"Apocryphal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quotations from the Bible and other sources are printed in italics, so far as I have recognized them. The scriptural allusions are given as nearly as possible in the words of the Authorized (in the Apocryphal books the Revised) Version, though at times they do not agree with the Vulgate Latin. Where it has been found necessary to depart from their renderings, the symbol "vg." follows the references ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... money. "He appears to have been a Bohemian of the lowest order." Between such authorship and the anonymous there does not seem to be much to choose. But the dying confession sounds in my ears as decidedly apocryphal. As for the letter, I had rather characterize it than reproduce it. It is an offence to decency and a disgrace to the national record on which it is found. This letter of "George W. M'Crackin" passed into the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the airs of a capital city the women of the town made this section of it the scene of their wanderings. Here came the second-hand sellers of things that look as if they never could find a purchaser, old-clothes dealers whose wares infected the air; in short, it was the rendezvous of that apocryphal population which is to be found in nearly all such portions of a city, where two or three Jews ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... if apocryphal, Ecclesiasticus, sagely and pithily remarked, many centuries before modern civilization was invented: Jest not with a rude man lest thy ancestors be disgraced. To this day the oriental methods of insult have survived in the Ghetto. The dead past ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... raconteur with a vivid imagination, and it did not trouble his conscience because the narratives he imparted to this wide-eyed youth were largely apocryphal. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... unprofitable. The author of the "TRADITIONS OF LANCASHIRE," in leaving the dry and heraldic pedigrees which unfortunately constitute the great bulk of those works that bear the name of county histories, enters on the more entertaining, though sometimes apocryphal narratives, which exemplify and embellish the records of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Italy, a sarcophagus was regularly exhibited as this sentimental relic. That no longer exists: the present one, which was formerly used as a washing-trough, looks so much like that or a horse-trough of the commonest sort that, even without knowing its claims to be apocryphal, the most credulous sentimental tourist would suspect that it had come up rather than gone down in the world. No matter: we were not dupes, but perhaps the full sweetness and sadness of the story never came home to us ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... him the affection of all counsel who practised before him, but there is one story—apocryphal it may be, coming from Lord Campbell—of a prejudice he had against Lord Brougham, who, in Scottish cases, frequently appeared before him in the House of Lords. Lord Eldon persisted in addressing the advocate as Mr. Bruffam. This was too much for Brougham, who was rather proud of the form and ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... teaching of science to that of revelation. In these days the ground has shifted, and supernatural teachings make preferably their defence by an appeal to intuition and other obscure phenomena which can be trusted to defy investigation. Against all such apocryphal glosses of evidential truth science protests with equal vehemence, and were Huxley here he would treat Bergson and his allies with the same scorn and contumely that he meted out to the Bishop of Oxford on the notorious occasion to which Dr Bridges made reference. As well might we decorate our writings ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... huge loin of beef steaming upon the table. "A noble joint!" exclaimed the king. "By St. George, it shall have a title!" Then drawing his sword, he raised it above the meat, and cried, with mock dignity, "Loin, we dub thee knight; henceforward be Sir Loin!" This anecdote is doubtless apocryphal, although the oak table upon which the joint was supposed to hare received its knighthood, might have been seen by any one who visited Friday-Hill House, a few years ago. It is, perhaps, a pity to ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... controvertible; in question &c. (inquiry) 461. vague; indeterminate, indefinite; ambiguous, equivocal; undefined, undefinable; confused &c. (indistinct) 447; mystic, oracular; dazed. perplexing &c. v.; enigmatic, paradoxical, apocryphal, problematical, hypothetical; experimental &c. 463. unpredictable, unforeseeable (unknowable) 519. fallible, questionable, precarious, slippery, ticklish, debatable, disputable; unreliable, untrustworthy. contingent, contingent on, dependent on; subject to; dependent ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... that Mark Lemon said of Douglas Jerrold that "he was doubtless considered caustic because he blackened every character he touched" is probably apocryphal—though Jerrold's occasional treatment of Lemon might perhaps have justified some sort of retaliation from his genial Editor. Still, it was Jerrold's firm belief, as he declared to Mr. Sidney Cooper, R.A., that he had never in his ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... scene of fire worship on the banks of Oil Creek, where the whole surface of the creek, being coated with oil, was set on fire, producing in the night season a wonderful conflagration. But there is room for the suspicion that this account is apocryphal. Such scenes as are there described have been witnessed on Oil Creek since the beginning of the modern oil trade. During the continuance of several accidental conflagrations, the scene has been awfully grand and impressive. It ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... indiscretion, was apparently an honest and modest gentleman; and the play itself, which this ingenuous theorist was fain, with all diffidence, to try whether haply he might be permitted to foist on the apocryphal fatherhood of Shakespeare, is not without such minor merits as may excuse us for wasting a few minutes on examination of the theory which seeks to confer on it the factitious and artificial attraction of ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... on Queen Mary's four Maries. Of these ballads only one is left, and it is a libel. The hanging of a French apothecary of the Queen, and a French waiting-maid, for child murder, has been transferred to one of the Maries, or rather to an apocryphal Mary Hamilton, with Darnley for her lover. Of this ballad twenty-eight variants—and extremely various they are—were collected by Professor Child in his English and Scottish Popular Ballads (ten parts, 1882- 1898). In one mangled form or another such ballads ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... Moslem, Shiah, Sunni, Wahabi, Osmanli. Brahmin^, Brahman^; Parsee, Sufi, Buddhist; Magi, Gymnosophist^, fire worshiper, Sabian, Gnostic, Rosicrucian &c Adj. heterodox, heretical; unorthodox, unscriptural, uncanonical; antiscriptural^, apocryphal; unchristian, antichristian^; schismatic, recusant, iconoclastic; sectarian; dissenting, dissident; secular &c, (lay) 997. pagan; heathen, heathenish; ethnic, ethnical; gentile, paynim^; pantheistic, polytheistic. Judaical, Mohammedan, Brahminical^, Buddhist &c n.; Romish, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... birth of his son Charles, Dryden immediately cast his horoscope. The following account of Dryden's paternal solicitude for his son, and its result, may be taken as embellished, if not apocryphal. Evil hour, indeed—Jupiter, Venus, and the Sun were all 'under the earth;' Mars and Saturn were in square: eight, or a multiple of it, would be fatal to the child—the square foretold it. In his eighth, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... prison, and would probably be again sentenced under the law. They were all silent and sullen as we entered the room, until an old woman spoke up with a strong, beery voice: "Good evening, gentlemen. We are all wery poor, but strictly honest." At which cheerful apocryphal statement, all the inmates of the room burst into boisterous laughter, and began pelting the imaginative female with epithets uncomplimentary and unsavory. Dickens's quick eye never for a moment ceased to study all these scenes of vice and gloom, and he told me afterwards ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... also from his family. Typical of this is another story, surely apocryphal, from Chuang Tzu (Ch. 3, 3). At the death of Lao Tzu a disciple went to the family and expressed his sympathy quite briefly and formally. The other disciples were astonished, and asked his reason. He said: "Yes, at first I thought that he was our man, but he is not. When I went to grieve, the old ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... road, and the birth, parentage, and education of every cab, hack, and draught-horse in the neighbourhood. He had heard of a mane-comb, but had never seen one; he considered a shilling for a "feed" perfectly apocryphal, as he had never received one. He kept a rough terrier-dog, that would kill anything in the country, and exhibited three rows of putrified rats, nailed at the back of the stable, as evidences of the prowess of his dog. He swore long country oaths, for which he will be unaccountable, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841 • Various
... best whether there is a wound underneath it. But, if it were not so, then the imperial man paid the full penalty of his offence, supposing the rancorous remembrance of that one neglect were truly and indeed what armed the Ides of March against his life. But, were this story as apocryphal as the legends of our nurseries, still the bare possibility that 'the laurelled majesty'[61] of that mighty brow should have been laid low by one frailty of this particular description—this possibility recalls us clamorously to the treasonable character of such an insolence, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... on the spot; and Mr. Bates, who had filled the dangerous office of pilot, told her about divers and coral reefs, and some adventures of his—a little apocryphal—in the China Seas. Frere resumed his smoking, half angry with himself, and half angry with the provoking little fairy. This elfin creature had a fascination for him which ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... differences and not discrepancies; but the following paragraph forbade so lenient an interpretation. "The only other mention of Mary by St. John, who describes her as sitting (sic) by the foot of the Cross, is apocryphal, being directly contradicted by the very precise statement [48] in the three other Gospels, that the Mary who was present on that occasion was a different woman, the mother of Salome." Even his ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... the fertilized ovum, analogous to an immanent logic. As a type of this creative form there has often been given a letter wherein Mozart explains his mode of conception. Recently (and that is why I do not reprint it here) it has been suspected of being apocryphal. I regret this—it was worthy of being authentic. According to Goethe, Shakespeare's Hamlet could have been created only through an intuitive ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... and put beside the canonical ones by distinguished fathers. The Lutherans have adhered to Jerome's meaning longer than the Reformed; but the decree of the Council of Trent had some effect on both. The contrast between the canonical and apocryphal writings was carried to its utmost length by the Westminster divines, who asserted that the former are inspired, the ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... best quality of rod. He said he could furnish the "plain" article at 20 cents a foot; "coppered," 25 cents; "zinc-plated spiral-twist," at 30 cents, that would stop a streak of lightning any time, no matter where it was bound, and "render its errand harmless and its further progress apocryphal." I said apocryphal was no slouch of a word, emanating from the source it did, but, philology aside, I liked the spiral-twist and would take that brand. Then he said he could make two hundred and fifty feet answer; but to do it right, and make the best job in town ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... their head, having coolly repossessed himself of the see from which he had been ejected as a traitor; an expression of contemptuous amusement hovering about his lips, which might be easily translated into the famous (but rather apocryphal) speech of Queen Elizabeth to the men of Coventry—"Good lack! What fools ye be!" On the left hand of the throne stood Lancaster, his lofty stature conspicuous among his peers, waiting with mock humility for the farce of their ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... for some neglect of duty. The matter-of-fact and doubtful folks, of whom there were a few among the Maypole customers, as unluckily there always are in every little community, were inclined to look upon this tradition as rather apocryphal; but, whenever the landlord of that ancient hostelry appealed to the mounting block itself as evidence, and triumphantly pointed out that there it stood in the same place to that very day, the doubters never failed to be put down by a large majority, and all ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... which rise out of this portion of Spanish history, and that the only fruit of an indefatigable, prolix, and even prodigious study of the subject, was a melancholy and mortifying state of indecision. [Footnote: PADRE PEDRO ABARCA. Anales de Aragon, Anti Regno, F2.] During this apocryphal period, flourished PELAYO, the deliverer of Spain, whose name, like that of William Wallace, will ever be linked with the glory of his country, but linked, in like manner, by a bond in which fact and fiction ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... book of Maccabees is a very remarkable passage authorizing prayers for the dead, and on this passage they build their theory and sanction their practise. Yet you know full well it is one of the Apocryphal books rejected by the Jews, because not originally written in their language. It was never quoted by our Saviour, nor even received as inspired by your own church till the Council of Trent, when it was admitted to substantiate the doctrine of purgatory, and sanction prayers for the dead. ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... intentional falsehood, concerning the characters, qualifications, and motives of our anonymous critics, whose decisions are oracles for our reading public; I might safely borrow the words of the apocryphal Daniel; "Give me leave, O SOVEREIGN PUBLIC, and I shall slay this dragon without sward or staff." For the compound would be as the "pitch, and fat, and hair, which Daniel took, and did seethe them together, and made lumps thereof; this he put in the dragon's mouth, and so the dragon ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... folly is there in even the remotest semblance of unfairness), instead of devoting themselves to throwing a flood of brilliancy upon the most important features and leaving the others to shine out in the light reflected from these. Even granting that some of the miracles recorded of our Lord are apocryphal, what of that? We do not rest upon them: we have enough and more than enough without them, and can afford to take the line of saying to the unbeliever, "Disbelieve this miracle or that if you find that ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... it," quoth she, "in Apocryphal Writ"— And the Devil stoop'd down, and kiss'd her; Not Jove himself, when he courted in flame, On Semele's lips, the love-scorch'd Dame, Impress'd such ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Phantasmata, chap. xiv; also Sir James Stephen, History of France, lecture xxvi; also Henry Martin, Histoire de France, vol. xv, pp. 168 et seq.; also Calmeil, liv. v, chap. xxiv; also Hecker's essay; and, for samples of myth-making, see the apocryphal Souvenirs de Crequy. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... in Scripture. The Miracle Plays had for their subjects the chief incidents of Old and New Testament history; not merely, however, of this history as accepted by the Reformed Church, but of that contained in the Apocryphal Gospels as well. An entire series of these Miracles consisted of short dramatic representations of many single passages of the sacred story. The whole would occupy about three days. It began with the ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... amenable, amenity, amity, amnesty, amulet, anachronism, analytical, anathema, anatomy, animadversion, annotate, anomalous, anonymous, antediluvian, anterior, anthology, anthropology, antinomy, antiquarianism, antiseptic, aphorism, apocryphal, aplomb, apostasy, apparatus, apparition, appellate, appertain, appetency, apposite, approbation, appurtenance, aquatic, aqueous, aquiline, arbitrary, archaic, arduous, aromatic, arrear, articulate, ascetic, asperity, asphyxiate, asseverate, assiduity, assimilate, astringent, astute, atrophy, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... valuables or mine. The facts forbid that your pen-feathered saint should decamp with some of my costly travel-scrapings! 'Pious' indeed! 'Edna,' forsooth! No doubt her origin and morals are quite as apocryphal as her name. Don't talk to me about 'her being providentially thrown into your hands,' unless you desire to hear me say things which you have frequently taken occasion to inform me 'deeply grieved' you. ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... together with the skazki there have been retained in the popular memory a multitude of legendui, or legends relating to persons or incidents mentioned in the Bible or in ecclesiastical history. Many of them have been extracted from the various apocryphal books which in olden times had so wide a circulation, and many also from the lives of the Saints; some of them may be traced to such adaptations of Indian legends as the "Varlaam and Josaphat" attributed to St. John of Damascus; and ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... the conversation between an attacking poodle and a fiercely repellent puss? Through innumerable gradations of childhood would the art grow before it attained the first formal embodiment in such plays as those, so-called, of miracles, consisting just of Scripture stories, both canonical and apocryphal, dramatized after the rudest fashion. Regarded from the height which the art had reached two hundred and fifty years after, "how dwarfed a growth of cold and night" do these miracle-plays show themselves! But ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... by all Russian historians of the war. He made fruitless inquiries after a paper said to have been left behind him by Skobeleff, explaining that "India is a cherry to be eaten by Russia, but in two bites"; it was contrary to the general's recorded utterances and probably apocryphal. Russophobe as regarded Turkey, he sneered at England's sentimental support of nationalities as "Platonic": a capital epithet he called it, and envied the Frenchman who applied it to us, declaring that it had turned all the women against us. He ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... even probable that apocryphal Sutras were composed in Central Asia. See Pelliot in Melanges d'Indianisme, Sylvain ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... in any writing prior to Wirt's book, have thus far been unsuccessful. These facts have led even so genial a critic as Grigsby to incline to the opinion that "much of the speech published by Wirt is apocryphal."[160] It would, indeed, be an odd thing, and a source of no little disturbance to many minds, if such should turn out to be the case, and if we should have to conclude that an apocryphal speech written by Wirt, and attributed by him to Patrick ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... almost on the eve of Danton's arrest, and parting with sombre disquietude on both sides. The interview, with its champagne, its interlocutors, its play of sinister repartee, may possibly have taken place, but the alleged details are plainly apocryphal. After all, 'Religion ist in der Thiere Trieb,' says Wallenstein; 'the very savage drinks not with the victim, into whose breast he means to plunge a sword.' Danton was warned that Robespierre was plotting his arrest. 'If I thought he had the bare idea,' said Danton with something of Gargantuan ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... gone when only few were fit To view with open vision the sublime, When for the rest an altar-rail sufficed To obscure the democratic Christ.... Perceiving now his gift, demanding it, The benison of common benefit, Men, women, all, Interpreters of time, Have found that lordly Christ apocryphal While Christ the comrade comes again—no wraith Of virtue in a far-off faith But a companion hearty, natural, Who sorrows with indomitable eyes For his mistreated plan To share with all men the upspringing sod, The unfolding skies— Not God who ...
— The New World • Witter Bynner
... recently approached him with a proposal that they should be eligible for judicial office—"Scarlet and ermine are so becoming"—and that he put them off with the old joke about there being "enough old women on the Bench already" is, of course, apocryphal. ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... disturb anyone that in the Decretals on Penance and in the IV. Book of the Sentences[14] this matter is differently treated. For they all are full of human inventions; and no wonder! They have taken everything they say out of a certain apocryphal and unlearned book called De vera et falsa poenitentia,[15] which is widely circulated, and ascribed, by a lying title, to ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... most extraordinary figures in the whole gallery of troubadour portraits is Peire Vidal, whose career extended, roughly speaking, from 1175 to 1215. He was one of those characters who naturally become the nucleus of apocryphal stories, and how much truth there may be in some of the fantastic incidents, in which he figures as the hero, will probably never be discovered. He was undoubtedly an attractive character, for he enjoyed the favour of the most distinguished men and women of his time. He was also a poet of ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... On the pretext that he had been sent for certain drawings which were to be found on the table or in a writing-desk, he was permitted by Mrs. Spooner to ascend to the bedroom, where she obligingly insisted on helping him search for the apocryphal plans, and seriously interfered with his purpose, which was to find the key of the studio. While Mr. Taggett was turning over the pages of a large dictionary, in order to gain time, and was wondering how he could rid himself of the old ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the story is confused and troublesome. According to Pitscottie, James's private friends advised him first to take counsel with the Earl of Douglas, the long-forfeited and banished Earl, represented as being then imprisoned in Edinburgh, which is clearly apocryphal: and afterwards with the Duke of Albany, to whom Pitscottie is throughout very favourable, making no mention of his undoubted treachery. For whatever may be the actual truth of all the curious and confused movements ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... of the Abyss;" the Septuagint superscription "[Greek: Ode ton anabathmon];" and the Vulgate, carmen graduum, "Song of the Steps." In accordance with which the Jewish writers state, that these Psalms were sung on fifteen steps leading from the Atrium Israelis to the court of the women. In the apocryphal book of the "Birth of Mary," translated by Archbishop Wake, which is to be found in the works of St. Jerome, and which is attributed to St. Matthew, there is an account of a miracle in the early history of the Virgin Mary, in which it is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... no; something went farther than speculation when I was not to be let in.—Where is this apocryphal elder? I'll ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... the fame of his scholarship which led to his election for Agmondesham, a borough in Bucks, when he was only sixteen years of age. This story, so far as his premature learning goes, seems rather apocryphal; but certain it is, that when scarcely eighteen, he had become M.P. for the above-mentioned borough. The parliament in which he found himself, was one of those subservient and cringing assemblies which James I. was wont to summon to sit till they had voted ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... Scotch Law, for which I must next year be prepared. I hope the saving will counter-balance the trouble of raising the money. I believe I shall enclose you my acknowledgment for the L200 (the L13 goes to the library, or something of that sort, which, though rather apocryphal in my nomenclature, shows the destination of the money). Tell the children[7] if they will write I will answer them soon, and enclose them something. Pray remember me to Mr Alcock, and repeat my sense of obligation to him. Tell Miss Seton I am now on ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... only a vague, indirect fashion. All the same, it must not be forgotten that the canonical Gospels have suffered numerous suppressions and interpolations. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that the early Fathers of the Church made use of gospels that are now either lost or have become apocryphal.[167] It has been proved that neither Jesus nor his disciples wrote a single word, and that no version of the Gospels appeared earlier than the second century.[168] It was at that time that religious ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... a relief to his habitual abstraction now half alarmed them. Yet he was not dissipated—he did not drink nor gamble. There certainly did not seem any harm in his frequenting the society of ladies, with a gallantry that appeared to be forced and a pleasure that to their critical eyes was certainly apocryphal. He did not drag his daughters into the mixed society of that period; he did not press upon them the company of those he most frequented, and whose accepted position in that little world of fashion was considered equal to their own. When Jessie strongly objected to the pronounced manners of a certain ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... evident that Spain and the Spanish faction at the English Court laboured to place upon the expedition the construction which Ralegh's apocryphal outburst to Bacon would warrant. Don Diego Sarmiento de Acuna, the Ambassador of Spain, better known by the title, not yet his, of Count Gondomar, was the mouthpiece of the view. He offered, as Ralegh in his Apology virtually admits, to procure a safe-conduct for Ralegh to and from the ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Sixth Article of Religion describes as "The other books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine." They are called Apocryphal for the reason that while they are usually bound up with the Bible, yet they are not regarded as canonical. Apocrypha is a Greek word meaning hidden, secret or unknown. Several of the Lessons are taken from the Apocryphal Books, and the Benedicite, which is sung as an alternate ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... from the multitudinous literature of Christianity was felt. Genuine letters had to be distinguished from spurious letters. Accurate knowledge of the life and teachings of Christ had become a vital necessity. The growth of legend and fable, in the Apocryphal Gospels, threatened to swallow up the memory of the real Jesus. A sifting process went on in the churches, by which the unimportant and objectionable writings were gradually winnowed out ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... opposition or loss, except of a boatswain and two sailors, killed from a little fort, to which Howe was near enough to advise them not to resist. However, some peasants in it fired and then ran away. Some prisoners have assured our troops that there is no force within twenty leagues. This may be apocryphal, a word which, as I am left at liberty, I always interpret false. It is plain, however, that we were not expected at St. Maloes at least. We are in violent impatience to hear the consequences—especially whether we have taken the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... so licentious were the times, as announced by the public declaration of the assembled clergy, recorded by Eadmer; and we need add nothing more to vindicate the probability of the scenes which we have detailed, and are about to detail, upon the more apocryphal authority ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... and English (Venice, 1819), is rather meagre in its details. I have heard it stated, I know not on what authority, that Lord Byron composed the English part of this grammar. This grammar contains the two Apocryphal Epistles found in the Armenian Bible, of the Corinthians to St. Paul, and St. Paul to the Corinthians. Like the Greek and German, "the different modes of producing compound epithets and words are the treasure and ornament of the Armenian language; ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 39. Saturday, July 27, 1850 • Various
... occupying himself in reading, and preserving a provoking taciturnity to the gentlemen in the room; though his manner was stern, his deportment was that of a gentleman." The story of his visit is probably as apocryphal as that of his offering his services to the English Government when the English forces wore blockading the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... instruct the Committee of Safety at Whitehall how they shall find an invention to escape Tyburn, if ever the law be restored; 2. That Harrington's Aphorisms and other political slips be recommended to the English Plantation in Jamaica, to try how they will agree with that apocryphal purchase; 3. That a Levite and an Elder be sent to survey the Government of the Moon, and that Warriston Johnstone and Parson Peters be the men, as a couple of learned Rabbis in Lunatics." Heedless of such mockery, the Harringtonians did not cease to put forth their ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... through several ages the Drama took different forms from time to time, as culture advanced. The earliest form was in what are called Plays of Miracles, or Miracle-Plays. These were mostly founded on events of Scripture, though the apocryphal gospels and legends of saints and martyrs were sometimes drawn upon for subjects or for embellishments. In these performances no regard was paid to the rules of natural probability; for, as the operation of supernatural power was assumed, this was held a sufficient ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... in the first century, denoted every deviation from the Christian faith. Pagans and Jews, as well as professors of apocryphal forms of the gospel, were called heretics. [201:3] But in the New Testament our attention is directed chiefly to errorists who in some way disturbed the Church, and adulterated the doctrine taught by our Lord and His apostles. ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... spiritual connection shattered to pieces in Protestantism, by part of the above-mentioned symbols being declared apocryphal, and only a few canonical!—and how, by their indifference to one of these, will they prepare us for the high ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... probably smelted it themselves in their rude bloomeries, or obtained it from the Phoenicians in small quantities in exchange for skins and food, or tin. We must, however, regard the stories told of the ancient British chariots armed with swords or scythes as altogether apocryphal. The existence of iron in sufficient quantity to be used for such a purpose is incompatible with contemporary facts, and unsupported by a single vestige remaining to our time. The country was then mostly forest, and the roads did not as yet exist upon which chariots could be used; whilst ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... in the Apocryphal books of 3 Esdras 4:36, 39 it is written that "all things call upon truth . . . and (all men) do well like of her works." Now God is the very truth according to John 14:6. Therefore all love God, and none ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... were a lot less trustworthy than the illuminated numbers. Anyone with a press could run one off, subbing in any apocryphal text he wanted — and who knew how accurate that translation was? Monks had an entire Papacy behind them, running a quality-assurance operation that had stood Europe in ...
— Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books • Cory Doctorow
... writings of the Jews were burnt, and gives a particular detail of the circumstances under which these were composed. He sets forth that he undertook to write all that had been done in the world since the beginning. It may be said that the books of Esdras are apocryphal, but in return it may be demanded, Has that conclusion been reached on evidence that will withstand modern criticism? In the early ages of Christianity, when the story of the fall of man was not considered as essential to the Christian system, and the doctrine of the ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... through the almost unexplored regions of Circassia and Georgia. The far-off shores of the Caspian were reached by some travelling traders, and the geographical knowledge they circulated on their return gave a new impulse to the growing spirit of adventure. Apocryphal as the narratives of Marco Polo and Mandeville appeared, there was a sufficient mixture of truth with exaggeration to stimulate the minds of men, ever greedy of gain, and the endless wealth of the grand khan and his people were the subjects of many ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... Michael, the archangel (Jude 9; 1 Thess. 4:16); angels, authorities, and powers—which are supposedly ranks and orders of angels (1 Pet. 3:22; Col. 1:16). In the Apocryphal books we find a hierarchy with seven archangels, including Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel. The fact that but one archangel is mentioned in the Scriptures proves that its doctrine of angels was not derived, as some supposed, ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... 110) the celebrated hero, Prince Yamato-dake, led an expedition against the Yemishi of the east. In commanding him to undertake this task, the Emperor, according to the Chronicles, made a speech which, owing to its Chinese tone, has been called apocryphal, though some, at any rate, of the statements it embodies are attested by modern observation of Ainu manners and customs. He spoke of the Yemishi as being the most powerful among the "eastern savages;" said that their "men and women lived together promiscuously," ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Europe. Lilith tempted to debauchery, and was variously known as child-strangler, child-stealer, and a witch who changed true offspring for fairy or phantom children.[A] The figure of the child-stealing witch occurs in an extremely ancient apocryphal book called the Testament of Soloman, and dates probably from the first or second century ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... obtain a lower or a higher grade hereafter, in proportion as we are more or less fitted by the exercise of our intellect to comprehend and execute the solemn agencies of God. The wise man is nearer to the angels than the fool is. This may be an apocryphal dogma, but it is not an ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... priest on the island of Cuba, and at Pentecost (Whitsunday) he arranged to go and preach and say mass in the new town of Sancti Spiritus. In looking for a text, he came across some verses in the Apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, which made him stop and think whether after all he was right in making the Indians work for him as slaves. These are ...
— Las Casas - 'The Apostle of the Indies' • Alice J. Knight
... (Revelation) is the revelation made through St. John to the seven churches of Asia. Many other pseudo-sacred books were current among the Christians, but the church has rejected all of these, and has termed them apocryphal. ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... reiterated invitation. Mackean was a good-looking elderly man, having a thin face and clear gray eye; such a man as may be ordinarily seen beside a collection-plate at a seceding meeting-house, a post which the said Mackean had occupied in his day. All Mackean's account of the murder is {p.238} apocryphal. Buchanan was a powerful man, and Mackean slender. It appeared that the latter had engaged Buchanan in writing, then suddenly clapped one hand on his eyes, and struck the fatal blow with the other. The throat of the deceased ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... Johnny's hidden treasure still remained as a superstition in the locality. Prospecting parties were continually made up to discover the unknown claim, but always from evidence and data altogether apocryphal. It was even alleged that a miner had one night seen the little figures of Johnny and Florry walking over the hilltop, hand in hand, but that they had vanished among the stars at the very moment ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... scientific France has not hesitated to paint the battles of Louis XIV. with similar hues; and England, though by no means fertile in angelic interpositions, delights to adorn the barren tracts of her more popular histories with apocryphal anecdotes. ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... doctrine. His books are now mutilated and falsified; they are but fragments collected by others who have appeared since. The Ellogians attributed to the heretic Corinthus the Gospel and the Apocalypse of St. John; this is why they reject them. The heretics of our last centuries reject as apocryphal several books which the Roman Catholics consider as true and sacred—such as the books of Tobias, Judith, Esther, Baruch, the Song of the Three Children in the Furnace, the History of Susannah, and that of the Idol Bel, the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, the first and second book of Maccabees; ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... cruelty, but appears to have been a prudent and capable administrator, who used no more rigour than was necessary to restrain the proverbially turbulent populations of Bassora and Cufa, Most of the anecdotes of his brutality and tyranny, which abound in Arab authors, are, in all probability, apocryphal. ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... Francis in a brilliant diplomatic career, seems to have been—when the clouds were thickening and every man's hand was against the fallen statesman—to insinuate that he was the anonymous personage who had accepted the apocryphal ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... increase yet further.[736] It must, however, be remembered that the younger Tavannes is not always a good authority; and that where, as in the present instance, the glory of his father is affected, he becomes altogether untrustworthy. If we reject his account as apocryphal, which apparently we must do, there still remains good reason to believe that the siege of Saint Jean d'Angely was agreed to by the majority of the Roman Catholic leaders from the sincere conviction that its reduction, to be followed by the still more important capture ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... fallen angels, foes of God and men, whose dwelling place was the upper air. Above these wicked spirits in high places, but below the heaven of Jehovah, was the paradise whither Enoch and Elijah were supposed to have been translated, and whence they would come again in the last days. The Jewish apocryphal book of Enoch which was written probably about a century and a half before the birth of Christ, and is explicitly quoted in the Epistle of Jude contains a minute account of the final judgment, including in its scope this whole scenery and all these agents, and closely anticipating ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... quite see what difference the fact of tea being served in one place or another can make to apocryphal visitors, so, with what cheerfulness she can muster, she asks the others which they would prefer. And at once, a little to her surprise, Nancy and Gerald answer simultaneously, "Oh, let us have tea on the ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... livery stable at Smithfield. There is no inherent improbability in the tale. Dr. Johnson's amplified version, in which Shakespeare was represented as organising a service of boys for the purpose of tending visitors' horses, sounds apocryphal. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... gossamer for "Editor" Huneker. That Huneker in false whiskers is inimitable, incomparable, almost indescribable. On the one hand, he is a prodigy of learning, a veritable warehouse of musical information, true, half-true and apocryphal; on the other hand, he is a jester who delights in reducing all learning to absurdity. Reading him somehow suggests hearing a Bach mass rescored for two fifes, a tambourine in B, a wind machine, two tenor harps, a contrabass oboe, two banjos, eight tubas and the usual clergy and ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... must have been naturally very deficient in vitality. It certainly did not kill Byron, though it was a knock-down blow; he rose from that combat from earth, like Antaeus, all the stronger for it. The story of its having killed Keats, though embalmed in verse, is apocryphal; and if such blows were not fatal in those times, still less so are they nowadays. On the other hand, if authors are difficult to slay, it is infinitely harder work to give them life by what the doctors term ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... Henniker, Jowett, Light, Macworth, Irby and Mangles, Carne, and Wilson, have not only contributed valuable materials, but also lent the aid of their names to correct or to conform the statements of some of the more apocryphal among their predecessors. ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... to me how this person forces himself on my company, harasses me with tales that have no more application to me than the legend of the Cid, and may be as apocryphal as the ballad ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... unto himself," and by the test of enlightened reason, to form his own unbiased judgment of all things natural and spiritual: second, that the reputation of the Bishops who extracted these books from the original New Testament, under the pretence of being Apocryphal, and forbade them to be read by the people, is proved by authentic impartial history too odious to entitle them to any deference. Since the Nicene Council, by a pious fraud, which I shall further allude to, suppressed these books, ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... canonical books of the Old Testament were written in Hebrew. The apocryphal books were produced either in a corrupted dialect, or ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... of Esdras are apocryphal; the books of Ezra and Nehemiah are inspired, and are included in the canonical Scriptures. 2. Under Edward VI., a confession of faith was drawn up by Cranmer and Ridley, 1551, approved by the king and a commission of divines, which was published in forty-two articles, ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... been deemed apocryphal. Much has been said concerning the doubtful character of that writer. He wrote in the first century of the Christian church, and Tertullian, St Ereneus, Clemens Alexandrius, Pico di Mirandola, and many learned and ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... "Shall I indorse this check on the back?" Fifty times had Sam Clark called to her, "Where'd you steal that hat?" Fifty times had the mention of Barney Cahoon, the town drayman, like a nickel in a slot produced from Kennicott the apocryphal story of Barney's directing a minister, "Come down to the depot and get your case of religious ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... preaching and martyrdom of St. Thomas in S. India as "occurrences very far from invalidated by any arguments yet adduced against the truth of the tradition." I do not know if the date is ascertainable of the very remarkable legend of St. Thomas in the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, but it is presumably very old, though subsequent to the translation of the relics (real or supposed) to Edessa, in the year 394, which is alluded to in the story. And it is worthy of note that this legend places the martyrdom and original burial-place ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... of articles of art, antiquarianism, and vertu, Hazlitt has only good-natured banter. Of what a strange jumble of apocryphal treasures the painter believed himself the possessor! And he was without the doubts and anxieties of ordinary collectors. They strive to believe and to cast aside all suspicion. But Cosway believed without the slightest effort; he was troubled by no hint of suspicion. His relics ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... The three apocryphal portions of Daniel considered in this book have often been hardly judged. One of them had almost become a byword of contempt for fabulous inventiveness. Yet the writer hopes that he has succeeded ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... word be true Of all the Wizard has told you, 490 Or but one single circumstance In all th' apocryphal romance, May dreadful earthquakes swallow down This vessel, that is all your own; Or may the heavens fall, and cover 495 These ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... on the vaults and lunettes of the arches in the outer narthex of the church portray scenes from the life of Christ, as recorded in the canonical and the apocryphal Gospels, while on the faces and soffits of the arches are depicted the figures of saints 'who desired to look into these things.' Scenes from the Saviour's life are also portrayed in the two bays to ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... hearts in his own way. If He save souls in a quiet way, I shall be happy; if in the midst of cries and tears, still I will bless his name. One painful thing has occurred: a man who pretends to be a missionary for Israel, and who brings forward the apocryphal book of Enoch, has been among my people in my absence, and many have been led after him. How humbling is this to them and to me! Lord, what is man! This may be blessed, 1st, to discover chaff which we thought to be wheat; 2nd, to lead some to greater distrust ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... doctrine of original sin is plainly evinced from scripture, canonical and apocryphal, Job xiv. 4. Psal. li. 5. Rom. v. 12. etc. 1 Cor xv. 21. John iii. 6. Apocrypha Eccles. xxv. {illegible}6; asserted in our church standards, illustrated and defended by many able divines (both ancient and modern) and by our British poets excellently ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... rise to much discussion. The testi- mony of Augustine and Jerome is to the effect that Jesus wrote nothing. The correspondence was rejected as apocryphal by Pope Gelasius and a Roman Synod (c. 495), though, it is true, this view has not been shared universally by the Roman church (Tillemont, Memoires, i. 3, pp. 990 ff ). Amongst Evangelicals the spuriousness ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... widow of Manasseh, who delivered her native city of Bethulia from the Assyrian Holofernes, lulling him to sleep with her charms and then striking off his drunken head with a falchion, though an Apocryphal personage, is the most popular of Israelitish heroines. The record shows the operas "Judith und Holofernes" by Leopold Kotzeluch (1799), "Giuditta" by S. Levi (1844), Achille Peri (1860), Righi (1871), and Sarri (1875). Naumann wrote a "Judith" ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... unqualified" undoubtedly included the first critic of the age, Dryden. Lord Buckhurst is also named as an admirer—pleasing anecdotes respecting the practical expression of his admiration, and of Sir John Denham's, seem apocryphal. ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... to the school of philosophy to which he belonged. External evidence seems to testify that he was an Epicurean; but internal would lead us to classify him with the Platonic. Unscrupulous in argument, confounding canonical gospels with apocryphal, and Christians with heretical sects, delighting in searching for contradictions, incapable of understanding the deeper aspects of Christianity, he has united in his attack all known objections, making use of minute criticism, philosophical theory, piquant sarcasm, and ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... springs, and the springs are dreadful. They bubble up salts and senna. I never knew anything that pretended to be water that was half as bad. It has no one redeeming quality. It is bitter. It is greasy. Every spring is worse than the last, whichever end you begin at. They told apocryphal stories of people's drinking sixteen glasses before breakfast; and yet it may have been true; for, if one could bring himself to the point of drinking one glass of it, I should suppose it would have taken such a force to enable him to do it ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... business looked apocryphal, and that a man does not, in real life, walk into a cellar door at four in the morning and come out of it with another man's cheque for close upon a hundred pounds. But he was quite easy and sneering. 'Set your mind at rest,' says he, 'I will stay with you till the banks open and cash the cheque ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... itself; and every unprejudiced mind must be convinced that 'the evidence is fatal to the claims' involved in this identification. Out of five reviews or notices of the work which I have read, only one seems to refer to our Supernatural Religion. The other four are plainly dealing with some apocryphal work, bearing the same name and often using the same language, but in its main characteristics quite different from and much more authentic ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... is the broad moral distinction between these soi-disant steady men, and those whom they are pleased to consider as "rowing" characters? it has always seemed to me rather apocryphal. If a man thinks proper to amuse himself with a chorus in his own rooms at one o'clock in the morning, it seems hardly material whether it be Greek or English—Sophocles or Tom Moore. It's a matter of taste, and tastes differ. Nor do I think the morality of Horace or Aristophanes, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... prominent topics in the history of the county, supply but few materials which may not be found in records that already exist. Yet there are incidents connected with them which the historian has left unrecorded; occurrences, it might be, too trivial or too apocryphal for his pen. One of the main events in the following narrative, though not found amongst written and authenticated records, the author has listened to when a child, with a vigorous and greedy appetite for wonder,—one ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... become KRANS; this was quickly abandoned when someone objected that 'krans' meant 'funeral wreath' in Swedish (though some Swedish speakers have since said it means simply 'wreath'; this part of the story may be apocryphal). Ultimately DEC picked TOPS-20 as the name of the operating system, and it was as TOPS-20 that it was marketed. The hacker community, mindful of its origins, quickly dubbed it TWENEX (a contraction of 'twenty TENEX'), even though ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... learned to swim. Peacock also notices his habit of floating paper boats, and gives an amusing description of the boredom suffered by Hogg on occasions when Shelley would stop by the side of a pond or mere to float a mimic navy. The not altogether apocryphal story of his having once constructed a boat out of a bank-post-bill, and launched it on the lake in Kensington Gardens, deserves to be alluded to in ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... book. For the same reasons which have caused the retention of these passages, no alterations have been made in the citations from Scripture, which being translations from the Vulgate, necessarily differ in phraseology from the version in use among ourselves. The apocryphal books too are quoted, and the story of Bel and the Dragon referred to as a part of the prophecy of Daniel; but what is of consequence to observe, is, that doctrines are founded on these translations, and on those very points in which they differ ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... A-C^4, paged. The first edition of these probably apocryphal jests appeared in 1607: the present appears to be ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... which the "13 chapters" formed the first CHUAN, adding that there were two other CHUAN besides. This has brought forth a theory, that the bulk of these 82 chapters consisted of other writings of Sun Tzu — we should call them apocryphal — similar to the WEN TA, of which a specimen dealing with the Nine Situations [15] is preserved in the T'UNG TIEN, and another in Ho Shin's commentary. It is suggested that before his interview with Ho Lu, ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... all more or less apocryphal, have been related respecting the first appearance of Joseph Andrews, and the sum paid to the author for the copyright. A reference to the original assignment, now in the Forster Library at South Kensington, definitely settles the latter point. The amount in "lawful Money of Great ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... the manager's office, carrying the message one way: "Madame Patti will not put on her slippers until she is paid," returning the other way with a thousand dollars; coming again to the manager with: "Madame has one slipper on, but will not put on the other till she has her fee"—and so on. Doubtless apocryphal and yet only a bit fanciful and exaggerated. Yet it was known in the inner operatic circles in 1885 that Colonel Mapleson had succeeded in getting himself pretty deeply into her debt. How he did it the anecdotes of the ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... country, and her listeners realized that she was verging perilously close to confidences. Mary Carmichael, who dreaded missing any detail of the chronicle that dealt with paw in the role of apocryphal duke, ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... glean much from. I, however, re-perused his volume carefully, and extracted notes. Some of the stories inserted in his work have thrown an air of discredit over it, and caused the whole work to be regarded in rather an apocryphal light. I think there is internal evidence enough in his narrative to prove that he visited the chief portions of country described. But he probably neglected to keep diurnal notes. When in London, starvation stared him in the face. Those ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... contains an anecdote which, though probably apocryphal, may as well be inserted here. It is said that when Wolfe was riding over the field of Culloden with the Duke of Cumberland they observed a Highlander, who, although severely wounded, was able to sit up, ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... power of witty expression to a degree excelling that of the writers he admired, and in quality of product, if not in quantity (for the greater part of the "funny stories" attributed to him, thank heaven, are apocryphal) he stands in the front rank of the ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... oracle, and does injustice to the old heathen prophet. He spake no word whatever about dominion; all he dared conjecture for his city was safety. Even that is put in a highly hypothetical mood. The augury begins with an "if," regarding the apocryphal story of Romulus and the twelve vultures. But whether the fable of the vultures be true or not, the augury of twelve centuries of safety deduced from it is undeniably false, whether it refers to the material city, or to the political constitution then established. The city then built ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... commerce of the world. The voyages of the two Zenos, over the northern seas, in the 14th century, extending to Greenland, appear to be well attested by the archives of that ancient city. The episode of Estotiland, which is apparently used as a synonyme for Vinland, has been generally deemed apocryphal, or of a date posterior to the other incidents described. To examine and set in order both the true and the intercalated parts of these curious ancient voyages, would involve no little degree of research, ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... by remarking that there were a good many stories current about him; some of them were true, but most of them apocryphal. ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Suetonius, reporting the traditions of the following century; but the authority is doubtful, and the story, like so many others, is perhaps apocryphal. ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... very earliest contribution to light literature was an apocryphal article which he is said to have written when about eighteen or nineteen. Just then there came into notice a voracious insect, gifted with peculiar powers against pear-trees. Knowing that his uncle was especially concerned in fruit culture, Hawthorne wrote, and sent from ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... principles. Clement, the reputed disciple of the Apostles Peter and Paul, is reported—in the "Liber Pontificalis" or "Lives of the Popes;" dating from the early years of the sixth century—to have made provision for preserving the "Acts of the Martyrs." Apocryphal as this account seems, yet the honest reader of Eusebius must confess that the idea was no novel one in the second century, as is manifest from the well-known letter narrating the sufferings of the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne. Space would now fail us to trace ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... if there had not been a single dissenter in the kingdom, might well have been received with favour. For the Church had, in her sixth Article, declared that the canonical books were, and that the Apocryphal books were not, entitled to be called Holy Scriptures, and to be regarded as the rule of faith. Even this reform, however, the High Churchmen were determined to oppose. They asked, in pamphlets which covered the counters of Paternoster ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... trouble them not at all. Some agents sent into the adjacent districts have used this fancied resemblance; and as in a rural propaganda the object is less to strike fair than to strike hard, Laurent Goussard's version, apocryphal as it is, is hawked about the country villages with a coolness that admits ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... armies do not make their appearance?" I am regarded as an idiot for venturing to discredit a notorious fact. If I dared, I would venture to suggest to some of my warlike friends that a town which simply defends itself by shutting its gates, firing into space, and waiting for apocryphal armies, is not acting a very ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... Lucian, in his 'Hermotimus,' speaks of these golden mountains as an apocryphal land of ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... Catholic mother, he served, after learning what Trinity College, Dublin, could offer him, a long apprenticeship to politics in the upper part of Grub Street. The story that he applied, along with Hume, for Adam Smith's chair at Glasgow seems apocryphal; though the Dissertation on the Sublime and the Beautiful (1756) shows his singular fitness for the studies that Hutcheson had made the special possession of the Scottish school. It was in Grub Street that he appears to have attained ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... composition. It is no longer possible for any one to assert that the second part of the book of Isaiah was written by Isaiah. The book of Daniel, which, according to all orthodox tenets, relates to the period of the captivity, is an apocryphal work composed in the year 169 or 170 B.C. The book of Judith is an historical impossibility. The attribution of the Pentateuch to Moses does not bear investigation, and to deny that several parts of Genesis are mystical in their meaning is equivalent to admitting as actual realities descriptions ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... feel the pulse of Paris. One day after dinner, Chasles invited me to go into town with him, and when we arrived he took a carriage and drove about with me for two hours observing the prevailing mood. We heard countless anecdotes, most of them apocryphal, but reflecting the beliefs of the moment: The Empress had sent three milliards (!) in French gold to the Bank of England. The Emperor, who was jealous of Macmahon since the latter had rescued him at Magenta, had taken the command of the Turcos from the Marshal, although the latter had said in ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... horns, when seen and reported by the laity, give rise to most amusing exaggerations and descriptions. The following account is given in New South Wales, obviously embellished with apocryphal details by some facetious journalist: The child, five weeks old, was born with hair two inches long all over the body; his features were fiendish and his eyes shone like beads beneath his shaggy brows. He had a tail 18 inches long, horns from the skull, a full set of teeth, and ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... thirteen seconds are no more than two minutes and thirteen seconds,—when I have said all I can about them; and that this plea, though it might save me dramatically, will damn me biographically, rendering my book from this very moment, a professed Romance, which, before, was a book apocryphal:—If I am thus pressed—I then put an end to the whole objection and controversy about it all at once,—by acquainting him, that Obadiah had not got above threescore yards from the stable-yard, before he met with Dr. Slop;—and indeed ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... a fabulous musical instrument described in an apocryphal letter of St Jerome to Dardanus,[1] and illustrated in a series of illuminated MSS. of the 9th to the 11th century, together with other instruments described in the same letter. These MSS. are the Psalter of Emmeran, 9th century, described by Martin Gerbert,[2] who gives a few illustrations ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... assistance, but on principle she was determined to make them independent of her, and she had always made it known that she regarded it as her duty to Humfrey that her Hiltonbury property should be destined—if not to the apocryphal American Charlecote—to a relation of ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said the glover in high wrath; "thy loves and thy battles are alike apocryphal. If thou must needs lie, which I think is thy nature, canst thou invent no falsehood that may at least do thee some credit? Do I not see through thee, as I could see the light through the horn of a base lantern? Do I not know, thou filthy weaver of rotten ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... But that very silence was construed into an acknowledgment of the truth of the words of the calumny. "The malignant commentators on this spurious text," says Marshall, "would not admit the possibility of its being apocryphal." ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... that he did not believe in the existence of these shoals; it is not improbable, therefore, that, with an idea of shortening his passage, he might have attempted to have gone nearer to them than prudence would justify, and thus tempted the danger which he held to be apocryphal. They might also have neglected to sound sufficiently often, an error which I have frequently witnessed, and which arises from a mistaken wish to save trouble and time—a poor excuse for risking the loss of lives and property. I am sure this will not be the case with ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... certain apocryphal letters ascribed to Phalaris, the tyrant, and published at Oxford, in 1718, by Charles Boyle. There was an edition in 1777 by Walckenaer; another in 1823, by G. H. Schaefer, with notes by Boyle and others. Bentley maintained that the letters were ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... deposits, and voted against Benton's expunging resolutions, but on all the regular and recognized party issues he was fully committed as a Democrat, and was, moreover, a nullifier. The sole proof of his Whiggery was the apocryphal statement that he wept when Clay failed to receive the nomination, while his political position was perfectly understood by the men who nominated him. There was one policy only on which they were perfectly agreed, and that was the policy of ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... latter. This recurrence of eclipses after intervals of 18.03 years is called the Saros, and was known to the Chaldeans. We do not know whether it was known to the Hebrews prior to their captivity in Babylon, but possibly the statement of the wise king, already quoted from the Apocryphal "Wisdom of Solomon," may ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... lived in the third century of our era. The best known anecdote of him is that his disciples asked him if he were not sometimes levitated, and he laughed, and said, "No; but he was no fool who persuaded you of this." Instead of Plotinus, we are referred to a mass of Jewish and anti-Christian apocryphal traditions, which have the same common point—the assertion of the existence of the phenomenon of levitation. Apollonius of Tyana is also said to have been a highly accomplished medium. We are next presented with a list of forty "levitated" persons, canonized or beatified ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... he composed on Beatrice, is preserved in the above singular volume. There can be no longer any doubt of the story of Beatrice; but the sonnet and the passion must be "classed among curious natural phenomena," or how far apocryphal, remains ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... related to somebody? Is not every Scotchman descended from some king, kemp, or cow-stealer of old, by his own account at least? Why, the writer would even go so far as to bet a trifle that the poor creature who ridicules Boee's supposed ancestry has one of his own, at least, as grand and as apocryphal as old ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... Zodiac, but into the more homely circle of European legend; and both Thor and Odin fight with dragons, as Apollo did with Python, the great scaly snake, Achilles with the Scamander, and Bellerophon with the Chimæra. In the apocryphal book of Esther, dragons herald "a day of darkness and obscurity"; and St. George of England, a problematic Cappadocian Prince, was originally only a varying form of Mithras. Jehovah is said to have "cut ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... longer came from Europe. It ceased when I returned from France. Its former payment was considered apocryphal by Longmeadow, whose very maids—too white, with a pink spot in each cheek—smiled with reserved amusement at a student who thought it possible he could ever be a king. I spoke to nobody but Pastor Storrs about my own convictions. But local newspapers, ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... almost commonplace, if the reader did not take pains to remember what it all meant. Nowhere is there anything like posing for effect; the nearest approach to it is in the initial entry in the diary of that excellent Irishman, Private Patrick Gass,—and parts of this have been branded as apocryphal, the interpolation of ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... show the field that it covers at present. First comes a fascicule of Greek texts, the mathematical papyrus of Akmim, explained and commented by M. Baillet; a long fragment of the Greek text of the Book of Enoch, remains of the apocryphal Gospel and Apocalypse of St. Peter, reproduced by M. Bouriant. All these works are of extreme importance for primitive church history. Arab archology is represented by memoirs of M. Casonova on an Arab globe, on sixteen Arab steles, and especially by ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... copy of the apocryphal book of Enoch contains a poem, which is prefixed to the body of that work, and which the learned author of "Nimrod" supposes to be authentic. It certainly dates from a vast antiquity. It is ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... reappears in the apocryphal Life of Esop, by Planudes, the only difference being that Esop's master is invited to a feast, instead of receiving a present of game, upon which Esop exclaims: "Alas! I see two crows, and I am beaten; ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... same constitution with himself" and died of the disorder which proved fatal to him, it is probable that the qualities inherited from his mother had much to do with the future philosopher's eminence. It is curious, however, that her estimate of her son in her only recorded, and perhaps slightly apocryphal utterance, is of a somewhat unexpected character. "Our Davie's a fine goodnatured crater, but uncommon wake-minded." The first part of the judgment was indeed verified by "Davie's" whole life; but one might seek in vain for signs of what is commonly understood as ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... with great heat; "Tobit and his dog baith are altogether heathenish and apocryphal, and none but a prelatist or a papist would draw them into question. I doubt I hae been mista'en ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... weighed critically; writings containing doctrines acceptable to the majority of Christians were quoted as authoritative while writings which supplied no dogmatic want were overlooked, or perhaps condemned as apocryphal. A striking instance of this is furnished by the fortunes of the Apocalypse. Although perhaps the best authenticated work in the New Testament collection, its millenarian doctrines caused it to become unpopular as the Church gradually ceased to look for the ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... timbered with iron-bark and box. Now, since leaving the Einasleih they had not seen a single box or iron-bark tree, or a stone. Frank Jardine therefore determined to push out to thenorth-east, and again seek this seemingly apocryphal stream. After travelling for eight miles through sandy ridges, scrubby and timbered with blood-wood, messmate, and melaleuca (upright-leaved) they struck a sandy creek, bearing north; this they followed for five miles, when it turned due west, as if a tributary of the stream they had left in the ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... number of a hundred-pound bank-note, and It would be as safe to offer the same sum to any bird that could furnish evidence of attaching a definite meaning to any seven of his seventy sentences. On close investigation, the stories of conversational parrots prove as apocryphal as Katy-King legends and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... references to other writers, as early as the author of the Book of Job, and as late as John Dennys, who betrayed to the world THE SECRETS OF ANGLING in 1613. Walton further seasoned his book with fragments of information about fish and fishing, more or less apocryphal, gathered from Aelian, Pliny, Plutarch, Sir Francis Bacon, Dubravius, Gesner, Rondeletius, the learned Aldrovandus, the venerable Bede, the divine Du Bartas, and many others. He borrowed freely for ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... books, and the persons, and characters of authors, and witnesses, require more application, and understanding, than falls to the share of the bulk of mankind; or else are very precarious in themselves, since we know that in the first centuries there were numberless forged Gospels, and Apocryphal writings imposed upon the credulous as apostolic and authentic; and there were in the Apostles times, as many, and as great heresies and schisms as perhaps have been since in any age of the Church. So that, setting aside ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... XVII. A.D. 1398. Lyle acknowledges that he has taken some liberties with the oral version, but does not state what they were, beyond that they consisted merely in 'smoothing down.' Would that he had left it 'in the ROUGH!' The last verse has every appearance of being apocryphal; it looks like one of those benedictory verses with which minstrels were, and still are, in the habit of concluding their songs. Lyle says the tune 'is pleasing, and peculiar to the ballad.' A homely version, presenting ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell |
