"Untruth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they would all have so wished;—have so wished, or else have abstained from all professional intercourse in the matter. I cannot understand how any gentleman can be willing to use his intellect for the propagation of untruth, and to be paid for so using it. As to Mr. Chaffanbrass and Mr. Solomon Aram,—to them the escape of a criminal under their auspices would of course be a matter of triumph. To such work for many years had they applied their sharp intellects ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... answered, cursing the unnecessary explanations that he had given when he had announced his intention of going to Washington, and wondering where he had read that clever liars give details, but that the cleverest do not. It did not hurt him half as much to tell May an untruth as to see her trying to pretend that she ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... of God be with you, amen. I did write unto you of late, and told you what extremity the parliament had concluded upon concerning religion, suppressing the truth, and setting forth the untruth; intending to cause all men, by extremity, to forswear themselves; and to take again for the head of the church him that is neither head nor member of it, but a very enemy, as the word of God and all ancient writers do record. And for lack of law and ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... I don't say 'praps,' when people go settin' class agin class. Praps nobody's windows was broke! Evidence! Hasn't our minister told us George Allen has been to London? He wouldn't tell us an untruth. Due respec', Brother Scotton—no lawyering—none of that—of them functions—'specially when it's infidels and ricks may be ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... but dignity has often been used as a stalking horse for untruth. King nodded, and it was not possible to judge by his expression whether he ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... 'You know you have been doing wrong, or you wouldn't be driven to uttering an untruth to me. That does grieve me. I'd rather be three months ill, than hear ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... said. "It is pleasanter indoors." And, stopping with this single untruth, he permitted himself the briefest glance about the room; then his eyes ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... it so, my lord," said the Duke, who, with many faults, would have disdained an untruth; "he seemed to desire to detain his Majesty, who, on the contrary, appeared to wish to mount his horse; but they have found pistols on his person, contrary to the proclamation, and, as it proves to be by Nigel Olifaunt, of whose ungoverned ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... difficulty was to find one beautiful enough; but the Prince of Spirits promised to supply one as soon as Zeyn should bring him a maiden at least fifteen years old, and of perfect beauty; only the maiden must not be vain of her charms, and she must never have told an untruth. Zeyn employed his magic mirror, and for a long time without success, as it always became blurred when he looked into it in the presence of a girl. At last he found one whose image was faithfully and brilliantly reflected—whose modesty and truthfulness were attested by the mirror. He took her ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... have not understood me," said his mother, not knowing how to justify herself. "You have not understood me, Nikolenka. It is your happiness I wish for," she added, feeling that she was telling an untruth and was becoming entangled. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... And she, one of Odin's Valkyries, had been wed to one who was not the bravest hero in the world, and she to whom untruth might not come had been deceived. She was silent now, and all the pride that was in her ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... said, "were used commonly for the singular because the singular was too grand and authoritative for ordinary use, it was no doubt a pity that the language should be so injured; but there could be no untruth in such usage; and it was better that at any rate the young should adhere to the manner of speech which was common among those with whom they lived." Thus Marion was saved from the "thees" and the "thous," and ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... moment silently; should he leave her under such a misunderstanding? It would be easier for them both, but he had intended no untruth. How was it possible to make such a woman understand? She was quiet now, and he was stealing away from her with a ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... her a second untruth, I interrupted her by saying, "I trapped your brother into acknowledging ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... a difficulty, well, it is a difficulty, and nothing more. A difficulty does not destroy a thesis that is solidly founded. Once a truth is clearly established, not all the difficulties in the world can make it an untruth. A difficulty as to the truth revealed argues an imperfect intelligence; it is idle to complain that we are finite. A difficulty regarding the infallible Church should not make her less infallible in our ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... little effort. Then Heine's notion, which seemed so brilliant at first, that the Dutchman could be redeemed by the unshakable love of a woman, has now all the disagreeable staleness of a decrepit and obvious untruth. It has no essential verity to give it validity, it is no symbol of a fact which is immediately and deeply felt to be a fact. The condition of redemption is entirely arbitrary: it might as reasonably be that the Dutchman should find a woman who would not shrink from eating his weather-stained ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... are no taverns nor flower-boats nor any places of dissipation in our neighborhood. No doubt Ming-Y has found some amiable youth of his own age with whom to spend his evenings, and only told me an untruth for fear that I would not otherwise permit him to leave my residence. I beg that you will say nothing to him until I shall have sought to discover this mystery; and this very evening I shall send my servant to follow after him, and to watch whither ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... Carnot has noticed this untruth, and attributes it to mere forgetfulness. We leave it to him to reconcile his very charitable supposition with what he elsewhere says of the remarkable excellence of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... concerned, believing that their daughter was telling them an untruth, and threatened to punish her for it, but she insisted so strongly that she saw and played with a "funny little boy, with lots of brass buttons on his jacket," that they finally gave up threatening and ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... the fashion of the time, on the need of never forgetting her duty to her God in her affection to her mother, Susan trusting that she would never let herself be led away to the Romish faith, and Richard warning her strongly against untruth and falsehood, though she must be exposed to cruel perplexities as to the right— "But if thou be true to man, thou wilt be true to God," he said. "If thou be false to man, thou wilt soon be ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... there. His capacity and opportunities for observation, and for clearly estimating the value of the facts coming under his notice were, of course, vastly superior to mine, and as he states the case stronger than I dare to, for fear of being accused of exaggeration and downright untruth, I reproduce the major part of his testimony—embodying also his official report to medical headquarters at Richmond—that my readers may know how the prison appeared to the eyes of one who, though a bitter Rebel, was still ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... intention to deceive her, to say that the publishers had advanced him five pounds. But that would be his first word of untruth to Amy, and why should he be guilty of it? He told her all that had happened. The result of this frankness was something that he had not ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... previously a doubt as to the other man who stood between himself and Anna, that doubt was now removed, and laying aside all thoughts of self, he exclaimed: "I tell you there is a great wrong somewhere. Arthur never told an untruth; he thought that you refused him; he thinks so still, and I shall never rest till I have solved the mystery. I will ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... an untruth about it now. Do you think I am blind, that I do not notice all your little manoeuvres? You remain alone with him for very long at a time. Just now, I was there. I saw you." He dropped his voice as ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... be thankful to the daily press which now disseminates the news of such things promptly, instead of allowing it to travel slowly by word of mouth, as it did in less advanced times—a process in which a little truth becomes very shortly a mighty untruth. Even between Denver and Omaha he had observed that the wonder-tales of this person grew apace, thus proving the inaccuracy of the human mind as a reporter of fact. Without the check of an unemotional daily press Mr. Gridley suspected that the poor creature's performances would ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... mean by cannot? 1. If thou meanest thou hast no strength to do it, thou hast said an untruth, for "greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world" (1 John 4:4). 2. If thou meanest thou hast no will, then thou art out also; for every Christian, in his right mind, is a willing man, and the day of God's power hath made him so (Psa ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Mark Hurdlestone was, at this period, still unbent with age, and he rose from his seat, his face flushed with anger at being detected in sanctioning an untruth. His quick eye recognised his brother, and he motioned to him to take a seat ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... to humble the enemies of our king, the Spaniards," he replied, and in this he was not telling an untruth, because the colonization in Virginia had for one of its aims the destruction of Spanish settlements in the ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... the enormous French revolution meant only that! The man was 'given up to strong delusion that he should believe a lie;' a fearful but most sure thing. He did not know true from false now when he looked at them; the fearfulest penalty a man pays for yielding to untruth of heart. Self and false ambition had now become his god: self-deception once yielded to, all other deceptions follow naturally, more and more. What a paltry patch-work of theatrical paper-mantles, tinsel and mummery, had this man wrapped his own reality in, thinking to make ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... Annie, hoarsely, after an effort, as if the untruth would not come easily. "I am worse than Mrs. Munger," ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... sun is shinin' yet, and them jiggers in the brush is chirpin' and the air is fine, but I ain't thinkin' poetical. I'd sure hate to have a real lady read what I'm thinkin', if it was in a book. 'Them that sets on the eggs of untruth,' as the parson says, 'sure hatches lies.' Jest yesterday I was tellin' in Usher how me bronc piled me when I'd been ridin' the baggage, which was kind of a hoss-lie. I must 'a' ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... series of tricks—his shooting, skating, etc., all a sham. Even when found out as an impostor before all the keepers and others, we find him impudently saying, "I'll tell you what I shall do to get up my shooting again." The fellow never had any shooting to get up. But the mere habit of untruth was ingrained in the man. His undignified race, in a dressing-gown, round the Crescent was no doubt concealed from Arabella—she would never have got over that! As a display of cowardice it was only matched by his ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... course, that your father and I spent our boyhood in Burbridge. Once I found that he had told me an untruth and we had our difference out, as boys will; and, as I was in the right, he confessed the lie before I let him up. That defeat was a hurt to his egoism that he could not forget. He was that way, ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... had been asked at that time why she wanted it, she would probably have told an untruth. She was rather given, by the way, to telling untruths. Had she, in fact, given a reason at all, she would perforce have left the straight path, because she had ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... me, for no one ever is ready to believe anything that can diminish his self-esteem—and why should you believe me? I frankly confess that I do not hesitate to lie when I hope to gain more by untruth than by that much-belauded and divine truth, which, according to your favorite Plato, is allied to all earthly beauty; but it is often just as useless as beauty itself, for the useful and the beautiful exclude each other in a thousand cases, for ten when they coincide. There, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... paltry speculation is at bottom, if we will count well, not yet two centuries old in the world" [Footnote: Sartor Resartus: "The Everlasting No" Past and Present: "Happy" Leaving aside this last statement, which is an irrelevant untruth, we probably feel an instinctive sympathy with Carlyle, and a sort of shame that we should have thought of happiness as the goal of conduct. Carlyle goes so far in his tirades as to call our happiness-morality a "pig philosophy," ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... influence on me was most beneficial. It was a pity it did not last longer. To give a single instance: as a child I was in the habit of telling lies.... In Yakov's presence I could not bring my tongue to utter an untruth. What I particularly loved was walking alone with him, or pacing by his side up and down the room, listening while he, not looking at me, read poetry in his soft, intense voice. It positively seemed to me that we were slowly, gradually, getting away from the earth, and soaring away to some ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... sense of the untruth of this present life, that it may come to my putting an end to myself." The ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... had a share in the building of that temple," Monsignor continued, "than to have won a campaign against the English. This is a victory, not of one race over another, but of the faith over heresy, truth over untruth. It will be the Christ-like glory of Ireland to give back to England one day the faith which a corrupt king destroyed, for which we have suffered crucifixion. No soul ever loses by climbing ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... teacher, "the fault is mine. I led young Lauriston away to"—he stopped: it would scarcely help his friend's cause to say that he had been helping him at his lessons; thus he continued, "to show him my lists"—which was not an untruth, for he had shown the copy ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... refuse, I will assuredly hang you on the court-yard gate the moment we gain possession thereof. Now, say which way went they?" I was sore put to it, for it was like betraying innocent blood to tell these savage men the course my godchild pursued in her escape; and yet to tell an untruth was repugnant to my nature, and I said to the captain, "It is a hard matter for me to point out where my friends ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... been used to discredit Luke's narrative. It is a remarkable canon of criticism that a reporter is responsible for the truthfulness of assertions which he reports, and that, if he has occasion to report truthfully an untruth, he is convicted of the untruth which he truthfully reports. Luke is responsible for telling what these people found it convenient to say; they are responsible for its veracity. But they did not say quite as much as is sometimes supposed. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... face, and then retreating left it pale again, but she was too proud to deny the charge. She would not utter an untruth nor an evasion even on so delicate a subject. There was an armed truce of silence between them for a few minutes, till the evil genius of the Secretary rose and he felt again that desire to subject her will ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... the steward if you cannot find your chairs, young woman; these are mine, engaged and paid for." With that, she prepared to seat herself with the help of the maid, who was blushing furiously, mortified by the flagrant untruth of ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... depends on the condition of your stomach," said she. "If it is as full as you say it is, and I know you wouldn't tell me an untruth, not even timid Whitefoot has anything to fear from you." Then she told all the little people to put aside their ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... to avoid betraying his real thoughts, De Guiche had recourse to the only defense which a man taken by surprise really has, and accordingly told an untruth. "I do not find Madame," he said, "either good or bad looking, yet rather good than ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... into a little scornful laugh: 'Arthur, my lord, Arthur, the faultless King, That passionate perfection, my good lord - But who can gaze upon the Sun in heaven? He never spake word of reproach to me, He never had a glimpse of mine untruth, He cares not for me: only here to-day There gleam'd a vague suspicion in his eyes: Some meddling rogue has tamper'd with him—else Rapt in this fancy of his Table Round, And swearing men to vows ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... [fellow-commoners] are popularly denominated "empty bottles," the first word of the appellation being an adjective, though were it taken as a verb there would be no untruth in it.—Bristed's Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... Burton. I am hard pressed at present, and I know no one else of whom I can ask a certain question, if I cannot ask it of you. I think that you will answer me truly, if you answer me at all. I do not think you would flatter me, or tell me an untruth." ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... must choose; yet how can I know I decide rightly? When heart and conscience stand opposed, any decision means sacrifice and pain. I meant those hasty words wrung out of me in shame, and spoken yonder; I meant them then, and yet they haunt me like so many sheeted ghosts. 'Tis not their untruth, but the thought will not down that the real cause of their utterance was not the wrong done ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... in discharging. There ought to be a far deeper consciousness of our fundamental unity. They talk a great deal about 'the rivalries of jarring sects.' I believe that is such an enormous exaggeration that it is an untruth. There is rivalry, but you know as well as I do that, shabby and shameful as it is, it is a kind of commercial rivalry between contiguous places of worship, be they chapels or churches, be they buildings belonging to the same or to different denominations. I, for my part, after ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... is a small circle around the imperial presence said to be exempt from corruption; and there may possibly be a few dignitaries of the government, in remote parts of the empire, who will not tell an untruth unless in their official correspondence, or steal except to make up what they consider due to them for public services; but the circle of immaculate ones is very small, and commences very near the Czar, and the other exceptions referred to are exceedingly ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... "He's your idea of a competent driver, eh? He hasn't that reputation on earth. Was it an untruth that credits him with a fine smash-up when he tried to drive the chariot of ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... to me this morning when you assured me your daughter had left this house to return to her employment at Stading?" said Merrington, with a cruel smile. "That wasn't true, you know. How do you describe that untruth? As a temporary ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... Now I might tell the truth about you,—with great pride, if occasion required it. But I couldn't do it then. What would the world have said to two men fighting in the streets about a girl, neither of whom had a right to fight about her? That was the reason why I told an untruth,—because I did not choose to fall into the trap which Augustus ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... would be to precipitate a catastrophe. Dormer Colville decided to go on as if nothing had happened. It is a compromise with the inconveniences of untruth to which we must all resort at some crisis ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... idea. The very theory of our integrity is gone, if we do not insist on this. God has not so made the world that any perjury or cover of the facts is necessary to serve the cause of goodness. Commend it though English or German critics do, can we not conceive of a speech grander than the untruth which Shakspeare has put into the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... for it with his body. As to Queen Guenevere, oft times, my lord, you have consented in the heat of your passion that she should be burnt and destroyed, and it fell to me to do battle for her, and her enemies confessed their untruth, and acknowledged her innocent. And at such times, my lord Arthur, you loved me and thanked me when I saved your Queen from the fire, and promised ever to be my good lord, for I have fought for her many times in other quarrels ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... the Fairy sadly; "that came when you told an untruth one day, and this when you did not mind mamma. All these blots and scratches that look so ugly, both in your book and in Carl's, were made when you were naughty. Each pretty thing in your books came on its page ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... imagine that Carrissima could possibly tell me an untruth?" demanded Sybil. "She was half beside herself when I met her, or she would ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... Emanuel Teasdale. The audience successively proposed "Bawk" (the parish pinder), "Doad o' Tibs" (bill poster), Jacky Moore (town's crier), Bill Spink, and others. The lecturer objected to each of these, and, in despair, accepted Bill o' th' Hoylus End. I officiated as best I could, and I utter no untruth in saying that I had a good deal to do; for I had to undertake the greater share in entertaining the large number of people present. Mr Leach had well nigh exhausted his stock of lecture "material" on the second evening, and on the third night I had to ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... little word," said I; "he should have said, 'all white men;' for as it now stands, it is a practical untruth, in a country which tolerates domestic slavery in its worst and most forbidding form. It is a declaration of SHAME, and not of INDEPENDENCE. It is as perfect a misnomer ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... but bad art. Yet these panels are sometimes used (and in fact are produced for the purpose of being used) precisely as a genuine tapestry would be, although the very fact of pretence in them, brings a feeling of untruth, quite at variance with the principles of all good art. The objection to pictures transferred to tapestries holds good, even ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... of green shows intellectual tolerance of the views of others. Growing duller, this indicates tact, diplomacy, ability to handle human nature, and descending another degree or so blends into insincerity, shiftiness, untruth, etc. There is an ugly slate-colored green indicating low, tricky deceit—this is a very common shade in the colors of the average aura, I am sorry to say. Finally, a particularly ugly, muddy, murky green indicates jealousy and ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi
... third hour of the morning, when kings usually arise, nor did he wait to be awakened, but he himself roused his slaves from their slumber, and all the other Egyptians, and together they went forth to seek Moses and Aaron.[222] He knew that Moses had never spoken an untruth, and as he had said, "I will see thy face again no more," he could not count upon Moses' coming to him. There remained nothing for him to do but go in search of the Israelitish leader.[223] He did not know where Moses lived, and he had great difficulty ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... untruth if I were to say I do not understand you, and I trust you will pardon me if I tell you that a girl more worthy of you than Evelina, and one more likely to make you ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... my own observation of him," she replied, "I can say that I have never known him to tell an untruth or do a dishonourable deed. As to theft, it is merely ridiculous. His habits have always been inexpensive and frugal, he is unambitious to a fault, and in respect to the 'main chance' his indifference is as conspicuous ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... of a generation of men for hundreds of years, who would any of them have gone to the stake rather than have told the smallest untruth; and for him who had been watched and guarded and catechised against this sin from his cradle, till he was as true and pure as a crystal rock, to have his faith shattered in the woman he loved, ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... that moment, those few words, marked an epoch in Ellen Bunting's life. It was the first time she had told a bold and deliberate lie. She was one of those women—there are many, many such—to whom there is a whole world of difference between the suppression of the truth and the utterance of an untruth. ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... this comparative untruth, that gives rise to the dissatisfaction we feel in the last analysis of French character. It is delusive. The promise of beauty held out by external taste is unfulfilled; the fascination of manner bears a vastly undue proportion to the substantial kindness and trust which that immediate charm ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... communication with the aristocracy. Every day of my life I see people who can dress better, and live in better houses, than I can afford. There are many individuals who would not choose to make my acquaintance, because I am not of their caste—but I should speak a great untruth, if I said this made me discontented. They have their path and I have mine; I am happy in my own way, and am willing they should be happy in theirs. If asked whether what little knowledge I have produces discontent, I should answer, that it made me happier, ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... give a sudden start and make an inarticulate murmur of remonstrance, then she checked herself. Maria knew that her uncle walked a mile from his factory to save car-fare; she knew also that she was telling what was practically an untruth, since she had made no agreement with her uncle ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... that we cannot turn into the right way. A spirit of error and untruth leadeth us continually wrong; like the sheep we wander still, and we weary ourselves in our wandering; and so spend all our labour and pains in vain. Being under the power of untruth and error, we cannot walk ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... majesty of the untruth of these allegations, they say, "yielding to no British subjects in affectionate attachment to your majesty's person, family, and government, we too dearly prize the privilege of expressing that attachment, by those proofs that are honourable to the prince that receives them, and to the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Now mark what I say to you, friend: I would not by any means in the world endeavour to fright you into anything, or any ways tempt you to tell an untruth, but provoke you to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, that is the business we come about here. Know, friend, there is no religion that any man can pretend to, can give a countenance to lying, or can dispense with telling the truth: Thou hast a precious immortal ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... from an animal soul by the mind alone. Hence Augustine says (Qq. lxxxiii, qu. 80) that from this error it would have followed that the Son of God "took an animal with the form of a human body," which, again, is against the Divine truth, which cannot suffer any fictitious untruth. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... of philosophy, and almost all authors, are rather to be frequented for exercise than for freight; but this exercise ought to acquire us health and strength, spirits and good-humour. There is none of them that does not supply some truth useful to every man, and some untruth equally so to the few that are able to wrestle with it. If there were no falsehood in the world, there would be no doubt; if there were no doubt, there would be no inquiry; if no inquiry, no wisdom, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... supported by a few "male Betties." The New York Sun spoke of Susan's "ungainly form rigged out in the bloomer costume and provoking the thoughtless to laughter and ridicule by her very motions on the platform."[38] Untruth was piled upon untruth until dignified ladylike Susan with her earnest pleasing appearance was caricatured into everything a woman should not be. Less courageous temperance women now began to wonder whether they ought ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... nineteen or twenty hurt and dishevelled men ranged against the tower wall, then back into a face impossible to associate with untruth. ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... respects they did consider all men created equal—equal with "certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that enforcement of it might follow ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... you can't call them back. No, Sir, you can't call them back, and sometimes that is a very sad thing, because—well, you see these little messengers always carry something to some one else, and that something may be anger or hate or fear or an untruth, and it is these things which make most of the trouble in this world. Or that something may be love or sympathy or helpfulness or kindness, and it is these things which put an end to most of the troubles ...
— The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat • Thornton W. Burgess
... re-assured, and to feel confident, it was enough to look at his broad face, at once energetic and debonair, his clear eye, in which shone the loyalty of his soul, and his thick red lips, which had never opened to utter an untruth. ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... Desmoulins and Danton and St. Just, that Robespierre read it through once every day." In the perspective of history, no one feels that he has said the last word about a philosophy like Rousseau's after demonstrating its "untruth." Good or bad, it has meant too much for any such easy disposal. What shall we call an idea, objectively untrue, but ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... am," I said, with a modest acquiescence in an assertion which I felt to be so much to my credit. But I blushed for its untruth. ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... remembered how he would often speak of her, even to me, and hint and insinuate things which were no doubt untrue, and which I disbelieved. Not that the question of their truth or untruth made him any the less despicable ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... your house as into an inn—except that there are no servants rushing forward," she said to Charlotte. And she added that that was very charming. Gertrude explained to her sister that she meant just the reverse; she did n't like it at all. Charlotte inquired why she should tell an untruth, and Gertrude answered that there was probably some very good reason for it which they should discover when they knew her better. "There can surely be no good reason for telling an untruth," said Charlotte. "I hope she ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... a successful attack, the captain of the unfortunate vessel would be placed in chains and questioned as to the cargo and treasures of his ship. A cutlass held menacingly over him indicated the danger of untruth, and frequently a savage gash brought a stubborn and silent captain to submission. Inquisitorial tortures, unrelieved by any mock civility, were continued to extract further confessions from the pain-racked prisoners. ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... one. 'Now, (added Johnson,) every one acquainted with microscopes knows, that the more of them he looks through, the less the object will appear.' 'Why, (replied the King,) this is not only telling an untruth, but telling it clumsily; for, if that be the case, every one who can look through a microscope will be ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... who was killed, you remember. I told Pauline I would resent that conduct if it were repeated, and on the same occasion I asked her whether she had engaged herself to him in any shape or form. Her answer was a simple, straightforward negative, and the child is incapable of untruth." ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... one of those over which the virtuosity of modern times, rejoicing in evil, has hung so fondly, as giving melancholy proof of the 'duplicity of Raleigh's character'; as if a man who once in his life had told an untruth was proved by that fact to be a rogue from birth to death: while others have kindly given him the benefit of a doubt whether the letter were not written after a private marriage, and therefore Raleigh, being 'joined unto' some one already, had a right to say that he did not wish to be ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... odd, and she is rich and agreable; but, if he does not love Emily, he has been excessively cruel in shewing an attention which has deceived her into a passion for him. I cannot believe it possible: not that he has ever told her he loved her; but a man of honor will not tell an untruth even with his eyes, and his have spoke a very ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... these lads, "was the spirit which rises in revolt against untruth; the spirit which, as I have shown you, has appeared and reappeared, and in due time will appear again, unless God be a delusion and man be as the beasts that perish. For it is but the inflashing upon the conscience ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... any hazard, little matter by what means. Abandon all hope of a life to come, and "from that instant there is nothing serious in mortality." In order that the world should be governable, ethical, happy, virtuous, magnanimous, is it possible that it should be necessary for the world to believe in an untruth? ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... little more, but finished my meal, wrote down my numbers, and gave him the bottle: but warned him, if he were questioned, by no means to tell an untruth. The boy looked at me again, in a manner that spoke highly in his favour, put the bottle in his pocket, and, as soon as his master returned to the door, removed ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... that I do not feel pleased and flattered at your proposal would be to tell a useless untruth," the thing began speciously. "But how are we situated, what hope of happiness with our unsettled prospects and worse than small means? Industry has doubtless never been and never will be wanting on your part, but—" and so to its ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... you laugh. But the men regarding whose lives and stories you have curiosity and sympathy appeal to a great number of our other faculties, besides our mere sense of ridicule. The humorous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness; your scorn of untruth, pretension, imposture; your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy. To the best of his means and ability he comments on all the ordinary actions and passions of ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... as quiet and measured a way as he could, but his heart was sinking. She would go on questioning; he could not tell her an untruth. She would discover particulars of that great-uncle's provision for him, which he, Swithin, was throwing away for her sake, and she would refuse to be his for his own sake. His conclusion at this moment was precisely what hers had been five minutes sooner: they were never ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... she saide, and deare constraint, Lets me not sleepe, but wast the wearie night 470 In secret anguish and unpittied plaint, Whiles you in carelesse sleepe are drowned quight. Her doubtfull words made that redoubted knight Suspect her truth: yet since no' untruth he knew, Her fawning love with foule disdainefull spight 475 He would not shend; but said, Deare dame I rew, That for my sake unknowne such ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... life they would be. In this he differs from every other playwright that I know of. Ibsen, for instance; and Henri Becque. He has carried an artistic convention much nearer to reality, and achieved another step in the evolution of the drama. The consequence is that he is accused of untruth and exaggeration, as Becque was, as Ibsen was. His truthfulness frightens, and ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... its beginning and its ground in humility. We only find safety, comfort, joy, encouragement, as we lie, prostrate in penitence, before our Redeemer. It is clear, is it not, what we mean by all this? We are, simply and naturally, to kneel before our Lord, and acknowledge to Him all our untruth, all our disloyalty, all the manifold failures of our service. And the very fact that we can do this sincerely and honestly, is the earnest of all good things to come in us. If only we can make this genuine and heartfelt ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... over hard upon my brother," said Kenric. "There lives not a man in the Western Isles better fitted than Alpin for the great office of kingship. He is just, and noble, and trusty. No man in all Bute can say that he ever broke a promise or told an untruth. Think you that because he is hasty with his dirk he is therefore a thoughtless loon, who knows not when a gentle word can do more service than a blow? When did he ever draw dirk or sword without just cause? You do not ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... that temper is the bar, but conscience; for charity would beget toleration, you know, which is a kind of implied permitting, and in effect a kind of countenancing; and that which is countenanced is so far furthered. But should untruth be furthered? Still, while for the world's good I refuse to further the cause of these mineral doctors, I would fain regard them, not as willful wrong-doers, but good Samaritans erring. And is this—I put it to you, sir—is this the view of ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... uttering no untruth. It was during the lengthy periods of silence that she experienced most delight in being there. With her head bent over her work, only lifting her eyes at long intervals to exchange with the doctor those interminable looks that riveted their ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... requires to be supported by falsehood. Having commenced in untruth, would it not be expedient to persevere until we reach America? I, at least, cannot now assert a right to my proper name, without deposing ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Yea when ther was speech of their remoovall into these parts, sundrie of note & eminencie of y^t nation would have had them come under them, and for y^t end made them large offers. Now though I might aledg many other perticulers & examples of the like kinde, to shew y^e untruth & unlicklyhode of this slander, yet these shall suffice, seeing it was beleeved of few, being only raised by y^e malice of some, ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... then went scarlet. "That's a direct untruth. You!—and not to egg a man on, if you see he admires you! You know every time a passer-by looks at you in the street. You feed on such looks—yes, and return them, too. I have seen you, my lady, looking and being looked at, by a stranger, in a way no decent woman allows.—For the rest, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... a morally high-bred man could no more condescend to such a falsehood than a man of cleanly habits would willingly steep himself in the mire. It is not the consequences, one way or the other, that matter. It is the eternal issue between the moral realities, truth and untruth, that is at stake. And in the light of this issue, in the light of the principle involved, petty as the circumstances may be, the occasion is not to be considered trivial. The eternal forces that have been at war since mankind first existed are at war on this occasion also; he must cast in ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... came bothering the colonel again next morning. The colonel again sent for me and asked me what on earth this man wanted now, so I was then obliged to admit the truth. I asked him if he would forgive me for telling him an untruth overnight, and on his consenting, I told him the Portuguese had lost a quantity of money, which he put down at seven thousand dollars. The Portuguese's answer to the question who had placed the money there was that he had himself, but ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... was sacred to my memory and fame— My monument. But Allen Forman came, Filled with the fervor of a new untruth, And carved upon ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... I was on my guard against its being lack of courage, rather than a conviction of its untruth, which held me back from embracing it. I thought it a true postulate that everything seemed permeated and sustained by a Reason that had not human aims in front of it and did not work by human means, a Divine Reason. Nature could only be understood from its highest ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... we might be mistaken after all," said the voice, which had a bewildered quality. Annie Eustace had a nature which could not readily grasp some of the evil of humanity. She was in reality dazed before this. She was ready to believe an untruth rather than the incredible truth. But Alice Mendon was merciless. She resolved that Annie ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Quirk, whose fate it was to win the love or hate of those who knew him. None who came in contact with him failed to appreciate the strength of his personality, and he threw himself resolutely on the side of truth. Those who lived on injustice and untruth would willingly have destroyed him because he exposed them relentlessly to public odium; the honest and straightforward placed him on a pedestal as a just man. "Good old Quirk" was a synonym for strength and uprightness of life in ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... credulous—would believe anything on earth anyone told her, because, although she had plenty of humor, she herself never would deviate from the absolute truth a moment, even in jest. I do not think she would have told an untruth to save her life. Well, of course we used to play on her to tease her. Frank would tell her the most unbelievable and impossible lies: such as that he thought he saw a mouse yesterday on the back of the sofa she was lying on (this would make her bounce ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... and do a great deal of harm; abstract illogicalities do matter a great deal, and do a great deal of harm. And this for a reason that any one at all acquainted with human nature can see for himself. All injustice begins in the mind. And anomalies accustom the mind to the idea of unreason and untruth. Suppose I had by some prehistoric law the power of forcing every man in Battersea to nod his head three times before he got out of bed. The practical politicians might say that this power was a harmless anomaly; that it was not a grievance. ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... perceptions by continual preoccupation. We cannot command veracity at will: the power of seeing and reporting truly is a form of health that has to be delicately guarded, and as an ancient Rabbi has solemnly said, "The penalty of untruth is untruth." But Pepin is only a mild example of the fact that incessant writing with a view to printing carries internal consequences which have often the nature of disease. And however unpractical it may be held to consider whether we have anything to print which ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... not to be excused by misfortune. Out of mercy then he paused, and for a moment he had it even in his mind to cheer his fellow-captive with a lie. Then, remembering that he was to die upon the morrow, and that at such a time it was not well to risk the perdition of his soul by an untruth, however ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... Pere Merlier. "Why do you tell an untruth? She passed the night locked in her chamber, monsieur. She tells a falsehood, ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... Oh, Mildred, have I met your brother's face? Compelled myself—if not to speak untruth, Yet to disguise, to shun, to put aside The truth, as—what had e'er prevailed on me Save you to venture? Have I gained at last Your brother, the one scarer of your dreams, And waking thoughts' sole apprehension too? Does a new life, like a young sunrise, break On the strange unrest of our night, ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... not sufficient to deter him from going to market to the Irrawaddy steamer, where I accidentally met him. So far from being abashed when he saw me, he took the occasion to tell me what he will, I know, pardon me for thinking an inexcusable untruth. He had written, he said, to the poor woman telling her, dying as he believed her to be, to come down to Bhamo ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... present time there is a "Catholic Truth Society" with a publication called "Truth", to oppose the anti-Catholic campaign; and that is all right, of course—except when the agents who collect the two-dollar subscriptions to this publication make use of Untruth in their labors—promising absolution and salvation to the families, dead and living, of those who "come across" with subscriptions. In the "Bulletin of the American Federation of Catholic Societies" for September, 1915, I find a record of the ceaseless plotting to bar criticism ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... evade never remained long with Dorian Trent; but that evening as he turned into the lane which led up to the house, he was sorely-tempted. Once or twice only, as nearly as he could remember, had he told an untruth to his mother with results which he would never forget. He must ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... I used to think, too, that I deceived them; so I went to them, and cautioned them very earnestly to be on their guard against me, for it might be that I deceived them. I saw well enough that I would not do so advisedly, nor tell them an untruth; [12] but everything made me afraid. One of them, on one occasion, when he had heard me speak of this temptation, told me not to distress myself; for, even if I wished to deceive him, he had sense enough not to be deceived. This gave ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... will secure you from all unpleasant circumstances connected with me save only one, viz. the evasion of a specific madness. You will never hear anything but truth from me; prior habits render it out of my power to tell an untruth, but, unless carefully observed, I dare not promise that I should not, with regard to this detested poison, be capable of acting one. Not sixty hours have yet passed without my having taken laudanum, though, for the last week, comparatively trifling doses. I have full ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... to himself should be out of sight of his sisters. Therefore he decided on following Oates, going through on the way the whole question whether to deny all knowledge, and yet feeling that the things belonging to God should not be shielded by untruth. His resolution finally was to be silent, and let them make what they would out of that, and Stead, though it was long since he had put it on, had a certain sullen air of stupidity such as often belongs to such natures as his, and which Jeph ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and no mere acquaintance; if with a servant, it was with a servant; if with a casual acquaintance, it is equally true. Nor if I say I had that woman, and did this or that with her, or felt or did aught else with a man, is there a word of untruth excepting as to the place at which the incidents occurred. But even those are mostly correctly given, this is intended to be a true history, and ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... that she could sing. It would prove to him that she had the will not to let this thing crush her, not to be as other women might have been. But her sincere soul put the thought aside because of its untruth. She had given him a great honesty always, she would give it to him until the end. He knew she suffered, but she desired him to know as well that she was brave, that her spirit was unconquered, that she would do something ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... than the thief, and if his mendacity takes the form of slander, he may be worse than most thieves. It puts a premium upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with untruth. An epidemic of indiscriminate assault upon character does not good, but very great harm. The soul of every scoundrel is gladdened whenever an honest man is assailed, or even when a scoundrel ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... is this "Will to Truth" in us? In fact we made a long halt at the question as to the origin of this Will—until at last we came to an absolute standstill before a yet more fundamental question. We inquired about the VALUE of this Will. Granted that we want the truth: WHY NOT RATHER untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? The problem of the value of truth presented itself before us—or was it we who presented ourselves before the problem? Which of us is the Oedipus here? Which the Sphinx? It would ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... was as pure as the driven snow, she did not require to be told that there were impurities in the world. If it was meant to be insinuated that he was untrue to her, she simply disbelieved it. But what if he were? His untruth would not justify hers. And untruth was impossible to her. She loved him, and had told him so. Let him be ever so false, it was for her to bring him back to truth or to spend herself in the endeavour. Her father did not understand her at all when he talked ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... day I took down the portrait of the Brigadier and slipped it into my pocket-book. I had liked old Joshua well, and I thought I would keep this as a memento not only of his art but of his ability in spontaneous untruth. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... succeeded in getting through these thick husks of untruth we find that the idea of liberty which floats before the eyes of woman is, not at all a question of freedom from unequitable legal restraints, but essentially a question of getting more of the personal liberty (or command of other people's services), which the possession of money confers ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... was chiefly to guide it to the rails and to make it fast when I had got it there. Otherwise, this basket was no different from any dress-basket you may see upon half a dozen four-wheelers the first time you look in at a railway station; and I should be telling an untruth if I said that I thought about it at all. Indeed, it was not until we got to the Boundary Road, and I stopped at the house called Bredfield, that so much as a notion of anything wrong entered my head. There, however, I did get a shock, and no mistake; for no sooner ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... and assure you, that shall become my Reader, that in that part of this following discourse, which is onely narration, I either speak my own knowledge, or from the testimony of such as dare do any thing, rather than speak an untruth. And for that part of it which is my own observation or opinion, if I had a power I would not use it to force any mans assent, but leave him a liberty to disbelieve what his own ...
— Waltoniana - Inedited Remains in Verse and Prose of Izaak Walton • Isaak Walton
... unreal, and contradictory to the nature around him, was no proof that they were not of God. But on the other hand, that they demanded what seemed to him unjust,—that these demands were founded on what seemed to him untruth attributed to God, on ways of thinking and feeling which are certainly degrading in a man,—these were reasons of the very highest nature for refusing to act upon them so long as, from whatever defects it might be in himself, they bore to him this ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... jealousy of Grant, had led him into the telling of an untruth, and he left the table feeling very contemptible indeed. Certainly it was not a malicious falsehood that was liable to do any one particular harm, but it was a falsehood just the same, and he ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... Winter's untruth yields at last, Spring renews old mother earth; Angry storms are overpast, Sunbeams fill the air with mirth; Pregnant, ripening unto birth, ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... others—or for herself. Though Christine's lips and cheeks glowed, and her eyes had wonderful warm lights, incredulity was constantly signalled from both eyes and lips. She was a fine, daring little animal, with as great a talent for untruth as truth, though, to this point in her life, truth had been more with her. Her temptations ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to call people liars, and you had better tell Doreen that I object to such strong language; there is no need for it. It is quite enough to say "an untruth." I hope Doreen was not calling any one names?' ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... and feeling he took up the words that I had dropped half idly, and showed me what he thought to be the truth and untruth of them. There was a grave earnestness in his speech which made his opinion on this subject suddenly become of moment to me, and his intensity did not produce any of that sensation of irritation or opposition which the intensity ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... leisurely pace and sat at the next table. Her expression, her gait, her dress, her coiffure told him that she belonged to society, that she was married, that she was paying her first visit to Talta, that she was alone, and that she was bored.... There is a great deal of untruth in the gossip about the immorality of the place. He scorned such tales, knowing that they were for the most part concocted by people who would be only too ready to sin if they had the chance, but when the lady sat down at the next table, only a yard or two away from him, his thoughts were filled ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... answer that it was her sole reason, unless she told an untruth. Her eyes fell under the gaze bent ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... to the office, where we sat, and in discourse at the table with Sir W. Batten, I was obliged to tell him it was an untruth, which did displease him mightily, and parted at noon very angry with me. At home find Lovett, who brought me some papers varnished, and showed me my crucifix, which will be very fine when done. He dined with me and Balty's wife, who is in great pain for her husband, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... lives and stories your kind presence here shows that you have curiosity and sympathy, appeal to a great number of our other faculties, besides our mere sense of ridicule. The humorous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness—your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture—your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the unhappy. To the best of his means and ability he comments on all the ordinary actions and passions of life almost. He takes upon himself to be the week-day preacher, so to speak. Accordingly, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... always been obedient to his father and mother. I have never known him to swear or tell an untruth, and he never took anything that was not his own—that is," the poor lady hastened to add when she recalled the painful circumstance, "he ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... great council was held at Winchester, which the Bishop called as the Pope's vicegerent. The unscrupulous churchman boldly came forward, and denounced his brother, inviting the assembly to elect a sovereign; and, with an amount of arrogance totally unprecedented, thus asserted the notorious untruth that the right of electing a king of England principally belonged to the clergy: "The case was yesterday agitated before a part of the higher clergy of England, to whose right it principally pertains to elect the sovereign, and also to crown him. First, then, as is fitting, invoking ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... you bother me, Monsieur, I shall tell every one that you are there to give out holy water that is poison. My aunt says so." My face turned purple with shame, and I stammered out, "Please do not believe that, Monsieur Doucet. My little sister is telling an untruth." ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... only, but also by that mysterious influence, that subtile contagion, finer than anything visible, ponderable, or tangible,—that effluence from eye, voice, tone, manner, which, according to the character which is behind, communicates an impulse of faith and courage, or an impulse of cowardice and untruth; which may be transmitted onward, forward, on every side, like the widening circles in a disturbed lake,—circles which meet and cross each other without disturbance, and whose influence may be strictly illimitable ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... lot, That thou would'st grieve or smile with me; And though all others prove most false, I ne'er should find untruth ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... totidem verbis pronounced. But there are simpler and less guarded wits, for the satisfying of which such an explanation may be needful. For there are certain invisible lines, which as Truth successively overpasses, she becomes Untruth to one and another of us, as a large river, flowing from one kingdom into another, sometimes takes a new name, albeit the waters undergo no change, how small soever. There is, moreover, a truth of fiction more veracious than the truth ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... the authorship of the "Letter," lying as thoroughly as he had done in that piece of writing itself, when he invented the name of Inchlif and forged the ideas of Saunderson. This time there was more excuse for his untruth; for the disclosure of his printer's name might have sent that unfortunate man to prison or to the galleys. The imprisonment of Diderot himself, at first severe, was soon lightened at the instance of Voltaire's mistress, Madame du Chatelet. Diderot was allowed to see his friends, and even to ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... features of a reigning fad. The Renaissance was an affair of the upper and middle classes. It never could spread to the masses. Classical learning came to be valued as a caste mark. Then it became still more truly an affectation, and was tainted with untruth. The masses were superior in the sincerity and truthfulness of their mores by the contrast. The humanists were pagan and profane, but did not follow their doctrines into a reformation of the church. They exaggerated the knowledge ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... that are read and trusted to throughout Europe; such books, too, as that of the Marquis de Chastelleux, or that of De Rouchefoucault, it becomes a matter of serious inquiry. The truth must be told, whatever it is, for the truth cannot be so bad, whatever it may be, as the untruth which is now ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... my good Signora Orsola! Are you aware that you are accusing me of being guilty of punishable defamation and slander? I say that the Signorina Paolina Foscarelli committed murder? Who on earth could ever have told you so monstrous an untruth? Allow me to assure you that I never said anything of ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... travelled for a Hamburg firm was not really an untruth. As a matter of fact he was engaged in commercial undertakings, which served as a cloak for the real object ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... when a man reveals another's sin, while observing the right order of so doing, and then he is not bound to restitution. Secondly, by saying what is untrue and unjustly, and then he is bound to restore that man's good name, by confessing that he told an untruth. Thirdly, by saying what is true, but unjustly, as when a man reveals another's sin contrarily to the right order of so doing, and then he is bound to restore his good name as far as he can, and yet without ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... apparently almost anyone can produce stories that people will read if only he or she puts in enough highly colored material about the aberrations of lovers and the possible ways in which marriage can be wrecked. It is sheer untruth to say that most marriages are failures. In most indeed there are ups and downs. The most affectionate couples make mistakes and quarrel over trifles. Love does not make all tempers smooth in a hurry. But love does teach people how to get past such troubles. ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... Parliament as the notorious "Iconoclast." A wave of screaming passed over the fair Christian land; the notorious advocate of atheistic principles was proclaimed a menacing danger to the Christian edifice. Injustice and untruth joined against him; shocking stories of blasphemy were circulated with mad recklessness against him. There was not a single word of truth in them. This was proved over and over again in courts of law, and yet the charges were encouraged ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... you gave me for a hostage played a trick!" he shouted. "He and a man of mine knew Persian. They talked together. Then in the night they ran away, and your hostage went to Wassmuss, and has told him all the truth and more untruth into the bargain than ten other men could invent in a year! So Wassmuss threw in my teeth that letter you gave me, and I was laughed out of countenance by a heritage of spawn of Tophet! And what has Wasmuss done but persuade three hundred ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... the most well-intended falsehood escape your lips; for Heaven, which is entirely Truth, will make the seed which you have sown of untruth ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... say that when I'm in. Mamma doesn't think it wrong, but one can't deny that it's an untruth." ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham |
