corrected by the ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... which a century later marked the approach of the great revolution, but which was not a characteristic of the reign of Louis XIV. He usually told the truth when he had no motive to do otherwise, and yet was capable at times of prodigious mendacity. [Footnote: La Hontan attempted to impose on his readers a marvellous story of pretended discoveries beyond the Mississippi; and his ill repute in the matter of veracity is due chiefly to this fabrication. On the ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... Bartlett," said Yates, "that I am the innocent cause of Miss Kitty's mirth. You see, madam—it's a pathetic thing to say, but really I have had no home life. Although I attend church regularly, of course," he added with jaunty mendacity, "I must confess that I haven't heard grace at meals for years and years, and—well, I wasn't just prepared for it. I have no doubt I made an exhibition of myself, which your ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... impudent piece of mendacity, we might expect Knox to protest in his "History"; to denounce it as a cause of God's wrath. On the other hand he states, with no disapproval, the childish quibbles by which his ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... Parisians in Paris, I cannot help feeling a good deal of sympathy for them, notwithstanding their childish vanity, their mendacity, and their frivolity. I sincerely trust, therefore, if they do seriously resist their besiegers, that the assurances of the Government that there are ample supplies of food and of ammunition, are not part of the system of official lying which was pursued by their predecessors; and I hope that the ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... of course, I do not know, as I say, anything about him, but it is a very natural thing that weak and vicious minds should be inflamed to acts of violence by the kind of awful mendacity and abuse that have been heaped upon me for the last three months by the papers in the interest of not only Mr. Debs but of Mr. Wilson and Mr. Taft. (Applause ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... people in Europe." In Italy I never began to see the cruelty to animals which English tourists report, and in Spain I saw none at all. If the reader asks how with this gentleness, this civility and integrity, the Spaniards have contrived to build up their repute for cruelty, treachery, mendacity, and every atrocity; how with their love of bull-feasts and the suffering to man and brute which these involve, they should yet seem so kind to both, I answer frankly, I do not know. I do not know how the Americans ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... after dinner, and make sure whether he were dead, or not. For it was not by any means hard to suppose that Sam Fry, being John's first cousin, might have inherited either from grandfather or grandmother some of those gifts which had made our John so famous for mendacity. At Porlock I found that it was too true; and the women of the town were in great distress, for the King had always been popular with them: the men, on the other hand, were forecasting what would be likely ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... feeling beyond that of humanity, and a right to expose the mendacity of those who have power to exercise it over the prisoners in Charleston. That mendacity has existed too long for the honor of that community, and for the feelings of those ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... dismissed Paula peremptorily for a real walk of her own. He had told her, in simple truth, that he would enjoy being left to himself for a while. She had taken this assurance for an altruistic mendacity, but she had yielded at last to his insistence and gone, under an exacted promise not to come back for ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... now were held by young men in the sixties of our century. I know very well that these ideas are obsolete. I am not preaching to the world, nor hoping to convert society, but to you, and purely in your own private, spiritual interest. If you enter on this path of tattle, mendacity, and malice, and if, with your cleverness and light hand, you are successful, society will not turn its back on you. You will be feared in many quarters, and welcomed in others. Of your paragraphs people will say that "it is a shame, of course, but it is very amusing." There are so ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... persons who make lies their refuge, must be liable to be doubted, even when they speak the truth. Still, it is possible, that a man's conscience may be so obdurate, as not to perceive the pravity of mendacity, when exercised for his supposed benefit, while he yet retains a regard for truth when engaged in relating his exploits to others. This, we think, is partly the case with our heroes. Their acknowledgment ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... was not so, Ndabezita. My 'Spider' told me that these were all the time alive," rejoined Laurence, with mendacity on a truly ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... in the land?) And the question may be answered, too, by watching whether the press and platform and pulpit stand as everlastingly and relentlessly for sharp demarkation between right and wrong, for the sharp demarkation between truth, plain truth, and intentional mendacity, as under the regime of the old hard days. When political life grows corrupt, is it now cleansed, or condoned? Let each Canadian answer for himself. If the altar fires of Canada's ideals again burn low, ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... looking to the sea and one along the coast, though not directly on it, windows sunk deep in massive walls built for a more bickering age than this. Count Victor took all in at a glance and found revealed to him in a flash the colossal mendacity of all the Camerons, Macgregors, and Macdonalds who had implied, if they had not deliberately stated, over many games of piquet or lansquenet at Cammercy, the magnificence of ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... have flourished as brilliantly as in France during the last century. But, if we read old French memoirs, we see how many brakes of scrupulosity which tie our tongues to-day were then removed. Where mendacity, treachery, obscenity, and malignity find unhampered expression, talk can be brilliant indeed. But its flame waxes dim where the mind is stitched all over with conscientious fear of violating the ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... then, the discovery that a man has the power to lie that shakes my confidence in him; it is loss of confidence in his mendacity that I find it impossible to get over. I forgive him for telling me lies, but I cannot forgive him for not telling me the same lies, or nearly so, about the same things. This shows he has a slipshod ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... historical character, as shown in the published literature of their [152] cause up to 1838, exhibited any sign of amelioration. It cannot be affected by the spirit and the lessons of the times. Mendacity and a sort of judicial blindness seem to be the two most salient characteristics by which are to be distinguished these implacable foes and would-be robbers of human rights and liberty. But, gracious heavens! what can tempt mortals to incur this weight of infamy? Wealth and ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... well, I'm aware, Sir, how ruthless rapacity Loves to take shelter, with cunning mendacity 'Neath an old saw; But well says the scribe that such "business" is crime, Sir, And such would be but for gaps half the time, Sir, 'Twixt ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... dollars and his goods actually under attachment, was usually in no mood to listen to, much less believe, his clerk's explanations. At all events, they availed naught, when Levine, with an expression of horror at such deliberate mendacity on the part of the clerk, was wont ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... the girl, with a bold plunge into mendacity. "I expected to see him at breakfast. Then I was told he was gone. I don't understand it ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... is why morality compares so unfavourably with intellectuality, which is the product of the upper sections of society and flashes out new lights every moment. But even morality changes. The Spartans, a highly moral people, thought it positively indecent not to steal. A modern vice, such as mendacity, was accounted a virtue by the greatest nation of antiquity. A modern virtue, like that of forgiving one's enemies, was accounted a vice proper to slaves. Drunkenness, reprobated by ancients and moderns alike, became the mark of a ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas |
