"Discredited" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... offered the leadership of the attack on Minorca (April 1756), and that he declined, saying, 'The English will do me justice, if they think fit, but I will no longer serve as a mere scarecrow' (epouvantail). In January 1756, however, Knyphausen, writing to Frederick from Paris, discredited the idea that France meant ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... given. The most ambitious moment of her artist-life seemed to have arrived at last. If she attained success, the crown was set on all the previous triumphs of her art; if failure were the issue, she would return to America discredited, if not disgraced, as an actress. The very crisis of her stage-life had come now in earnest. It found her despondent, almost despairing; at the last moment she was ready to draw back. She had then ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... adopted by the syndicalists a quarter of a century later. Nevertheless, one cannot escape the thought that Bakounin's advocacy of a purely economic struggle was only a last desperate effort on his part to discover some method of action, aside from his now discredited riots and insurrections, that could serve as an effective substitute for political action. In reality, Bakounin found himself in a vicious circle. Again and again he tried to find his way out, but invariably he returned ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... of natives in their vivid colours, which seem so atune with all that has to do with love, mattered not at all; but Leonie turned and pointed casually to the Devil, enjoying his matutinal bath, as the boy flung himself from the discredited polo pony on which he had ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... curse of war came home to roost. Henry V's abler but less brilliant brother, Bedford, stemmed till his death the rising tide of English faction and French patriotism. Then the expulsion of the English from France began, and a long tale of failure discredited the government. The nation had spirit enough to resent defeat, but not the means to avoid it; and strife between the peace party and the war party in the government resolved itself into a faction ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... up a pilot outside the Lewes breakwater a man of few words. I told him only the outlines of our story, and I believe he half discredited me at first. God knows, I was not a creditable object. When I took him aft and showed him the jolly-boat, he realized, at last, that he was face to face with a great tragedy, and paid it the tribute of throwing away ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... said firmly, "you have the strength of our house. Perhaps it might be well if he could be induced to produce the Eagle and be thus discredited in the eyes of his comrades. It would tend to make my authority more secure. It would be to the ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... believe me—what I want is to convince the Grand Jury! I oughtn't to have come to a man who knows me—your cursed incredulity is infectious. I don't put my case well, because I know in advance it's discredited, and I almost end by not believing it myself. That's why I can't convince YOU. It's a vicious circle." He laid a hand on Denver's arm. "Send a stenographer, and put my ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... first discredited, has since been corroborated by the discovery of a completely petrified forest, near the head waters of the Cheyenne, or Chienne river, which has its source in the Black Hills of the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... insolence which, at first, characterised a large proportion of the attacks with which he was assailed, is no longer the sad distinction of anti-Darwinian criticism. Instead of abusive nonsense, which merely discredited its writers, we read essays, which are, at worst, more or less intelligent and appreciative; while, sometimes, like that which appeared in the "North British Review" for 1867, they have ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... projector were a Catholic, and, on being answered in the negative, to have declined having anything to do with him. [This anecdote, which is related in the correspondence of Madame de Baviere, Duchess of Orleans, and mother of the Regent, is discredited by Lord John Russell, in his "History of the principal States of Europe, from the Peace of Utrecht;" for what reason he does not inform us. There is no doubt that Law proposed his scheme to Desmarets, and that Louis refused to hear of it. The reason given for the refusal is ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... his sweetheart which drove it from his mind. Clara had been kind to him the night before,—whatever her motive, she had been kind, and could not consistently return to her attitude of coldness. With Delamere hopelessly discredited, Ellis hoped to have at least fair play,—with fair play, he would take his chances ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... knows anything of what is passing in the world, is looking to be told on what evidence the New Testament claims to be received. The state of opinion proves of itself that the arguments hitherto offered produce no conviction. Every other miraculous history is discredited as legend, however exalted the authority on which it seems to be rested. We crave to have good reason shown us for maintaining still the one great exception. Hard worked in other professions, and snatching with difficulty sufficient leisure to learn how complicated is the problem, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... maintained? M. Muratori, in that part where he treats of imagination, places the tales on this subject in the same line with what is said of the witches' sabbath; and he says[700] "that these extravagant opinions are at this day so discredited, that it is only the rudest and most ignorant who suffer themselves to be amused by them." One of my friends made me laugh the other day, when, speaking of the pretended incubuses, he said that those who believed in them were not ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... to clear your mind of foolishness," I answered hotly, for it stung me to the soul to be branded thus a liar, to have my word discredited by that of a ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... way associated with the name of Ignatius seems to have a wonderful fascination for the learned prelate. Not content with publishing and commending what he considers the genuine productions of the apostolic Father, he here edits and annotates letters which have long since been discredited by scholars of all classes, and which he himself confesses to be apocryphal. The Acts of Martyrdom of Ignatius—which he also acknowledges to be a mere bundle of fables—he treats with the same tender regard. Nor is ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... duty, and ability to judge for themselves in matters for which a life-time of specialization were barely sufficient. A congeries of dogmatic assertions and negations raked together from the chief writers of a decadent school, discredited twenty years ago by all men of thought, Christian or otherwise; a show of logical order and reasoning which evades our grasp the instant we try to lay critical hands on it; a profuse expression of disinterested devotion to abstract truth, an occasional bow to conventional ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... venture to affirm that there is no explanation which does justice to these two sides of Christ's consciousness—the one all divine and authoritative and lofty, and the other all lowly and identifying Himself with petitioners and suppliants everywhere—except the old-fashioned and to-day discredited belief that He is 'God manifest in the flesh,' who prays in His Manhood and hears prayer in His Divinity. The bare humanistic view which emphasises such utterances as these of my text does not, for the life of it, know what to do with the other ones, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... which, old and insulated, I did not think important enough to mention at the time I received it. You will remember, Sir, that during the late war, the British papers often gave details of a rebellion in Peru. The character of those papers discredited the information. But the truth was, that the insurrections were so general, that the event was long on the poise. Had Commodore Johnson, then expected on that coast, touched and landed there two thousand men, the dominion of Spain in that country would have been at an end. They only wanted ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... of Harvey's influence is noticeable. The letters, from one of which the above doom is quoted, enlighten us also as to a grand scheme entertained at this time for forcing the English tongue to conform to the metrical rules of the classical languages. Already in a certain circle rime was discredited as being, to use Milton's words nearly a century afterwards, 'no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age to set off wretched matter and lame metre.' ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... confession to Portia until he had told Loring; and in making it he did not tell Miss Van Brock to whom he owed the sudden change in the point of view. But Portia would have greatly discredited her gift of insight if she had not instantly reduced the problem to its ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... the Beaconsfield Administration was deeply discredited. The year had opened with the disaster in the Zulu War at Isandhlwana; in September came the tragedy at Kabul, when Sir Louis Cavagnari and his staff were slain by a sudden uprising of the tribesmen; and though Sir Frederick Roberts fought his way into the Afghan capital on October 12th, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... what she was, she merely strove to effect the same end by a method not punishable by law, in short, by murdering her reputation. Would she be responsible if her sister went wrong, and was thus utterly discredited in the eyes of this man who wished to marry her, and whom Elizabeth wished to marry? Of course not; that was Beatrice's affair. But she could give her every chance of falling into temptation, and this it was ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... situation, and until Wednesday in Whit week it was the only situation the American people had realised. It was then they heard for the first time of the real scale of the Dornhof aeronautic park and the possibility of an attack coming upon them not only by sea, but by the air. But it is curious that so discredited were the newspapers of that period that a large majority of New Yorkers, for example, did not believe the most copious and circumstantial accounts of the German air-fleet until it was actually in sight of ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... the flies, that, before a storm, sting more sharply than at any other time. The two horses belonging to the escort were some fifty paces to the left. It was as though they appreciated the position of affairs, and declined to mix with the animals of the discredited Englishman. ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... Moggridge (page 5) goes on: "So long as Europe was taught Natural History by southern writers the belief prevailed; but no sooner did the tide begin to turn, and the current of information to flood from north to south, than the story became discredited." ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... bankruptcy; the great and oppressive evil of my heart is removed; I ought, I admit, to have known that admirable girl better than to suffer any suspicion of; her to have-entered into my heart; but, then, I must have discredited my own eyes—and so I ought. God bless you, Poll! I forgive you all that you and those malignant villains have made me suffer, in consequence of what you have ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... one of those instincts of justice that lie deep in human hearts, though in ordinary moments overlaid by many a worldly layer, all felt (all mothers felt especially) that innocence alone could have been so unprepared for reproach. The explanation I had previously given, discredited then, was now accepted without a question. Lilian's present state accounted for all that ill nature had before misconstrued. Her good name was restored to its maiden whiteness, by the fate that had severed the ties of the bride. The formal dwellers on the Hill vied with the franker, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Rowland," he asked, quietly, "that you will stand alone—that you will be discredited, lose ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... He therefore kept his suspicions to himself. Had he said that the giraffes could not have knocked down the stockade without his hearing them, he would have been told that he was too drunk to hear anything, and his testimony discredited. He ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... it my faith. I shall not insist upon its efficacy in discovering the concealment of stolen goods, the boundary-stones of fields, the traces of robbers and murderers, or even the existence of subterraneous springs and streams of water; albeit, I think these properties not easily to be discredited; but of its potency in discovering vein of precious metal, and hidden sums of money and jewels, I have not the least doubt. Some said that the rod turned only in the hands of persons who had been born ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... conquer prejudice. HE spoke of my beauty, my grace, my sweetness! I looked into his eyes and believed him. And yet he left me without a word! What would I do in Clarence now? I came away engaged to be married, with even the day set; I should go back forsaken and discredited; even ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... and again Mr. Medhurst (Foreigner in Far Cathay), have discredited the great prevalence of infant exposure in China; but since the last work was published, I have seen the translation of a recent strong remonstrance against the practice by a Chinese writer, which certainly implied that it was very prevalent in ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... a shrewd man, and, understanding his fellow-men in their mental as well as their physical natures, knew very well that such a story, if it were not entirely discredited, would be at any rate doubted and caviled at. The general opinion would be that there was some truth in it, but not much. He was a sensitive man, disliking and dreading ridicule, and he came to the conclusion that no possible good could result from his publishing the story. He did not ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... met. But he remembered her ancestry, especially her mother, and her creed, which was the opposite of his, and he knew that either she would not marry him because he was the chief opponent of her cause, or if he succeeded in winning her, he would most likely be discredited at Court by this suspicious marriage. It was better not to see her, or to run any further risks. He had made many sacrifices—all his life was to be sacrificed for his cause—and this would only be one more. He tried ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... for work and lack of energy, while ridicule has concealed the misuse. This much-discussed question has met with the same fate as certain panaceas and specifies of the quacks who by ascribing to them impossible virtues have discredited them. In the Middle Ages, and even in some Catholic countries now, the devil is blamed for everything that superstitious folk cannot understand or the perversity of mankind is loath to confess. In the Philippines one's ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... hardly fit for the mouth of a gentleman, the witnesses—that is another term—that I had sent for up from Melcombe Regis, and relied upon for clearing up my character, by disclosing my real name, John Pendulous—so discredited the cause which they came to serve, that it had quite a contrary effect to what was intended. In short, the usual forms passed, and you behold me here the miserablest ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Motion discredited, motion gone, all was gone that belonged to an outward and concrete experience, thus securing exclusive validity to the sort of knowledge, if knowledge it is to be called, which corresponds to the "Pure Being," that after all ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... measurable reach. Ten years appeared nothing beside the twenty which only a few months back had divided them. If he could but postpone his majority another year! Then came the miserable doubt about Ratman. If, after all, his unlikely, discredited story should prove to have a grain of truth at the bottom of it! But he dismissed ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... forest. Peer deserts her and roams the world, where he finds his theory of Self upset by one adventure after another and at last reduced to absurdity in the madhouse at Cairo. But though his own theory is discredited, he has not yet found the true one. To find this he must be brought face to face in the last scene with his deserted wife. There, for the first time, he asks the question and receives the answer. "Where," he asks, "has Peer Gynt's true self ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... final 3 years of my Administration, I urge the Congress to join me in mounting a major new effort to replace the discredited present welfare system with one that works, one that is fair to those who need help or cannot help themselves, fair to the community, and fair to the taxpayer. And let us have as our goal that there will be no Government program which ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Richard Nixon • Richard Nixon
... terrorism that it has had to bear during the war. Permanent peace will follow the establishment of a Republic. But the German people will not overthrow the present government until the leaders are defeated and discredited. Today the Reichstag Constitutional committee, headed by Herr Scheidemann, is preparing reforms in the organic law but so far all proposals are mere makeshifts. The world cannot afford to consider peace with Germany until the people rule. The sooner ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... same glands in non-alcoholics who had died of various chronic diseases, such as tuberculosis, he found no such condition. His conclusion is that the reproductive glands are more sensitive to the effects of alcohol than any other organ. So far as is known to us, his results have never been discredited; they have, on the contrary, been confirmed by other investigators. They are of great significance to eugenics, in showing how the action of natural selection to purge the race of drunkards is sometimes facilitated ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... the same authority, was the first Thessalian bishop who had insisted on the married clergy putting away their wives, which may probably have tended to make him unpopular: but the story of his deposition, it should be observed, rests solely on the statement of Nicephorus, and is discredited by Bayle and Huet, who argue that the silence of Socrates (Ecclesiast. Hist. v. chap. 22.) in the passage where he expressly assigns the authorship of the "Ethiopics" to the Bishop Heliodorus, more than counterbalances the unsupported ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... of the last representatives of that great and beautiful thing, Service; giving to that often discredited word its original meaning, the relation between feudal lord and servitor. That relation, only to be found in some out-of-the-way province, or among a few old servants of the King, did honor alike to a noblesse that could call forth such affection, and to a bourgeoisie that could conceive it. Such ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... forgotten all about his weak heart; the dash he made out of that right-of-way, across the street, down a second right-of-way, and into a public garden, would not have discredited a trained pedestrian. An hour later Mr. Crips was seated in a secluded spot on the river bank, taking stock. He possessed one very second-hand black bag and four dozen four-ounce bottles. The Kid's intention in the first place had been to dispose of the ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... "That tale about an Ankorbadian fleet build-up has been discredited a full thousand times. When they pried that crazy scout out of his ship, he was an hour away from the crematorium. You try spending forty-six days in space without food or water sometime! You'll see hidden arsenals of alien ships ...
— Unspecialist • Murray F. Yaco
... reason than that he bore the name of Gladstone. For European conservatives read the letters with disgust and apprehension. People like Madame de Lieven pronounced Mr. Gladstone the dupe of men less honest than himself, and declared that he had injured the good cause and discredited his own fame, besides doing Lord Aberdeen the wrong of setting his name at the head of a detestable libel. The illustrious Guizot wrote Mr. Gladstone a long letter expressing, with much courtesy and kindness, his regret at the publication. Nothing ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Cana appears very seldom in the ancient representations taken from the Gospel. All the monkish institutions then prevalent discredited marriage; and it is clear that this distinct consecration of the rite by the presence of the Saviour and his mother did not find favour with the ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... man using your map happens to strike the faked portion, he immediately condemns your whole map as incorrect. Every other part may be highly accurate, but your whole map is discredited because the user strikes the bad part first. You will naturally put little faith in the man who has told you something you know to be untrue. You will always suspect him. So it is with maps. Don't put down anything that you don't know to ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... warns us is as dangerous as ever; we may even live to see some new "Brethren of the Free Spirit" turning their liberty into a cloak of licentiousness. If so, the world will soon whistle back the disciplinarian with his traditions of the elders; prophesying will once more be suppressed and discredited, and a new crystallising process will begin. But before that time comes some changes may possibly take place in the external proportions of Christian orthodoxy. The appearance of a vigorous body of faith, standing firmly on its ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... a sober, reflective turning of the mind, had been so overcharged with the dramatic that sober, reflective people could hardly use the expression any more. Repentance had come to have so strong a gloss of the hysterical as to be almost discredited by men of common sense. It was a relief, therefore, to remember that it implied no more than a turning to God by a process of thought; and that a process of thought would ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... in the general government, but must henceforth be held as conquered territory,—a most dangerous experiment for any free people to try. Yet within a dozen years we find the old federal relations resumed in all their completeness, and the disunion party powerless and discredited in the very states where once it had wrought such mischief. Nay more, we even see a curiously disputed presidential election, in which the votes of the southern states were given almost with unanimity to one of the candidates, decided quietly by ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... tried to give a quasi-scientific definition of their meaning. It is common enough for people to argue sensibly, when the explicit statements of their argument may be altogether erroneous. At any rate, I think it has been a misfortune that a good phrase has been discredited; and that Mill's assailants, in exposing the errors of that particular theory of a "wage fund," seemed to imply that the whole conception of a "wage fund" was a mistake. For the result has been, that the popular mind seems to regard the amount spent ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... doctor paused, glancing with a vague smile towards the woman who stood beside them. "Or even nurse—" he added, not troubling to finish his sentence. "We all have our moments of expansiveness. And it is a story that might easily be—discredited." ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... knew, oh, if you knew against what odds I fought even to get that! They knew that they had got me down; and the only card left me at last was their own reluctance to let a discredited President go back to his own people and show them his empty hands, and tell them that he had failed. So a bargain was struck, and this one thing was given me, that peradventure it might have life—if ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... which Southey once remarked to me, that, if it had been differently named (as, suppose, a mer-ape,) nobody would have questioned its existence any more than that of sea-cows, sea-lions, &c. The mermaid has been discredited by her human name and her legendary human habits. If she would not coquette so much with melancholy sailors, and brush her hair so assiduously upon solitary rocks, she would be carried on our books for as honest a reality, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... of Jonah and the whale, as well as the tale of Noah's ark[2] both of which are now generally discredited. Moreover, his prophecy regarding his entombment was inaccurate, for he was only two nights and one day in the heart of the earth, from Friday night to ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... illustration of the implacability which pursued him I may mention that among many leading Republicans to whom I related the incident most of them discredited his sincerity, one of them—a man of national importance—expressing the opinion that all along he was artfully playing for the nomination. This I do not believe. Perhaps he was never quite fixed in his mind. The presidency is a wondrous lure. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... through generations till the real interests at issue were confounded in blind animosity of neighbor against neighbor—was the sense of humor and of sarcasm they encouraged. To hurl dead donkey against your enemy's town-wall passed for a good joke, and discredited his honor more than the loss of a hundred fighting men in a pitched battle. Frontier fortresses received insulting names, like the Perugian Becca di questo, or like the Bolognese Grevalcore. There was much, in fact, in these Italian wars which reminds one ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... this religion seems to him discreditable—discredited—not believing in itself; putting forth its authority in a cowardly way, watching how far it might be tolerated, continually shrinking, disclaiming, fencing, finessing; divided against itself, not by stormy rents, but by thin fissures, and splittings ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... triumph of democracy the old man was finally banished to the limbo of discredited things. Montesquieu's advice was quite forgotten (see the context Laws, v, 8). He said that in a democracy "nothing kept the standard of morals so high as that young men should venerate the old. Both profit by it, the young because they respect the old, and the old because ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... it that there were very valid reasons, both of a personal and political nature, for holding it back. The facts were well known to a good number of people at the time, and some version of them did actually appear in a provincial paper, but was generally discredited They have now been thrown into narrative form, the incidents having been collated from the sworn statements of Colonel Cochrane Cochrane, of the Army and Navy Club, and from the letters of Miss Adams, of Boston, Mass. These have been supplemented by the ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... eye of a severe and unremitting vigilance, shame and destruction must ensue. For one, the worst event of this day, though it may deject, shall not break or subdue me. The call upon us is authoritative. Let who will shrink back, I shall be found at my post. Baffled, discountenanced, subdued, discredited, as the cause of justice and humanity is, it will be only the dearer to me. Whoever, therefore, shall at any time bring before you anything towards the relief of our distressed fellow-citizens in India, and towards a subversion of the present most ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... assistance of Merlin, who had accompanied the expedition, the wonderful stones were conveyed to Salisbury, and, by order of Ambrosius, placed over the graves of the British lords. These gravestones are what are now called Stonehenge. Such stories, as may be expected, are discredited by historians, but our best antiquaries disagree as to the origin ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... dancing eyes. There was an air at once deprecatory and insinuating about the rascal that I thought I recognised. There came to me from my own boyhood memories of certain passionate admirations long passed away, and the objects of them long ago discredited or dead. I remembered how anxious I had been to serve those fleeting heroes, how readily I told myself I would have died for THEM, how much greater and handsomer than life they had appeared. And looking in the mirror, it seemed to me that I read the face ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... literature, like laws and institutions, are an expression of society and therefore inextricably linked with the other elements of social development—a theory, it may be observed, which while it has discredited the habit of considering works of art in a vacuum, dateless and detached, as they were generally considered by critics of the seventeenth century, leaves the aesthetic problem ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... and took the birds, but the second one soon died. The fact of species of Mygale sallying forth at night, mounting trees, and sucking the eggs and young of hummingbirds, has been recorded long ago by Madame Merian and Palisot de Beauvois; but, in the absence of any confirmation, it has come to be discredited. From the way the fact has been related, it would appear that it had been merely derived from the report of natives, and had not been witnessed by the narrators. Count Langsdorff, in his Expedition into the Interior of Brazil, states that he totally ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... please, for your instruction." And at the end we find him again admonishing the scribes to use the pen with faithfulness. "Whosoever," says he, "shall write out this book, let him write it according to the copy, and for God's love correct it, that it be not faulty, less he thereby be discredited, and I shent."[103] ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... you are my guest. Come and go when and where you will. Omar is yours so long as you stay, and when you depart in triumph, leaving me a broken, discredited wretch, I shall stand on the dock and wave you a bon voyage. Now it's bedtime for my 'boys,' since we rise at ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... that took its holiday thus in a grinding world, among maskers, to the horrification of the prim. So to refresh ourselves, by having publicly a hip-bath in the truth while we shock our hearers enough to be discredited for what we reveal, was a dexterous merry twist, amusing to her; but it was less a cynical malice than her nature that she indulged, 'A woman must have some excitement.' The most innocent appeared to her the Stock Exchange. The opinions of husbands who ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... days before he had been a trusted and respected member of the Cameron family, one of the wealthiest and most exclusive in New York. Now, discredited and in danger from the threatened exercise of a law he had not violated, he was presumably a prisoner on his way back to the Tombs. And yet, was he really on his way there? That was a question fully as puzzling as any other feature of ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Testament'), but which nevertheless, appearing useful to many, had been studied ([Greek: espoudasthe]) with the other Scriptures; (3) The Acts, Gospel, Preaching, and Apocalypse of Peter, which four works he rejects as altogether unauthenticated and discredited—he continues [37:1]:— ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... in positive terms that he was present in the room, and saw me at play. My defence availed nothing. The wretched old woman, whom I produced, as the court and jury believed, to establish my defence by perjury, was immediately discredited, and the jury returned a verdict of guilty. I was sentenced to six months' imprisonment. My feelings I ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction - Vol. X, No. 289., Saturday, December 22, 1827 • Various
... I can't bear to see godless people triumph. Because it offends me to see a man and woman, who are practically penniless through their own evil courses, and should be discredited everywhere, able to resume their life of ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... while the tinker devoured one plateful after another with a ravenous haste that almost discredited his previous restraint, Patsy spun a fanciful tale of having found a cluricaun under a quicken-tree. With great elaboration and seeming regard for the truth, she explained his magical qualities, and how—if you were clever enough to ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... ) fought at Almanza, Malplaquet, and Douay. After the duel, Maccartney escaped to Holland, but on the accession of George I. he returned to England, and was tried for murder (June 1716), when Colonel Hamilton gave evidence against him. Hamilton's evidence was discredited, and he found it necessary to sell his commission and leave the country. Maccartney was found guilty as an accessory, and "burnt" in the hand. Within a month he was given an appointment in the army; and promoted to be Lieutenant-General. He ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... succeeded in making them laugh at that which was laughable in themselves. He aimed his shafts at the fallacies and the duplicities which his countrymen ardently cherished, and he scorned the cheaper wit which contents itself with mocking at idols already discredited. As a result, he purged society, not of the follies that consumed it, but of the illusion that these follies were noble, graceful, and wise. "We do not plough or sow for fools," says a Russian proverb, "they grow of themselves"; but humour has accomplished ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... meats, and many of them much richer. It may be said in passing, that this last-mentioned bugbear of our diet-reformers is now believed to have nothing whatever to do with rheumatism, and probably very little with gout, and that the ravings of Haig and the Uric-Acid School generally are now thoroughly discredited. Certainly, whenever you see any remedy or any method of treatment vaunted as a cure for rheumatism, by neutralizing or washing out uric acid, you may safely set it down as ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... over every other signal would be a contemptible trick. Mild punishments like fines and imprisonments would be too good for the wretch who would so deliberately mislead people. Moreover a few such offenses would cause the importance of the call to be discredited so that in time nobody would be in a rush ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... the fact that none of the other Pawnees had discovered any of the seven, would have discredited the statement of Red Wolf and Lone Bear; but the two were so strenuous in their declaration that it produced the effect desired. Some of the listeners believed there was a large party of enemies at hand, and prudence demanded that their own warriors should ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... he cried. "Virginia was more grateful; from her I have some acres of wild land and—a sword." He laughed. "A sword, gentlemen, and not new at that. Oh, a grateful government we serve, one careful of the honor of her captains. Gentlemen, I stand to-day a discredited man because the honest debts I incurred in the service of that government are repudiated, because my friends who helped it, Father Gibault, Vigo, and Gratiot, and others have never been repaid. One of them ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... maketh them apt to conceiue, that whatsoeuer the words are, the finger pointeth onely at them. The last is, for that the Argument of our English historie hath been so foiled heretofore by some unworthie writers, that men of qualitie may esteeme themselues discredited ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... of Moliere's famous pieces. His undoubted connection with the stage, and the fact of the contemporary existence of a certain Timothy Fielding, helped suggestions of less dignified occupations as actor, booth-keeper, and so forth; but these have long been discredited and indeed disproved. ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... everything—could not tell her that she hated that dreadful pair at Cambridge. As we know, she had forbidden herself this emotion as regards individuals; and she flattered herself that she considered the Tarrants as a type, a deplorable one, a class that, with the public at large, discredited the cause of the new truths. She had talked them over with Miss Birdseye (Olive was always looking after her now and giving her things—the good lady appeared at this period in wonderful caps and shawls—for she felt she couldn't thank her enough), and even Doctor Prance's fellow-lodger, whose ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... maintained her impartial and judicial attitude admirably. "But even were I inclined to believe that, your whole story is discredited by the simple fact that through no combination of circumstances could this picture have come into ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... Reformed theology, while his brother-in-law, C. F. Schaeffer, who had entered 1856, was the exponent of a mild confessionalism. E. J. Wolf: "At Gettysburg, in the same building, one professor in almost every lecture disparaged and discredited the Confessions, while another one constantly inspired his students with the highest [?] veneration for them." (Lutherans, 441.) Jacobs: "The students were soon divided, but the gain was constantly upon the conservative side." (History, 427.) But while ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... was that he had almost savagely challenged some of the sordid deliberations of this stern conference. In a full-blooded and manly appeal he begged them "to get on higher ground." If he could but have heard it, it would have cheered the heart of the broken and discredited pioneer of Empire at Capetown, who had received his death-warrant, to take effect within five years, in the little cottage at Muizenberg by the sea; as great a soul in posse as ever came from the womb of the English mother; who said as he sat and watched ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Brannan as well as certain old hands resented the idea of Mr. Davies being held accountable, they had to muzzle him. Brannan declared he would warn the lieutenant the moment he returned to the troop, so they made up their minds that he must be discredited, if not ruined. Howard said that there was in his writing-case a sealed packet that contained evidence that would send him to State's prison and "kill" him in the lieutenant's eyes; and this, indeed, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... time in Italy had to perform three separate functions. His first duty was to the Church. Leo left the See of Rome worse off than he found it: financially bankrupt, compromised by vague schemes set on foot for the aggrandisement of his family, discredited by many shameless means for raising money upon spiritual securities. His second duty was to Italy. Leo left the peninsula so involved in a mesh of meaningless entanglements, diplomatic and aimless wars, that ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... is the oldest. After being for nearly half a century discredited, it has again found ardent defenders, and it may seem at first sight to be the most natural and reasonable. Arthur, if he existed at all, was undoubtedly a British hero; the British Celts, especially the Welsh, possess beyond all question strong ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... seize the five members, the effect of which was to prejudice the whole trade of the city and the kingdom. They therefore humbly desired him to take steps for the speedy relief of the Protestants in Ireland, to place the Tower in the hands of persons of trust, to remove discredited persons from Whitehall and Westminster, and not to proceed against Lord Kimbolton and the five members of the Commons otherwise than in accordance ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... struck with an idea, "will be thoroughly discredited just so soon as the new grain tariff is published. I have means of knowing that the San Joaquin rate—the issue upon which the board was elected—is not to be touched. Is it likely the ranchers would secure the election of a board that plays ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... of beginning and occasioning, Next, drawing out the war in Gallia, For which thou late triumph'st; dissembling long That Sacrovir to be an enemy, Only to make thy entertainment more. Whilst thou, and thy wife Sosia, poll'd the province: Wherein, with sordid, base desire of gain, Thou hast discredited thy actions' worth, And been a traitor to ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... de Commines is expected any moment and is to go at once to the King, who waits for him; Monsieur de Commines does not appear, but remains paying his court to the Dauphin at Amboise. The inference would be clear to all men, and Monsieur de Commines would be ruined outright and utterly discredited. Yes, Ursula de Vesc had saved ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... was confused by the rapidity with which the discredited past was re-created by Bowman's mere presence. He was at the point of refusing to fetch the beer when he saw that there was no explanation possible; they would regard him as merely crabbed, and Bella would ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... personage. The sudden revelation of his full intellectual power, and of his influence in the country, for which the general election of the preceding winter had provided the opportunity, was still an exciting memory among journalists and politicians. He had gone into the election a man slightly discredited, on whose future nobody took much trouble to speculate. He had emerged from it—after a series of speeches laying down the principles and vindicating the action of his party—one of the most important men in England, with whom Lord Parham himself must henceforth treat on quasi-equal ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fine market. The prophecy of the sibyl doth explain and lay out before us the same very predictions which have been denoted, foretold, and presaged to us by the decree of the Virgilian lots and the verdict of your own proper dreams, to wit, that you shall be very much disgraced, shamed, and discredited by your wife; for that she will make you a cuckold in prostituting herself to others, being big with child by another than you, —will steal from you a great deal of your goods, and will beat you, scratch and bruise you, even to plucking the skin in ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... obtain specie for the payment of duties and other public dues. The banks, therefore, must keep their business within prudent limits, and be always in a condition to meet such calls, or run the hazard of being compelled to suspend specie payments and be thereby discredited. The amount of specie imported into the United States during the last fiscal year was $24,121,289, of which there was retained in the country $22,276,170. Had the former financial system prevailed and the public moneys been placed on deposit in the banks, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... at St. Malo that I realized how cleverly I had been tricked. The drug had been administered to me in just sufficient dose to ensure that my brain should be affected, and that any story I might afterwards tell should be discredited. ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... behaviour of the no less infamous Apollo. But no one before Verrall had thought of coupling together the free-thinking and the episode in the play. This is what Verrall did. Ion sees that the oracle can lie, and, therefore, "Delphi is plainly discredited as a fountain of truth." The explanation is, of course, somewhat conjectural. Homer, who was certainly not a free-thinker, made his deities sufficiently ridiculous, and, at times, altogether odious. Mr. Lang says with truth: "When Homer touches ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... two fights for the people. First I left my party, bearing the gonfalon Of independence, for reform, and was defeated. Next I used my rebel strength To capture the standard of my old party— And I captured it, but I was defeated. Discredited and discarded, misanthropical, I turned to the solace of gold And I used my remnant of power To fasten myself like a saprophyte Upon the putrescent carcass Of Thomas Rhodes, bankrupt bank, As assignee of the fund. Everyone ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... reached us through the newspapers was meagre and contradictory; many people discredited it; but a letter from my mother left us no room for doubt. The sickness was in the city. The hospitals were filling up, and hundreds of the citizens were flying from the stricken place by every steamboat. The ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... enough; so that I was spared that arch-torture of thirst which seems, in the memory of such sufferers, to absorb all others. Towards evening a slight breeze sprang up, and by morning I came in sight of a vessel, which I contrived to board. Her crew, however, and even her captain, utterly discredited such part of my strange story as I told them. On that point, however, I will say no more than this: I will place this manuscript in your hands. I will give you the key to such of its ciphers as I have been able to make out. The language, I believe, for ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg |
