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Libel   /lˈaɪbəl/   Listen
Libel

verb
(past & past part. libeled or libelled; pres. part. libeling or libelling)
1.
Print slanderous statements against.



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"Libel" Quotes from Famous Books



... Vaal River Water Supply Concession, in which Mr. Kruger's son-in-law 'hawked' about for the highest bid the vote of the Executive Council on a matter which had not yet come before it, and, moreover, sold and duly delivered the aforesaid vote. There is the famous libel case in which Mr. Eugene Marais, the editor of the Dutch paper Land en Volk, successfully sustained his allegation that the President had defrauded the State by charging heavy travelling expenses for a certain trip ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... caused by these practices and their bad effect on the morality of women culminated in the great Maharaj libel suit in the Bombay High Court in 1862. Since then the objectionable features of the cult have to a large extent disappeared, while it has produced some priests of exceptional liberality and enlightenment. The tilak of the Vallabhacharyas is said ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... Court was highly displeased with his publishing a thing of that nature, in order to misrepresent the justice of their proceedings, and that they were ready to punish him for his contempt in the aforesaid publication of such a libel; Mr. Leech thought fit to prevent it by making his most humble submission, and asking pardon of the Court for his offence, assuring them that it proceeded only from inadvertency, and promising never to print anything of the like sort again. Whereupon the Court were graciously pleased to dismiss ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... Grande Fantaisie, Op. 22, and the Caprices, Op. 15 and 19, which in 1837 made its appearance in the Gazette musicale, accompanied by an editorial foot-note expressing dissent. I called Liszt's article a criticism, but "lampoon" or "libel" would have been a more appropriate designation. In the introductory part Liszt sneers at Thalberg's title of "Pianist to His Majesty the Emperor of Austria," and alludes to his rival's distant (i.e., illegitimate) relationship to a noble family, ascribing his success to a great extent ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... passage, in explanation, adds, that "Montaigne in his Essays supposes his cat thought him a fool for losing his time in playing with her;" but, under favor, this is a misinterpretation of the essayist's sentiments, and something like a libel on the capacity of both himself and cat. Montaigne's words are: "When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me? We mutually divert each other with our play. If I have my hour to begin or refuse, so also has she hers." Nobody who ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... connective tissue, that on the least provocation is liable to go off into a gangrene and drag one of the main generative, or even all the procreative, apparatus into the general wreck. Nature certainly never intended anything of the kind. To be generous, and not libel nature, we must conclude that the prepuce is a near relative to the fast-disappearing climbing-muscle; very useful in our primitive, arboreal days, when we needed such a muscle to reach our perch for the night, and ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... Call him tyrant, murderer, pirate, bully; and he will adore you, and swagger about with the consciousness of having the blood of the old sea kings in his veins. Call him liar and thief; and he will only take an action against you for libel. But call him coward; and he will go mad with rage: he will face death to outface that stinging truth. Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice. Yet ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... admitted. 'Yes.' He began to walk about the room. 'But what's the reason? Drake's action, if this statement is a libel, is the ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason

... by the mere records of his individual biography. The work abounds with piquant anecdotes of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Keats, Lamb, Hazlitt, and Moore—gives a detailed exposition of Hunt's connection with the Examiner, and his imprisonment for libel—his residence in Italy—his return to England—and his various literary projects—and describes with the most childlike frankness the present state of his opinions and feelings on the manifold questions which have given a direction to his intellectual ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... bringing to him greater personal freedom of thought and speech, came the most active period of Evelyn's literary production. His loyalty at once found opportunity to answer a libel on King Charles (entitled News from Brussels) in The late News from Brussels unmasked, a long vindication of his Majesty from the calumnies and scandal therein fixed on him. From a literary and antiquarian point of view, however, far greater interest attaches to a much ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... exaggerated with a malignant licence, which makes a young and beautiful woman an epitome of all the vices, uniting the extreme of masculine profligacy with the extreme of feminine silliness. Will you encourage by your presence the wretches who libel your sex? Will you sit smiling to see your sisters ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... industry, and dependence upon Heaven there seems to be none."[293] Such was his private experience; and facts of public notoriety are appealed to in confirmation: "It has long seemed to me the most serious libel on the character of the Deity to assume for one moment that he interferes in human exigencies. A mountain of desolating facts rises up to shame into silence the hazardous supposition? Was not the whole land a short time ago convulsed ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... established by force, is of itself an evidence against its Christian principle. A religion which consists in the eternal repetition of prescribed prayers, which forbids every innocent pleasure, and cramps or annihilates every mental power, is a libel on the Divine Founder of Christianity, the benign Friend of human-kind. It is true, that the religion of the Missionaries has, with a great deal of evil, effected some good. It has abolished heathen superstitions, and an irrational ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue

... repentance public and deep such as he manifested at Nathan's rebuke. Least to his credit was his weakness in relation to his sons and to Joab. On the other hand, the testament attributed to him in 1Kings ii. cannot be justly laid to his charge; it is the libel of a later hand seeking to invest him with a fictitious glory. In like manner it is unjust to hold him responsible for the deaths of Abner and Amasa, or to attribute to him any conspiracy with the hierocracy for the destruction of Saul, and thus to deprive ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... rid of the belief in chance and the disbelief in design, as in no sense appurtenances of Evolution, the third libel upon that doctrine, that it is anti-theistic, might perhaps be left to shift for itself. But the persistence with which many people refuse to draw the plainest consequences from the propositions they profess to accept, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... told the agent quite frankly what he, Peters, thought of the railway, its officers, legal department, road-bed, rolling-stock and claims department; especially claims department! Undoubtedly the company had grounds for libel after the receipt of that epistle, but it ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour

... believed that a clash between the two classes of society was inevitable, and he eagerly ranged himself on the people's side. He had an idea of publishing a series of poems adapted expressly to commemorate their circumstances and wrongs. He wrote a few; but, in those days of prosecution for libel, they could not be printed. They are not among the best of his productions, a writer being always shackled when he endeavours to write down to the comprehension of those who could not understand or feel a highly imaginative ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley

... be sure," he added regretfully, "what our readers most like is personalities! If we dared to slate old Crood with all the abuse we could lay our pens to, the readers of the Monitor, sir, would hug themselves with pleasure. But libel, Mr. Brent, libel! Do you know, sir, that ever since I occupied the editorial chair of state I have always felt that the wet blanket of the law of libel sat at my banquet like the ghost in Macbeth, letting its sword hang by a thread an inch from my cranium! ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... Lothario is fortunate in having so competent and experienced a champion. However, we cannot wholly endorse the sentiments of these excellent writers. The statement that "all amateur journalists are flirts, more or less", is a base and unwarranted libel which we are ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... Christian?—Let the answer be yes—as good a Christian as ever kneeled in the small mountain chapel, in whose churchyard her body now waits for the resurrection. If she was—then the picture painted of her and her agonies, is a libel not only on her character, but on the character of all other poor Christian women in this Christian land. Placed as she was, for so many years, in the clutches of so many passions—she surely must have turned sometimes—ay, often, and often, and often, else had she sooner left the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... cultivated masses know anything of Russian artists, sculptors, and literary men? Some old literary hack, hard-working and talented, will wear away the doorstep of the publishers' offices for thirty-three years, cover reams of paper, be had up for libel twenty times, and yet not step beyond his ant-heap. Can you mention to me a single representative of our literature who would have become celebrated if the rumor had not been spread over the earth that he had been killed in a duel, gone out of his ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... given it in the belief that Dare, from his answers to her questions, had never been married to the woman at all, in the belief that she was a mere adventuress seeking to make money out of him by threatening a scandalous libel, and without the faintest suspicion that she was his divorced wife, whether legally ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... are precisely to belabour every act or opinion of which you disapprove, in the form of some one man. You pride yourself, in fact, on giving personal blows, instead of general and theoretical admonitions; and even here you seem incapable of hitting fair; you libel where you cannot honestly convict, and do not care how ignoble or how irrelevant the libel may be. Does the poet deserve criticism as such? Does he write bad verse, does he inculcate foul deeds? The cry is, 'he cannot read ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... Isabel. "At times one has to be—Napoleonic. They want to libel me, Mr. Remington. A political worker can't always be in time for meals, can she? At times one has to ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... was never blamed for any of these things by the Censor. Such censures as the attitude of that official involves may be dismissed with a very light sort of disdain. To represent Shaw as profane or provocatively indecent is not a matter for discussion at all; it is a disgusting criminal libel upon a particularly respectable gentleman of the middle classes, of refined tastes and somewhat Puritanical views. But while the negative defence of Shaw is easy, the just praise of him is almost as complex as it is necessary; and I shall ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... of a fresh libel, in and upon this Court and palace; a commodity I have in my nature no inclination at all to vent, either by wholesale or retail; yet is this fit also, in my humble judgment, for persons of great nearness to his Majesty ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe

... "and if I knew who the man was, I'd have him up for libel I reckon. I may or may not agree about the damn birds, but I wouldn't have made a policeman my fast friend in this place if I weren't a straight man, and I'm a good bit surprised, Joseph, that you thought ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... its content. Tityrus and Mopsus are alternately lovers, courtiers and spiritual pastors; Pan, when he does not conceal under his shaggy outside the costly robes of a prince, is a strange abortive monster, drawing his attributes in part from pagan superstition, in part from Christian piety; a libel upon both. The seed sown by Petrarch and Boccaccio bore fruit only too freely. The writers of eclogues, either debarred from or incapable of originality, sought distinction by ever more and more elaborate and involved allusions; and their works, in their own day held ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... right has any man among you, or any association of men (to come nearer to you) who, out of Parliament cannot be consider'd in a public capacity, to meet, as you daily do, in factious clubs, to vilify the Government in your discourses, and to libel it in all your writings? Who made you judges in Israel? Or how is it consistent with your zeal for the public welfare, to promote sedition? Does your definition of loyal, which is to serve the King according to the laws, allow you the licence of traducing ...
— English Satires • Various

... "Here is libel on a large scale, and I have purposely refrained from approaching it until I could show my readers something of the spirit in which the whole attack is conceived. 'If he wanted a thing he went after it with an entire contempt for consequences. For these, indeed, the Shorter Catechist was ever prepared ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... breakfast I read the newspaper, and in it a letter, which, the further I perused it, the more closely engaged my attention. I cannot now recollect the purport of it; but before I had finished it, it appeared demonstratively true to me that it was a libel or satire upon me. The author appeared to be acquainted with my purpose of self-destruction, and to have written that letter on purpose to secure and hasten the execution of it. My mind, probably, at this time began to be disordered; however it was, I was certainly given ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... ought to be sued for libel. By the way, did you know he has been having his professional eye ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... that's enough. The Harpoon, like lots of other newspapers, has its social column, and in that column, no doubt, a paragraph like this one about Stella would have a certain sensational value. But supposing it wasn't true! A libel action follows, follows inevitably. A great deal would be said about the unscrupulous recklessness involved; the judge would come down like a cartload of bricks and the paper would get badly stung. No editor of any reliable paper would run ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason

... think Dr. Jewett is extremely foolish. I did not say that I would commence suit against a minister for libel. I can hardly conceive of a proceeding that would be less liable to produce a dividend. The fact about it is, that the Rev. Mr. Jewett seems to think anything true that he hears against me. Mr. Jewett is probably ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... started upon liberal principles. Bate immediately ranged himself upon the side of the Prince of Wales and his party, and thus his fortunes were secured. In 1781 his paper sustained a prosecution, and the printer was sentenced to pay a fine of L100, and to undergo one year's imprisonment, for a libel upon the Russian ambassador. For this same libel the printers and publishers of The London Courant, The Noon Gazette, The Gazetteer, The Whitehall Evening Journal, The St. James's Chronicle, and The Middlesex Journal received various sentences of fine ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... controlled the whole city and nearly all of Italy." We have not all the documents bearing on the case, but from the statements of witnesses for the accused it appears that she had grounds for bringing a suit for libel.[239] ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... soon unearthed and publicly burnt a libel against their Order belonging to some of the traders. Their strength was soon increased. The Fathers Noirot and De la Noue landed, with twenty laborers, and the Jesuits were no longer houseless. Brebeuf set ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... You may just as well understand it at once as not. Here you are my man, and I'll tell you why! Months ago you put your property out of your hands, boasting that you did so to escape losing it on prosecution for libel." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... unfavourable character of a servant, even though it be in writing. Communications of this nature, in answer to inquiries, are considered privileged. But if it can be proved that an employer has given a false character from motives of malice, then an action for libel will lie against him; but the representations must be proved to be ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... essential to social order, and that this will be swept away by calling forth energy of thought in all men. This objection, indeed, though exceedingly insisted on in Europe, has nearly died out here; but still enough of it lingers among us to deserve consideration. I reply, then, that it is a libel on social order to suppose that it requires for its support the reduction of the multitude of human beings to ignorance and servility; and that it is a libel on the Creator to suppose that he requires, as the foundation ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... any—this unpleasant duty of mine that still sticks in my throat like funeral-cake was partly forced by consideration for another lady—the sweetest and the best—who would be the last I should care to have hear any ill of me, even in a libel." ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... Pinckney; "he went clean mad for the moment. Then there's the fact that I struck him. No, taking everything into consideration, we'll let it be. I don't feel any animosity against him, not half as much as if he'd stabbed me behind the back with a libel— He did tell a lie about me to-night but it was the stupid sort of lie a child might have told. The man has his good points as well as his bad and I don't want to ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... necessary to advert to a paragraph which appeared in a paper in the minority interest some time before this debate. "A very dark intrigue has lately been discovered, the authors of which are well known to us; but until the glorious day shall come when it will not be a LIBEL to tell the TRUTH, we must not be so regardless of our own safety as to publish their names. We will, however, state the fact, leaving it to the ingenuity of our readers to discover what ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Department. This correspondence was published, and the mass of the people were at last aroused, and turned from Genet in disgust. The leaders tried vainly to separate the minister from his country, and Genet himself frothed and foamed, demanded that Randolph should sue Jay and King for libel, and declared that America was no longer free. This sad statement had little effect. Washington had triumphed completely, and without haste but with perfect firmness had brought the people round to his side as that of the national ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge

... was renowned as an art critic; but his theories were strongly opposed and he was continually in hot water. In his zeal to defend Turner or Millais or Burne-Jones he was rather slashing in his criticism of other artists. The libel suit brought against him by Whistler, whom he described as a coxcomb who flung a pot of paint in the face of the public, is still talked about in England. The jury (fancy a jury wrestling with a question of art!) found Ruskin guilty, and decided that he should pay for the artist's damaged reputation ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... expression to describe a man in a state of ebriety, that "he is as drunk as a beast," or that "he is beastly drunk." This is a libel on the brutes, for the vice of ebriety is perfectly human. I think the phrase is peculiar to ourselves: and I imagine I have discovered its origin. When ebriety became first prevalent in our nation, during the reign of Elizabeth, it was a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... "how dare she? But that she is dead, as Juliet told me, I would have her up for libel. Maraquito herself killed the woman. I am sure ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume

... the doctor called malnutrition—plain starvation. Smith filed suit and openly stated that the lawyers of the corporation were responsible for the death of the child. The indignation of the business and professional element blazed to white heat. A suit for libel and disbarment proceedings were started against him. Nothing could be done in this direction as Smith had not only justice but the law on his side. His enemies were waiting with great impatience for a more favorable opportunity to strike him down. Open threats were beginning ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin

... years intervening between 1815 and 1830 were therefore a period of constant bitterness and contention between the higher and the lower classes. Mass meetings which were called by the popular leaders were dissolved by the government, radical writers were prosecuted by the government for libel, the habeas corpus act was suspended repeatedly, and threatened rioting was met with severe measures. The actions of the ministers, while upheld by the higher classes, were bitterly attacked by others ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... some one privily threw down a bitter libel near the standard of the Petulantes legion, which, among other things, contained these words,—"We are being driven to the farthest parts of the earth like condemned criminals, and our relations will become slaves to the Allemanni after we ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... damage to another obliged the wrongdoer to make reparation, and this responsibility extended to damages arising not only from positive acts, but from negligence or imprudence. In an action of libel or slander, the truth of the allegation might be pleaded in justification. [Footnote: D. 47, 10, 18.] In all cases it was necessary to show that an injury had been committed maliciously. But if damage arose in the exercise ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... cruel thing to do, but we had to do it. For ours is ordinarily a quiet office. We have never had a libel suit. We have had fewer fights than most newspaper offices have, and while it hardly may be said that we strive to please, still in the main we try to get on with the people, and tell them as much truth as they are entitled ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... man Allison prided himself on never having involved any of his papers in a libel suit, though he was usually the man who wrote the "danger-stuff." He had complaints, yes; libel suits, no. Dick Ryan, known in prehistoric newspaper circles in Louisville as "Cold Steel," because his mild blue eyes hardened and glinted when his copy was cut—the typical police court reporter ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock

... name of patron, we all know of the reverence he felt in the presence of the king. Divine Right and non-resistance were dead, but they had not died without a struggle. Freedom of the press and legal equality may have been obtained; but it was not until the passage of Fox's Libel Act that the first became secure, and Mr. and Mrs. Hammond have recently illumined for us the inward meaning of the second. The populace might, on occasion, be strong enough to force the elder Pitt upon an unwilling king, or to shout for Wilkes and liberty against ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... were assoiled of the charges against them. Their hands, then—unless the present ruddying of female fingernails is the revival of an old fashion—were not pink-tipped, save, perhaps, in the way of health; nor imbrued, except in soapsuds. My proposed facetiousness put me in peril of libel. ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... all of us, have been too excited, too frightened, to understand the relation between the bad management of the water-works, the bad water, and the fever. Tell them that relation. Only tell it carefully, by insinuation if necessary, so that you will avoid the libel law—for you have no proof as yet. Make them understand that the fever is due to bad water, which in turn is due to bad management of the water-works, which in turn is due to ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott

... Daisy, as I don't want to figure in a libel action; but I should like to know why Miss Whichello went to the dead-house to ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... called specially his chaplain, giveth him a brace of dogs. These be trim things for prelates to give or receive; especially of them to make such account as to print them among such special prerogatives." Sign. D. iiij. v. Yet even to this libel was affixed the following epitaph upon Parker; which shews that truth "is great, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... who for two years had ruled the destinies of France as sovereign master. What means were not employed to mislead the opinion of the public respecting Moreau? The police published pamphlets of all sorts, and the Comte de Montgaillard was brought from Lyons to draw up a libel implicating him with Pichegru and the exiled Princes. But nothing that was done produced the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... these celebrated Authors, and publish a Paper which shall be more taking than ordinary, I have here drawn up a very curious Libel, in which a Reader of Penetration will find a great deal of concealed Satyr, and if he be acquainted with the present Posture of Affairs, will easily discover the Meaning ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... the calculatingly outrageous treatment of the coloured races of South Africa by the Boer section of that community is mainly due from the sanction it receives from the Dutch Reformed Church. If the predikants of the Dutch Reformed Church would but tell their congregations that it was gross libel on the Christian faith, which they profess, to treat human beings as they treat those with loathsome disease — except when it is desired to exploit the benefits, such as their taxes and their labour which these outraged human beings confer upon the ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... the Archbishop of Canterbury, Canning, and Dr. Keate. Hatchard is the Godly Bookseller of Beloe; he was a Conservative, dressed like a bishop, and published for Hannah More and the Evangelicals. Zachary Macaulay, Wilberforce, and the other opponents of slavery, once involved Hatchard in a libel action, in which he was found guilty. Hatchard published for Crabbe and for Tupper, and, according to Mr. Humphreys' interesting 'Piccadilly Bookmen,' Liston, Charles Kemble, and other actors, frequented the shop. So did the Duke of Wellington, who, ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts

... Everything's wrong! There are lots of people about with red whiskers and low receding foreheads, and they'll all bring actions of libel. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various

... a libel to call this beautiful creature a hyena. He has neither the ugly form, the harsh pelage, the dull colour, nor the filthy habits of one. Call him a "wolf," or "wild dog," if you please, but he is at the same time the handsomest wolf or wild dog in creation. But we shall name ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid

... again, and once more turned his attention to that excellent French illustrated weekly without which no officers' mess in France is complete. Lest I be run in for libel, I will refrain from further information as to its title and general effect ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... "everybody feels her charm," and that "the Emperor, when presenting her at the balcony on the wedding-day, looked radiant with happiness." My Parisian friend says that young Alexandre Dumas is amongst the people arrested for libel,—a thorough mauvais sujet. Lamartine is quite ruined, and forced to sell his estates. He was always, I believe, expensive, like all those French litterateurs. You don't happen to have in Boston—have you?—a copy of "Les Memoires de Lally Tollendal"? I think ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... never got anything by his madness, and never sought it. The wildest and most raging attacks of the time allow him these merits: and not to let him have 'em in their full extent, remembering in what a (politically) wicked time he lived, would lie upon my conscience heavily. The libel he was imprisoned for when he died, was on the Queen of France; and the French government interested themselves warmly to procure his release,—which I think they might have done, but for Lord Grenville." I was ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... workshop, a hive of industry. And this was precisely what the astute Hohenzollern saw through the smoke of battle in far-away Manchuria. He saw a prosperous Germany if the Slav crushed the yellow man. To say he did not would be a libel upon a giant intellect. ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... was ninety miles away. Madam, I journeyed those ninety miles to learn that meanwhile he had returned to this city. While I was covering those miles for the second time, to-day's paragraph appeared. I hastened to accuse its author of libel, but the result was hardly what I expected. Perhaps you ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green

... least as good, if not better logic, than that which was successfully employed in the time of the popish plot, to convict an Irish physician of forgery. The matter is thus recorded by L'Estrange. The Irish physician "was charged with writing a treasonable libel, but denied the thing, and appealed to the unlikeness of the characters. It was agreed that there was no resemblance at all in the hands; but asserted that the doctor had two hands; his physic hand and his ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... in Great Britain, not Junius nor Wilkes's No. 45, had produced such an effect. All England was divided into those who, like Cruger of Bristol, said "Ditto to Mr. Burke," and those who swore by Thomas Paine. "It is a false, wicked, and seditious libel," shouted loyal gentlemen. "It abounds in unanswerable truths, and principles of the purest morality and benevolence; it has no object in view but the happiness of mankind," answered the reformers. "He is the scavenger of rebellion and infidelity."—"Say, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... fetch in Calamity as the mother of the whole mess; the call of the blood, you know; reversion to type! They'll have to prove that the intent was malice before they can get a judgment. They'll have to come out with the truth before they can prove libel. It isn't libelous if it's done ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... to describe the mental atmosphere in which we were working. It would be no libel upon the public opinion upon which we sought to make an impression to say that it really allowed no question to be discussed on its merits. Public opinion on social and economic questions is changing now, but I cannot associate the change with ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett

... he said to me afterwards, with a nod of satisfaction, 'You saw Mr. Wilkes acquiesced.' Wilkes talked with all imaginable freedom of the ludicrous title given to the Attorney-General, Diabolus Regis; adding, 'I have reason to know something about that officer; for I was prosecuted for a libel.' Johnson, who many people would have supposed must have been furiously angry at hearing this talked of so lightly, said not a word. He was now, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... thought again of anything but Truth and the Church, and the enemies of Truth and the Church: the Manichees, the Arians, the Pelagians—the Donatists, above all. He lets no error go by without refuting it, no libel without an answer. He is always on the breach. He might well be compared, in much of his writings, to one of our fighting journalists. He put into this generally thankless business a wonderful vigour and dialectical subtlety. Always and everywhere he had to have the last word. He brought ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... the author mentioned that more than one Yorkshire schoolmaster laid claim to be the original of Squeers, and he had reason to believe "one worthy has actually consulted authorities learned in the law as to his having good grounds on which to rest an action for libel." But Squeers, as Dickens insisted, was the representative of a class, and not an individual. The Brothers Cheeryble were "no creations of the author's brain" Dickens also wrote; and in consequence of this statement "hundreds upon hundreds of letters from all sorts of people" ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... EVETTS. The XIT Ranch of Texas, Chicago, 1929. As county and town afford the basis for historical treatment of many areas, ranches have afforded bases for various range country histories. Of such this is tops. A lawsuit for libel brought by one or more individuals mentioned in the book put a stop to the selling of copies by the publishers and made it very "rare." Charles Goodnight, Cowman and Plainsman, Boston, 1936, reissued by University of ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie

... not, "I live!" Such were a libel on the Plan Blazing within the mind of God Ere world or star or sun began. Say rather, with your fellow man, "I grub; I burrow in the sod." Life is not life that does not flame With consciousness of whence it ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... wasn't, Seppi; it was human—quite distinctly human. It is not pleasant to hear you libel the higher animals by attributing to them dispositions which they are free from, and which are found nowhere but in the human heart. None of the higher animals is tainted with the disease called the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... was out, for the world to read. Yet it was a statement only of bare, easily proved facts. The newspapers were glad to have such a startling yarn, and it had been told in such a way that John Rhinds did not have a single chance in any suit he might bring for libel. ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham

... womanly frail, Alone in thy faith and thy need; In the homeless home, in the poisonous air Of spite and libel and greed; Mid perfidy's net thy pathway is set, And thy ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... libel!" interrupted Tom. "Captain Putnam's rates are no higher than the rates of other first-class academies. I move we cut that ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield

... he threw up his situation that night and left town for good. The tailor came with his goose and a pair of shears; but he despised me, too, and departed for the South that night. The two lampooned citizens came with threats of libel, and went away incensed at my insignificance. The country editor pranced in with a warwhoop next day, suffering for blood to drink; but he ended by forgiving me cordially and inviting me down to the drug-store ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain

... next morning Brooks was at Witherspoon's house. A "friend" had called his attention to the article. Had it appeared in one of the reputable journals instead of in this fly-by-night smircher of the characters of men, a suit for criminal libel would have been brought, but to give countenance to this slander was to circulate it; and therefore the two men were resolved not to permit the infamy to place them under the ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read

... sentence to obliterate all traces of his error, without any intimation to the reader? Had not the public a right to expect more distinctness of statement, considering that the author had been led by this error to libel the character of more than one writer? Must not anyone reading the apology to Dr Westcott, contained in the note quoted above, necessarily carry off a wholly false impression of ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... is a libel on my invention!" exclaimed Harry. "If I had drawn on that, could I not have told you something ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... heard people speak well of the editorials in our chief London rival, but they are not thought much of in Ballybun; they haven't the flavour. Our paper used to be strongly political, but the increase in the number of subscribers did not pay for the libel actions, and so of late we have been cultivating an open mind and advertisements. It is true that even so it was impossible for Casey, our editor, to steer wholly clear of vexed political questions, but his latest manner was admirably statesmanlike. He would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various

... whom all controversy had found until then indifferent and lukewarm went back in fright to monarchical and religious ideas; democracy, which was charged with being developed at last to its ultimate, was cursed and driven back. This accusation of the conservatives against the democrats was a libel. Democracy is by nature as hostile to the socialistic idea as incapable of filling the place of royalty, against which it is its destiny endlessly to conspire. This soon became evident, and we are witnesses of it daily in the professions of Christian and proprietary faith by ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... Opposition period Sir George was dead and buried by the Grits; once over the Union Trust land investigation; again in a libel suit which he lost to the Globe when Rowell was against him. None of these things defeated the able author of Resurgam! who was made Minister of Trade, went for a six-months' journey in the Orient trying to convert the yellow races from rice to Canadian flour, and ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... peculiar qualities of the Iberian mind—its disillusion, its patient weariness, its pervasive melancholy. Spain, I take it, is the most misunderstood of countries. The world cannot get over seeing it through the pink mist of Carmen, an astounding Gallic caricature, half flattery and half libel. The actual Spaniard is surely no such grand-opera Frenchman as the immortal toreador. I prescribe the treatment that cured me, for one, of mistaking him for an Iberian. That is, I prescribe a visit ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... worthy man my foe, Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear, Or from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear! But he who hurts a harmless neighbour's peace, Insults fallen worth, or beauty in distress; Who loves a lie, lame slander helps about; Who writes a libel, or who copies out; That fop, whose pride affects a patron's name, Yet absent, wounds an author's honest fame; Who can your merit selfishly approve, And show the sense of it without the love; Who has the vanity to call you friend, Yet ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... the hollowed pages of the Bible, To sanction crime, and robbery, and blood, And, in oppression's hateful service, libel ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... has been very odd these last few weeks. Sometimes I wonder whether he didn't steal the money after all. But we shall know after the libel action this afternoon. It starts at two. Oh, are you there, Father? I'm just going to see ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various

... Antony were forgotten, clean wiped from her mind. The whole scene is a libel upon Cleopatra and upon womanhood. When betrayed, women are faithless out of anger, pique, desire of revenge; they are faithless out of fear, out of ambition, for fancy's sake—for fifty motives, but not without ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... is not the law of libel yet, not the law of the land yet," said Mowbray; "no knowing what we may come to. Would it not be hard, ma'am, to constitute the feelings of one person always sole judge of the intentions of another? though in ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... handkerchief, upon which are recorded scenes from the career of the emperor; the thing must have been of English manufacture, for only an Englishman (inspired by that fear and that hatred of Bonaparte which only Englishmen had) could have devised this atrocious libel. One has to read the literature current in the earlier part of this century in order to get a correct idea of the terror with which Bonaparte filled his enemies, and this literature is so extensive that it seems an impossibility that anything like ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... know the full offence of this born villain, This creeping, coward, rank, acquitted felon, Who threw his sting into a poisonous libel,[db] And on the honour of—Oh God! my wife, The nearest, dearest part of all men's honour, Left a base slur to pass from mouth to mouth 160 Of loose mechanics, with all coarse foul comments, And villainous jests, and blasphemies obscene; While sneering nobles, in more ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... Now he had become the missionary in England of the new French gospel of "impressionism," which to Ruskin was one of those half-truths which are ever the worst of heresies. Mr. Whistler appealed to the law. He brought an action for libel, which was tried on November 25th and 26th before Baron Huddleston, and recovered a farthing damages. Ruskin's costs—amounting to L386 12s. 4d.—were paid by a public subscription to which one hundred and twenty persons, including many ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... Eton were simply scurrilous. There's a libel action in every sentence. How do you like this place from ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... the same shall be delivered to the owners and captors concerned therein, or shall be publicly sold by the marshal of the same court, as shall be finally decreed and ordered by the court; and the same court, who shall have final jurisdiction of any libel or complaint of any capture as aforesaid, shall and may decree restitution, in whole or in part, when the capture and restraint shall have been made without just cause as aforesaid, and if made without probable cause or otherwise unreasonably may order and decree damages and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 10. • James D. Richardson

... gambling-hole, and I don't know but it is a libel on the dog to call it so," answered Ben, as ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... declaration as to God, and what He is going to do, but it is a commandment to some men, telling them what they are to do. 'Let him alone' does not mean the same thing as 'I will let him alone'; and if people had only read with a little more care, they would have been delivered from perpetrating a libel on the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... reporter lost his smile. "You had better clarify that, Dr. Long. I wouldn't want to join you in a libel action." ...
— The Deadly Daughters • Winston K. Marks

... by many humble retainers. And there is no retainer so devoted as he who is allowed to sit on the doorstep. The fellows who have got inside are apt to think too much of themselves. This last remark, I beg to state, is not malicious within the definition of the law of libel. It's fair comment on a matter of public interest. But never mind. Pro domo. So be it. For his house tant que vous voudrez. And yet in truth I was by no means anxious to justify my existence. The attempt would have been not only needless and ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... was a libel on the poor animal. It was only the dear lad Eric's joke! Mouser would never touch one drop of the breakfast cream, save perhaps when we might be late for the meal, or when the dear fellow felt ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson

... whether in politics or letters or discovery but he was not ready with something pat on it before the public interest faded. It followed that at a time when imprisonment, mutilation, and the pillory took the place of our modern libel actions he had an adventurous career. In politics he followed the Whig cause and served the Government with his pen, notably by his writings in support of the union with Scotland, in which he won over the Scots by his description of the commercial ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... speech and of the press does not mean that a citizen may always say anything he pleases in public. At no time has one the right to attack the character of another by false or malicious statements. This constitutes slander, or libel, and may be punished by the courts. In time of war freedom of speech and of the press may be restricted to an extent that would not be tolerated in time of peace, because if absolute freedom were permitted information might ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn

... forfeited all the respect of societies and of men. Into what companies will he hereafter go with an unembarrassed face, or the honest intrepidity of virtue? Men will watch him with a jealous eye; they will hide their papers from him, and lock up their escritoires. He will henceforth esteem it a libel to be called a man of letters; this man ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth

... (222 This libel on our national oath, and this accusation of all our countrymen of being in the daily practice of solemnly asseverating the most enormous falsehood, I fear deserves the notice of a more active Attorney General than that ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... libel upon the Constitution of the United States—and, what is worse, sir, it is a libel upon the great and good men who framed, adopted, and ratified it; it is a libel upon Washington and Franklin, and Hamilton and Madison, upon John ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... War Office, and pleaded for one little day's extension of leave to make himself decent. "Not a bit of it," said the War Office. "If you choose to spend your leave playing with sailor-men and getting wet all over, that's your concern. You will return to duty by to-night's boat." (This may be a libel on the W.O., but it sounds very like them.) "And he had to," said the boy, "but I expect he spent the next week at Headquarters telling fat generals all about ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling

... Gulliver's Travels an acute and illuminating little essay, contains one comment that gives an amusing revelation of his point of view. He says in regard to the fourth part of the story: "It is some consolation to remark that the fiction on which this libel on human nature rests is in every respect gross and improbable, and, far from being entitled to the praise due to the management of the first two parts, is inferior in plan even to the third."[196] This is a sound verdict, even if it does contain ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... is Catharine's uncle, Pope Leo the Tenth, who was said to have predicted the total destruction of whatever house she should be married into. See also the famous libel "Discours merveilleux de la vie de Catherine de Medicis" (Ed. of Cologne, Pierre du ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... use the language! On the same principle, if a set of pickpockets at the Five Points should choose to mystify their trade a little by including the term 'to filch' the literal borrowing of a pocket-handkerchief, it would not be a libel to accuse a citizen of 'filching his ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper

... "A libel," he answered promptly. "Maiden—hair, indeed! Why, I can see some a thousand times prettier quite close by. What can you want with this? You can't see the other, but I'll tell you what it's like. It's the most beautiful brown, with gold in it, and it grows in little ripples and waves and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... angry and resentful reception of the Pre-Raphaelites another instance of the absolutely indefensible nature of many of the most beautiful propositions. And as a still more striking and remarkable case, take the onslaught made by Ruskin upon the works of Whistler. You will remember that a libel action ensued and that these pictures were gravely reasoned about by barristers and surveyed by jurymen to ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... charge of treason, inciting people to armed resistance to the King's authority. We all feared that it would go badly with him. There was another trial, too, Karl and Engels and a comrade named Korff, manager of the paper, were placed on trial for criminal libel. I went to this trial and heard Karl make the speech for the defence. The galleries were crowded and when he got through they applauded till the rafters shook. 'If Marx can make a speech like that at the 'treason' trial, no ...
— The Marx He Knew • John Spargo

... Trefusis, enraged, wrote an argumentative letter to the "Times," which was not inserted, a sarcastic one to the trades-union, which did no good, and a fierce one to the employers, who threatened to take an action for libel. He had to content himself with setting the man to work again on mantelpieces and other decorative stone-work for use in house property on the Trefusis estate. In a year or two his liberal payments enabled the mason to save sufficient to start as an employer, in which capacity he soon began to ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... from Marvillier's to watch our friend; and from him we learned that the so-called Doctor dropped in for a picture that day at a dealer's in the West-end (I suppress the name, having a judicious fear of the law of libel ever before my eyes), a dealer who was known to be mixed up before then in several shady or disreputable transactions. Though, to be sure, my experience has been that picture dealers are—picture dealers. Horses rank ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen

... defiance of law and justice. Russell died with the fortitude of a Christian, Sidney with the fortitude of a Stoic. Some active politicians of meaner rank were sent to the gallows. Many quitted the country. Numerous prosecutions for misprision of treason, for libel, and for conspiracy were instituted. Convictions were obtained without difficulty from Tory juries, and rigorous punishments were inflicted by courtly judges. With these criminal proceedings were joined civil proceedings scarcely less formidable. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... suppliants to offer their cheeks to the smiters, been held to be public enemies. Such scruples, however, never hampered the theocracy. Their justice was trammelled neither by judges, by juries, nor by laws; the petition was declared to be a seditious libel, and the petitioners were given their choice of disavowing their act and making ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... are reading realities, by little touches such as 'I do not know,' 'He did not tell me this,' or the needless introduction of particulars irrelevant to the general plot such as we always stumble on in life, and writers of fiction usually omit. Bunyan was never prosecuted for libel by 'Badman's' relations, and the character is the corresponding contrast to Christian in the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' the pilgrim's journey being in the opposite direction to the other place. Throughout ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude

... representations of Christ here, set forth in the guide book as full of grace and majesty, which, any soul who has ever felt his infinite beauty would reject as a libel. And as to the Virgin Mother, one's eye becomes wearied in following the countless catalogue of the effeminate ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... her was that she should consent to be almost as completely separated from her family and friends as if she had gone to Calcutta, and almost as close a prisoner as if she had been sent to gaol for a libel; that with talents which had instructed and delighted the highest living minds, she should now be employed only in mixing snuff and sticking pins; that she should be summoned by a waiting-woman's bell to a waiting-woman's duties; that she should pass her whole life under the restraints of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... hundredth anniversary, the Pitt diamond, the patient Hannibal, little thread, crushing argument, moving spectacle, the martyr president, tin pans, few people, less trouble, this toy, any book, brave Washington, Washington market, three cats, slender cord, that libel, happy children, the broad Atlantic, The huge clouds were dark and threatening, Eyes are bright, What name was ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... urged Sir Arthur to proceed against the paper in an action of libel; but he would not hear of it, nor consent to my father's taking any legal steps whatever in the matter. My father, however, wrote in a threatening tone to Faulkner, demanding a surrender of the author of the obnoxious ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... obstruct it quietly—and they do so. Meaning no evil. I dip my hand in the accumulation and extract a leaflet by the all too zealous Mr. Murray. In it he denounces various public officials by name as he cheats and scoundrels, and invites a prosecution for libel. ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells

... animadvert upon it, consistently with the effective preservation of its most necessary prerogative of freedom of debate; but when that speech became a book, then the law was to look to it; and there being a law of libel, commensurate with every possible object of attack in the state, privilege, which acts, or ought to act, only as a substitute for other laws, could have nothing to do with it. I have heard that one distinguished ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... be said to be of primary consequence beyond the proof which they furnish of the interest felt abroad in passing transactions in this country, even in such incidents of minor moment as the trial of Elizabeth Cellier in 1680 for an obscure political libel, and the occasional value which they have acquired through the apparent loss of the English originals. We have, for example, a French account of a London ferryman, who, under pretence of conveying passengers across ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt

... facts are significant. On November 9, 1911, the Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, assured the Reichstag that Germany had never intended to annex Moroccan territory, an assertion confirmed by Kiderlen-Waechter on Nov. 17. But during the libel action brought against the Berlin Post it was positively affirmed that the Government and Kiderlen-Waechter had intended to annex South-West Morocco. A high official, Dr. Heilbronn, telephoned so to the Post, urging it to ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... twenty francs; we sell it for twenty-three and a half. A million subscribers make three millions and a half of profits; there are my figures; contradict me by figures, or I will bring an action for libel." The reader may fancy the scene takes place in England, where many such a swindling prospectus has obtained credit ere now. At Plate 33, Robert is still a journalist; he brings to the editor of a paper an article of his composition, a violent attack on a law. "My dear M. Macaire," says the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Swift had come from Ireland, and resided for some time with Pope. Bolingbroke came over occasionally from Dawley; and Gay was often there to laugh with, and be laughed at by, the rest. Swift had "Gulliver's Travels"—the most ingenious and elaborate libel against man and God ever written—in his pocket, nearly ready for publication; and we may conceive the grim, sardonic smile with which he read it to his friends, and their tumultuous mirth. Gay was projecting his "Beggars' Opera," and Pope preparing some of his witty "Miscellanies." At the ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... of an adventure,' said Mr. Winkle, with a smile; and, at the request of Mr. Pickwick, he detailed the malicious libel of the Eatanswill INDEPENDENT, and the consequent excitement of their ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... is sheer libel," he answered presently. "Larssen could rook you for goodness knows what damages if you got ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... it is You that Libel by your Application my Charge is not against any particular Person, Degree, Rank, or Set of Men, but against known Profess'd Sharpers; Who, under the Mask of Honour, Amusement and Friendship, dayly Commit Crimes ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin

... paper he had signed, would be suspected, and—and"—stammered the Judge as his imagination pictured what might follow—"they might even attack his will!" He advanced truculently. "Do you mean to publish this libel?" ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis

... Pallados, and who had written for the heavy quarterlies any time this last forty years, professed that he saw through the article. The 'Evening Pulpit' had been, he explained, desirous of going as far as it could in denouncing Mr Melmotte without incurring the danger of an action for libel. Mr Splinter thought that the thing was clever but mean. These new publications generally were mean. Mr Splinter was constant in that opinion; but, putting the meanness aside, he thought that the article was well done. According to his view it was intended ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... Offences which we are accustomed to regard exclusively as crimes are exclusively treated as torts, and not theft only, but assault and violent robbery, are associated by the jurisconsult with trespass, libel and slander. All alike gave rise to an Obligation or vinculum juris, and were all requited by a payment of money. This peculiarity, however, is most strongly brought out in the consolidated Laws of the Germanic tribes. Without an exception, they describe ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... the people he would lead and the country he would lead them to, lies his strength, just as in his admission that his Zionist fervor is only that second-rate species produced by local anti-Semitism, lies a powerful answer to the dangerous libel of local unpatriotism. Of the real political and agricultural conditions of Palestine he knows only by hearsay. Of Jews he knows still less. Not for him the paralyzing sense of the humors of his race, the petty feud of Dutchman and Pole, the mutual superiorities ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... libel against the amours of the Court of France. I walked up and down Deptford yarde, where I had not been since I come from living at Greenwich, which is some months. There I met with Mr. Castle, and was ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... was opened, eleven ballot-papers inscribed with two crosses instead of one, and valueless. Here, should the charges against a distinguished and highly respected Government official fail, as in the opinion of the Express they undoubtedly would fail of substantiation was a big libel case all dressed and ready and looking for the Mercury office. "Foolish—foolish," wrote Mr Williams at the close of his editorial comments. ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... rather some weakness and peccability, with vital warmth and human sympathies. A shrewd reasoner in one thing, a sound philosopher is another. I admire your power and precision. Monks will admonish us how little the author of the Maxims knows of the world; and heads of colleges will cry out 'a libel on human nature!' but when they hear your titles, and, above all, your credit at court, they will cast back cowl, and peruke, and lick your boots. You start with great advantages. Throwing off from a dukedom, you are sure of enjoying, if not the tongue of these puzzlers, the full ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... the Gold Conspiracy. Adams had become used to the idea that he was free of the Quarterlies, and that his writing would be printed of course; but he was stunned by the reason of refusal. Reeve said it would bring half-a-dozen libel suits on him. One knew that the power of Erie was almost as great in England as in America, but one was hardly prepared to find it controlling the Quarterlies. The English press professed to be shocked ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... Incarnate Charnal Etiquette Rejuvenate Eradicate Quiet Requiem Acquiesce Ambidextrous Inoculate Divulge Proper Appropriate Omnivorous Voracious Devour Escritoire Mordant Remorse Miser Hilarious Exhilarate Rudiment Erudite Mark Marquis Libel Libretto Vague Vagabond Extravagant Souse Saucer ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... grouth of the classical and warrelike shipping of this Island: as namely, first of the great nauie of that victorious Saxon prince king Edgar, mentioned by Florentius Wigorniensis, Roger Houeden, Rainulph of Chester, Matthew of Westminster, Flores historiarum, & in the libel of English policie, pag. 224. and 225. of this present volume. [Footnote: Original edition.] Of which Authors some affirme the sayd fleet to haue consisted of 4800. others of 4000. some others of 3600. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt

... The Law of Unfair Business Competition. Including chapters on trade secrets and confidential business relations; unfair interference with contracts; libel and slander of articles of merchandise, trade names and business credit ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... have try'd all ways, fair and foul; nay, had settled t'other Day my whole Estate upon him, and just as I had sign'd the Writings, out comes me a damn'd Libel, call'd, A Warning to all good Christians against the City-Magistrates; and I doubt he had a Hand in Absalom and Achitophel, a Rogue. But some of our sober Party have claw'd him home, i' faith, and given him ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... been given, have afterwards returned to the thoughts of those who have had influence, have been considered as their own ideas, and have been acted upon. The conduct of Captain Tartar may be considered as a libel on the service—is it not? The fault of Captain Tartar was not in sending them on board, or even putting them in irons as deserters, although, under the circumstances, he might have shown more delicacy. The fault was in stigmatising a young man as a swindler, and the punishment ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... practicability of carrying the measure into effect at that time. He had promised to contribute a hundred pounds to their equipment. Byron attributed the Colonel's objections to reluctance to pay the money; and threatened him if it were refused, with a punishment, new in Grecian war——to libel him in the Greek Chronicle! a newspaper which Stanhope ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... be wished that there should be afterwards a particular tribunal, which should weigh in an exact scale the motives of each caption, in order that imprudence and guilt, the pen and the poniard, the book and the libel, might not be confounded. ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... sensible, that such an imputation ought not to be charged upon any person whatsoever, upon slight grounds or doubtful surmises; and that those who think I am able to produce no better, will judge this passage to be fitter for a libel than a history; but as the account was given by more than one person who was at the meeting, so it was confirmed past all contradiction by several intercepted letters and papers: and it is most certain, that the rage of the defeated ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... little, Plaster'd with cobweb and spittle, An airy prospect all so pleasing, From my light window without glazing, A trencher and a College bottle, Piled up on Locke and Aristotle. A prayer-book, which he seldom handles A save-all and two farthing candles. A smutty ballad, musty libel, A Burgersdicius[2] and a Bible. The C****[3] Seasons and the Senses By Overton, to save expenses. Item, (if I am not much mistaken,) A mouse-trap with a bit of bacon. A candlestick without a snuffer, Whereby his fingers ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... was the sum promised by the whole Queensberry family and by Lord Alfred Douglas in particular to Oscar to defray the costs of that first action for libel which they persuaded him to bring against Lord Queensberry. Ross has since stated in court that it was never paid. The history of the monies promised and supplied to Oscar at that time is so extraordinary and so ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... too much sense to believe all this trumped-up libel!" Sorenson exclaimed furiously. "About us, respected leaders of this town! ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... remember that some of the commentators of Shakspeare have thought it incumbent on their gallantry to express their utter contempt for the scene between Richard and Lady Anne, as a monstrous and incredible libel on your sex? ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... law of libel, a man is punished, not for telling a lie, but for telling either the truth or a lie with malicious intent. I imagine the Almighty will take the intent into consideration, if human justice finds it ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman

... cried Mr. Hardwick, as he paced up and down his room, "that I shall be more careful after this in the handling of truth; it is a most dangerous thing to meddle with. If you tell the truth about a man, you are mulcted in a libel suit, and if you tell the truth about a nation, the united Press of the country are down upon you. Ah, well, it makes the battle of life all the more interesting, and we are baffled to fight ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr

... What charge have you against me? 23. That there was justice in his accusation? But you yourselves would not say so. That the defendant is a nobler man and from nobler family than I? Not even he would claim that. That, having thrown away my shield, I am accused of libel by the one who rescued it? Such is not the story about town. 24. But remember that you rendered him that great favor. In this matter who would not pity Dionysius that he met with such misfortune, a noble man who fell into danger, coming from ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias

... could do so, Dr. Milton found himself served with a writ for libel. As a result, nothing more was heard ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... is a world on which the sun never rises, but it looks upon a thousand bloodless battles that are some set-off against the miseries and wickedness of Battle-Fields; and it is a world we need be careful how we libel, Heaven forgive us, for it is a world of sacred mysteries, and its Creator only knows what lies beneath the surface of ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens

... their tongues alone, But speak a language of their own; Can read a nod, a shrug, a look, Far better than a printed book; Convey a libel in a frown, And wink a reputation down; Or, by the tossing of the fan, describe the ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various

... make his peace with the Directory, by writing a bulky libel on England, entitled, The Liberty of the Seas. He seems to have confidently expected that this work would produce a great effect. He printed three thousand copies, and, in order to defray the expense of publication, sold one of his farms for the sum of ten thousand francs. The book came out; ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... official journals compared the policy of the Court of St. James with the methods of the Barbary rovers and the designs of the Miltonic Satan.[229] Nevertheless, our Ministry prosecuted and convicted Peltier for libel, an act which, at the time, produced ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... Justice were, as Miles and Julius told her, impossible,—and she would not believe it, except on the word of a lawyer,—public exposure was the only alternative for righting Archie, and she could not, or would not, understand that they would have undergone an action for libel rather than not do their best to clear their cousin, but that they thought it due to Mr. Moy to give him the opportunity of doing the thing himself; she thought it folly, and only giving him time and chance for ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the precise words had been used. Mr. Genet then, in the coarsest terms, averred the falsehood of the certificate which had been published, and demanded from the attorney general, and from the government, that Mr. Jay and Mr. King should be indicted for a libel upon himself and his nation. That officer accompanied his refusal to institute this information with the declaration that any other gentleman of the profession, who might approve and advise the attempt, could be at no loss to point out a mode which ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall

... against Samuel Marsden, as a man and a Christian priest, but against the missionaries, and signed "Philo-free," appeared in the Sydney Herald, the Government paper, and was traced to Macquarie's own secretary! The libel was such that Mr. Marsden felt it due to his cause to bring an action against the publisher, and in spite of the prejudice against him, after a trial of three days, he gained a complete victory and damages of 200 pounds; but the newspaper published such a false and scandalous ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... public peace, these are to give notice, that what person soever shall discover unto one of the secretaries of state, the printer, publisher, author, or hander to the press of any of the said libels, so that full evidence may be made thereof to a Jury, without mentioning the informer, especially one libel, entitled An Account of the Growth of Popery; and another called A Reasonable Argument to all the Grand Juries, &c. the discoverer shall be rewarded as follows; he shall have fifty pounds for such discovery as aforesaid, of the printer ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber



Words linked to "Libel" :   slander, hatchet job, calumny, civil wrong, jurisprudence, asperse, denigrate, besmirch, defamation, defame, smear, law, libeler, calumniation, libellous, libelous, complaint, traducement, tort, obloquy, smirch, calumniate, sully



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