"Defamation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... aggrieved husband to recover damages for defamation of the character of his wife. It centered in one of the dramatic incidents at Knapp's execution. In the last extremity, and in the presence of immediate death, the prisoner came down from the ladder, and asking to speak ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... this work cannot be set forward, without the great slander of the gospel, defamation of many preachers, and evident hurt and loss of the people's souls committed to our charge. For the people are brought almost to the like case, as they were in Syria, Arabia and Egypt, about the 600th ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... by common interest to form an impartial judgment, and a jury was refused. Bryan then dropped the action, which he objected to entrust to assessors, directed perhaps by a member of the executive: for the same reason he withdrew his proceedings against the police magistrate for defamation of character. He returned to England: sought redress from the ministers, but in vain. On this case the opinion of impartial persons can hardly err. Yet the right of the governor to withdraw men, though not to be exercised ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... endeavour to suppressor lessen every thing that is praise-worthy, is as frequent among the men as women. If I can remember what passed at a visit last night, it will serve as an instance that the sexes are equally inclined to defamation, with ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... grapples with an equally modern and timely subject, viz., the license of the press. With terrible vividness he shows the misery, ruin, and degradation which result from the present journalistic practice of misrepresentation, sophistry, and defamation. It is a very dark picture he draws, with scarcely a gleam of light. The satire is savage; and the quiver of wrath is perceptible in many a sledge-hammer phrase. You feel that Bjoernson himself has suffered from the terrorism which he here describes, and you would surmise ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... latter unheard-of Schlubhut thing, the Supreme Court at Berlin (CRIMINAL-COLLEGIUM) have been sitting on, for some time; and, in regard to Schlubhut, they have brought out a result, which Friedrich Wilhelm not a little admires at. Schlubhut clearly guilty of the defamation, say they; but he has moneys, landed properties: let him refund, principal and interest; and have, say, three or four years' imprisonment, by way of memento. "Years' imprisonment? Refund? Is theft in the highest quarters a thing to be let off for refunding?" growls his Majesty; and will ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of Truth defended, etc. Two Trials of the Rev. T. Hill, Methodist Preacher, for defamation of the character of Miss Bell, etc. etc. 8vo. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... behavior, instead of making you appear more virtuous, only draws down upon you, by those who know the world, suspicions not much to your advantage. Your sex are in general suspected by ours, of being too much addicted to scandal and defamation; a suspicion, which has not arisen of late years, as we find in the ancient laws of England a punishment, known by the name of ducking-stool, annexed to scolding and defamation in the women, though no ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... minerals that, according to experts, is intrinsically worth $5,000, though it would take vastly more to buy it from a man so covetous of honor. Removing to Washington, he published a curious little book called "Slander and Defamation ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... actions of the greatest diversity, cases of mere slander or defamation of character being sometimes brought before it. Any violation of the ten commandments was within its jurisdiction. It particularly devoted itself to secret crimes, such as magic, witchcraft, or poisoning. Its agents of justice were bound to make constant circuits, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... of slander was to be carried to the ducking stool to be ducked unless her husband would consent to pay the fine imposed by law for the offense.... Some years after (1646) a woman residing in Northampton was punished for defamation by being condemned to stand at the door of her parish church, during the singing of the psalm, with a gag in her mouth.... Deborah Heighram ... was, in 1654, not only required to ask pardon of the ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... that such a poster, flaring from every billboard, is a defamation of patriotic American women, and a distinct blow to the cause of suffrage. It will not only antagonize men, who alone have the power to grant the franchise in those States still obdurate, but disgust thousands of women not yet won over to the cause, and far too ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... acceptance of the gouty and irascible Pirkheimer's defamation of Frau Duerer as a miser and a shrew called forth a display of ingenuity on the part of Professor Thausing to prove the contrary. And I must confess that if he has not quite done that, he seems to me to have very thoroughly discredited ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... Toleration had come even from Cromwell's favourite Independents, Messrs. Owen and the rest, with their twenty fundamentals! Add the difficulties arising from the nature of some of the current heresies themselves, as tending directly to the defamation of his government, the subversion of laws and institutions, and the disturbance ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... subjects, and so intend only to be guilty of being impertinent: but as they cannot go on for ever talking of nothing, as common matters will not afford a sufficient fund for perpetual continued discourse, where subjects of this kind are exhausted they will go on to defamation, scandal, divulging of secrets, their own secrets as well as those of others—anything rather than be silent. They are plainly hurried on in the heat of their talk to say quite different things from what they first intended, and which they afterwards wish unsaid: or improper things, which they ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... all public men have to undergo similar virulent defamation. I have heard a well-known publicist, a lawyer of ability, argue that both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln did not escape from what seems now incredible abuse, and that they were, nevertheless, the noblest of men and peerless ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... finally able to return to England, probably in 1641. There he found Anthony Panton continuing his campaign of defamation against him. Panton was not content to accuse the previous government in Virginia of every sort of general crime (although he failed to cite any specific instance of oppression) but charged that the commission the King had granted to Sir William Berkeley in August 1641 ...
— Virginia Under Charles I And Cromwell, 1625-1660 • Wilcomb E. Washburn
... do not wish that my destiny should involve yours, or your future be ruined. I, who am, thank God, innocent, and without a stain on my life—I, who would lay bare my heart to my enemies, could they thus read its purity, will resist to the last. For you might come ruin, defamation, and perhaps imprisonment. Take away the money you so nobly offered me, and the assurance that not one movement of your generous heart has escaped me, and that your doubts, though they have wounded, have not estranged me. Go, I say, and seek elsewhere what the ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... faults worse than mere indiscretion. A great scandal connected with a diamond necklace, which an unprincipled woman, the Countess Lamotte, falsely asserted that the queen desired the Cardinal de Rohan to purchase for her, did much to make her the victim of gross defamation (1785). Her forbearance towards unworthy favorites, and her intermeddling in the affairs of government, in opposition to political reforms, gradually kindled against her wide-spread ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... lose sight of this title and this publication, for (as will be more fully explained in a succeeding chapter) they had much to do with the future defamation of Vespucci. He, it will be observed, was pursuing his voyage to, or from, that "New World," while that little quarto of only four leaves, with its significant title, was being printed and circulated in Europe. ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... sometimes mere bodily frailties; but a lie in a man is a vice of the mind and of the heart. For God's sake be scrupulously jealous of the purity of your moral character; keep it immaculate, unblemished, unsullied; and it will be unsuspected. Defamation and calumny never attack, where there is no weak place; they magnify, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Providence, were briefly, and in succession, a profitless marriage with the most distinguished heiress of his province, carried off from twenty more eligible rivals by the superior strategy of seduction and defamation, pecuniary extravagance, dissipation, debts, sequestration of property, marital separation, successive imprisonments by paternal intervention, deadly hate with the father, permanent alienation from his adulterous wife and only child, licentious connection with ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Belfield eagerly, "if you imagine me a hireling scribbler for the purposes of defamation or of flattery, you as little know my situation as my character. My subjects shall be my own, and my satire shall be general. I would as much disdain to be personal with an anonymous pen, as to attack an unarmed man in the dark with a dagger ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... inclined to believe, that the great law of mutual benevolence is oftener violated by envy than by interest, and that most of the misery which the defamation of blameless actions, or the obstruction of honest endeavours, brings upon the world, is inflicted by men that propose no advantage to themselves but the satisfaction of poisoning the banquet which they cannot taste, and blasting the harvest ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... useful art, finds himself pursued by multitudes whom he never saw with implacability of personal resentment; when he perceives clamour and malice let loose upon him as a public enemy, and incited by every stratagem of defamation; when he hears the misfortunes of his family or the follies of his youth exposed to the world; and every failure of conduct, or defect of nature, aggravated and ridiculed; he then learns to abhor those artifices at which he only laughed before, and ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... them, is, to say the least, hazardous; but to make accusations to formulate which the accuser is forced, not only to ignore facts, but actually to deny them, is, to our mind, nothing short of rank defamation. ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... short, but it was long enough for certain newspapers of Chattanooga to give expression to their dislike to negro troops in general and to those in their proximity especially. The Washington Post, also, ever faithful to its unsavory trust, lent its influence to this work of defamation. The leading papers, however, both of Chattanooga and the South generally, spoke out in rather conciliatory and patronizing tones, and "sought to restrain the people of their section from compromising their brilliant display of patriotism ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... added, "Can you wonder Oxford is now the metropolis of slander, since it is full of court-ladies who have now no revels or maskings to amuse them, and never leave reputations in quiet when they are out of humour. But, to put a stop to defamation, let me advise a ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety. They might, indeed, have been corrected by the wholesome punishments reserved to and provided by the laws of the several States against falsehood and defamation, but public duties more urgent press on the time of public servants, and the offenders have therefore been left to find their punishment in ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... he thought of that. The reply was, 'Lions have no painters.' For days the unblushing apostles of sham Democracy have in this House drawn pictures of the ignorance and degradation of the people of color in the District of Columbia. Had the subjects of their wanton defamation had a Representative here, there would have been a different coloring to the picture, and I would gladly leave their defense to the Representatives of classes who have by hundreds darkened these galleries with their sable countenances, waiting for days to hear the decisive vote which ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... told me one or the other of you had said so. We won't stand that—we'll have you arrested for—for defamation of character!" stormed the rival auctioneer, working himself up into a ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... action in the cause of others. I will be delighted to meet an accusation of sentimentality and exaggeration by any man or woman who has gone to a Southern mill as an operative and worked side by side with the children, lived with them in their homes. It is defamation to use the word "home" in connection with the unwholesome shanty in the pest-ridden district where the remnant of the children's lives not lived in the mill is passed. This handful of unpainted huts, raised on stilts from the soil, fever-ridden and malarious; ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... thoroughly cowed; when I can walk the streets without expecting every moment to get shot from a stairway or double-banked by the meek and lowly followers of the Messiah; when I have time to amuse myself with trifles, I'll sue this brace of Smart Alecs for $20,000 each for deliberate defamation of character, and if I recover the money I'll use it to make a partial payment on the grocery bills of the rest of the gang. Intellectual pigmies who accumulate much cash by trading in cash or tripe in a country town are quite apt to become too big for their britches and require to be taken ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... and I suppose it will. It is none the less for that expensive, harsh, unpopular and unsettling. I am young enough to have been annoyed, and altogether eject and renegate the whole idea of political affairs. Success in that field appears to be the organisation of failure enlivened with defamation of character; and, much as I love pickles and hot water (in your true phrase) I shall take my pickles in future from Crosse and Blackwell and my hot water with ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mr. Canham and the Monitor), Protestants (through the National Council of Churches), Quakers (through the American Friends Service Committee), and Jews (through the American Jewish Committee, The Anti-Defamation League, and other organizations) are among the religious groups which have publicly supported activities of the Foreign Policy Association. Powerful Catholic personalities and publications ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... I, "Ursula, I was bred an apprentice to gorgio law, and of course ought to stand up for it, whenever I conscientiously can, but I must say the gypsy manner of bringing an action for defamation is much less tedious, and far more satisfactory, than the gorgiko one. I wish you now to clear up a certain point which is rather mysterious to me. You say that for a Romany chi to do what is unseemly with a gorgio is quite out of the question, yet only the other ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... accompanied her home, entreating her to be patient under a misfortune to which even kings are liable: namely, defamation. ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... "but this foolhardiness will one day bring as pretty a brigantine as ever sailed in the narrow seas, to condemnation; and then will there be rumors abroad, and characters cracked, till every lover of gossip in the Americas shall be tired of defamation." ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... then abundantly deserve his fate? What conceivable defence is open to him, after his public defamation of all that is noblest? On the public which listened to him, too, the spectacle of his condign punishment will have a healthy effect; we shall see no more ridicule of Philosophy. Tame submission to insult would naturally enough be taken, not for moderation, but for insensibility ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... upon whom the leaders of the Anti-Masonic movement at that time depended in their defamation of WASHINGTON, was Jared Sparks of Boston, who at the time was engaged writing a life of WASHINGTON, and then had access to all the Washington letter-books and papers, and from his connection with the Washington correspondence, was supposed ...
— Washington's Masonic Correspondence - As Found among the Washington Papers in the Library of Congress • Julius F. Sachse
... yet we daily see ministers of the Gospel ignoring Mary's exalted virtues and unexampled privileges and parading her alleged imperfections; nay, sinfulness, as if her Son were dishonored by the piety, and took delight in the defamation of His Mother. ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... interpretation of unlawful union methods is briefly as follows: Strikes are illegal when they involve defamation, fraud, actual physical violence, threats of physical violence, or inducement of breach of contract. Boycotts are illegal when they bring third parties into the dispute by threats of strikes, or loss of business, publication of "unfair lists,"[98] ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... friend nor foe. She was, it is true, a very handsome girl, and the charms of her person would have procured her many admirers if they had not been disgraced by her natural propensity to slander and defamation. In her very infancy, as soon as she could speak to be understood, she began with telling fibs of the servants, and very frequently of her brothers and sisters; for which, you may be certain, they all despised her very heartily. But as she was too much ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... as little knowledge of what is practicable in politics as I did in that book, who suppose that the liberty of any civil society can be maintained by the destruction of order and decency or promoted by the petulance of unbridled defamation. ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... being clearly realized by our foes, that so long as its influence in Washington political circles remained unimpaired, no rupture of diplomatic relations could be hoped for. Entente diplomacy left no stone unturned which could be of service against us; lies, robbery, personal defamation, gossip, were all used ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... hypocritically look askance if they happen to meet with a true man in music. They pretend to be shocked, as though they had come across something improper. The spirit of their shyness, which originally served to conceal their own impotence, now attempts the defamation of other people's potency. Defamatory insinuations and calumny find ready acceptance with the representatives of German Philistinism, and appear to be at home in that mean and paltry state of things which, as we have seen, environs ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... 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 principles the ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... imagery, his pungency of periods, or his fertility of allusion, that he detains the cits of London, and the boors of Middlesex. Of style and sentiment they take no cognizance. They admire him, for virtues like their own, for contempt of order, and violence of outrage; for rage of defamation, and audacity of falsehood. The supporters of the bill of rights feel no niceties of composition, nor dexterities of sophistry; their faculties are better proportioned to the bawl of Bellas, or barbarity of Beckford; but they are told, that Junius is on their side, and they are, therefore, sure ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... Orsola! Are you aware that you are accusing me of being guilty of punishable defamation and slander? I say that the Signorina Paolina Foscarelli committed murder? Who on earth could ever have told you so monstrous an untruth? Allow me to assure you that I never said anything ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... is going to make it hot for old Bartlett," went on Bob. "He is going to sue him for defamation of character." ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... Pareus, observe upon Gal. v. 15, that contentions breed hurtful and pernicious effects, which tend to consumption and destruction. Now, wherein do we injure or harm our opposites in their persons, callings, places, &c.? Yet in all these, and many other things, do they wrong us, by defamation, deprivation, spoliation, incarceration, &c.? How much better were it to remove the Babylonian baggage of antichristian ceremonies, which are the mischievous means, both of the strife and of all the evil which ariseth out of it! Put away the ceremonies, cast out this Jonas, and, behold, ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... along through everybody's palms all the way, till it reaches him,—and forty cents of it gets spilt, like the water out of the fire-buckets passed along a "lane" at a fire;—but when it comes to anonymous defamation, putting lies into people's mouths, and then advertising those people through the country as the authors of them,—oh, then it is that they let not their left hand know ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... defamation and libel are, very justly, liable both to *criminal prosecution*, as offences against the public, and to *action for damages* by civil process, on the obvious ground that the injury of a man's character ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody |
