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More "Untruth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attitude, often only half conscious on the part of the regular practitioners, has led many thousands of people to follow will-o'-the-wisp cults, which pay no attention to the findings of science, but which emphasize a realization of man's spiritual nature. Many of these cults, founded largely on untruth or half-falsehood, have succeeded in cases where careful science has failed. Despite fearful blunders and execrable lack of discrimination in attempting to cure all the ills that flesh is heir to by methods that apply ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... 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 ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... 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 Scarborough ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... for filthy lucre's sake: and grievous to reflect that the boasted immunity which makes the cottage of the English peasant, no less than the palace of the English noble, a castle—which so fences his domestic hearth that no man may set foot within his door without his consent, or proclaim an untruth concerning him without being legally compelled to render compensation, should be withdrawn from his grave. I cannot tell you how I have blushed for the living, and kindled with resentment on behalf of the dead, when contemplating the merciless desecration ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... It would be an ill time to do it with our common enemy at the door. A lie (as I take it in my own Highland fashion) is the untruth told for cowardice or to get a mean advantage of another: your way with MacCailein was but a foolish way (also Highland, I've noticed) of saving yourself the trouble of spurring up your manhood to put him in ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... near an untruth as Banneker cared to go. In his own mind he defended it on the ground that the projected visit would, in fact, be time wasted for the journalist since he, Banneker, intended fully that Gardner should not see Io. Deep would have been his disgust and self-derision could ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... hands were clasped tightly around her knees, while her body was swaying to and fro, as if the agitation of her mind would not allow of its repose. Her eyes were dry, but red from former weeping; and she was occasionally muttering, "No, he can't be guilty"—"Owen commit a murdher!—It must be an untruth!" and such like expressions. Gradually, as she thus thought aloud, her motions became more rapid, and her cheeks were no longer dry, while the light that entered through the open door becoming suddenly shaded, ...
— Ellen Duncan; And The Proctor's Daughter - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the administration of the ex-Viceroy and Eunuchs that Tioneg and his companion, named Yanglion, uttered the untruth already stated; and subsequently I begged the Emperor to transmit all the papers bearing upon the matter, together with the minutes of Tioneg's accusation; when I myself examined the before-mentioned papers, and knew that everything that the accused Tioneg ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... See also Epist. lv. p. 177. "If any amount of difference of opinion as to the truth or untruth of the teaching of a geographical priesthood, will justify separation under another Christian ministry, then it at once ceases to be true that there can be but one bishop, or one priest, over any given area in which such ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... properties; of practising deceptions, impositions, frauds, and all forms of insincerity, usury, extortions, and violence; of laying obstructions in the way of the weak or helpless; of giving false testimony; of speaking untruth; of reporting even truth, when it may lead to discord and strife; of occasioning danger; of offending decency and good manners; of causing scandal; of withholding wages or remuneration due; of keeping ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... 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 ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... regarding whose 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, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... latter undertakes to criticize religious conceptions; on the contrary, it must guide this so that the discovery of the contradictions which unavoidably adhere to sensuous form shall not mislead the youth into the folly of throwing away, with the relative untruth of the form, also ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... of lies as well: The kind you live, the ones you tell. Back through his years from age to youth He never acted one untruth. Out in the open light he fought And didn't care what others thought Nor what they said about his fight If he believed that he was right. The only deeds he ever hid Were acts of ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... said except the abominable metaphysical modernism of 'the spirit world'; but to say that it is recorded that He did say it, is like saying it is recorded that He preferred palm trees to sycamores. It is a simple and unadulterated untruth. The author should know that these words have meant a thousand things to a thousand people, and that if more ancient sects had paraphrased them as cheerfully as he, he would never have had the text upon which he founds his theory. In a pamphlet in which plain printed words cannot be left alone, it ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... out the words importing this sentiment, it was averred, that the clause asserted an untruth. It was not true that the confidence of the people in the President was undiminished. By a recent transaction it had been considerably impaired; and some gentlemen declared that their own ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... thinking she had given him aught that she did not give to others. This was as it should be. The idea of an entanglement growing out of the evening was as remote as it would have been repugnant. And she had disclaimed and buried the incident with a decisive untruth. Here were two young people with fancy enough to distinguish a game from its reality—who by the very casualness with which they met and passed ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the light, With dark forgetting of my care, return. And let the day be time enough to mourn The shipwreck of my ill-advised youth; Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn, Without the torments of the night's untruth. Cease, dreams, the images of day-desires, To model forth the passions of to-morrow; Never let the rising sun prove you liars, To add more grief, to aggravate my sorrow. Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain, And never wake to feel ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... or Modernism, or anything you like," Rachael said with sudden fire, "but while you go on calling what you profess Christianity, Bishop, you simply subscribe to an untruth. You know what our lives are, myself and Florence and Gardner and Clarence; is there a Commandment we don't break all day long and every day? Do we give our coats away, do we possess neither silver nor gold in our purses, do we love our neighbors? Why don't ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... guessed. This gate, door, wicket, opening, or road was always half open, was easier to open than to shut, and cost much in repairs. In short, at that period, there was no fresh device in love invented, that had not its origin in the good convent of Poissy. You may be sure there is a good deal of untruth and hyperbolical emphasis, in these proverbs, jests, jokes, and idle tales. The nuns of the said Poissy were good young ladies, who now this way, now that, cheated God to the profit of the devil, as many others did, which was but natural, because our nature is weak; and although they were nuns, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... the two girls, her eyes flashing and her heart beating fast, and exclaimed, "Did Ethel really say that? How dare she tell such an untruth!" ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... never was a scintilla of truth for the charge of wholesale slaughtering of wounded dervishes, nor that the Sirdar ever issued such an order, or that any reputable person ever received it, or ever had it hinted to him. The accusation is an unmitigated untruth, and absolutely at variance with all that was said and done by the Sirdar before and during the course of the battle and the pursuit. I certainly never heard of the matter until Mr Bennett made the accusation, and I cannot trace its authorship beyond himself. From ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... 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
... ceased believing in God and in goodness. She had herself believed in God, and believed that other people also believed in Him; but after that night she became convinced that no one believed, and that all that was said about God and His laws was deception and untruth. He whom she loved, and who had loved her—yes, she knew that—had thrown her away; had abused her love. Yet he was the best of all the people she knew. All the rest were still worse. All that afterwards happened to her strengthened her in this belief at ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... of the bygone time. And that letter—God is good, for that! For it was that told of how she died—that wicked poison-bite! My child, it has never gone quite out of my heart to think your mother died so far away in such pain—never in all these years! And now I know it for an untruth. I thank God for ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... this thought her heart almost stopped beating. There was only one thing that could prevent it, and that was for her to write him another letter, contradicting the first. It sounded easy to say it, but it would mean that her father would know she had told an untruth, and she shrank back miserably from the revelation. She admired her father and cared much for his opinion of her, and to be branded as a liar in his sight was more than she could bear. He would ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... controvert it, so impatient was he of the limitations of our daily thought. This habit, of course, is a little chilling to the social affections; and though the companion would in the end acquit him of any malice or untruth, yet it mars conversation. Hence, no equal companion stood in affectionate relations with one so pure and guileless. "I love Henry," said one of his friends, "but I cannot like him; and as for taking his arm, I should as soon think of taking ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... partner of, well, adventurers, and the money which he received would in fact be filched from the pockets of unsuspecting persons. He would vouch for that of which he was doubtful and receive the price of sharp practice. In other words he, Alan Vernon, who had never uttered a wilful untruth or taken a halfpenny that was not his own, would before the tribunal of his own mind, stand convicted as a liar and a thief. The thing was not to be borne. At whatever cost it must be ended. If he were fated to be a beggar, at least he ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... tell of all the trials through which Mr. Brown passed with his children. But those trials were very severe, and if Mr. Brown was on certain points untrue to the young partner who trusted him, allowances for such untruth must be made. He was untrue; but there is one man, who, looking back upon his conduct, ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... glittering bronze; and each told of his deeds in battle and in the chase; but woe to him who boasted or spoke falsely, magnifying his prowess, for then would his sword angrily turn of itself in its scabbard, convicting him of untruth. ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... from a gigantic criminal conspiracy on the part of surgeons; that a sufficient cure for appendicitis, "as any honest doctor would tell you," is an injection of molasses and water! The endless harm done by such outright untruth is swelled by a joining stream of slapdash misinformation and vicious sensation, constantly running through ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... people in stump-speeches at $—— per year, ye hired bravos of the bar that stab justice in the dark, ye Jesuit priests that "lie for God," listen all, and learn how to do it! What are your timid devices, compared with this of benumbing your adversary at the start by an outright electric shock of untruth? But a man must be supported by a powerful sense of sincerity to be capable of a statement so royally false that the truth itself shall look tame and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... Mexicans, and say that the hair on their faces is like the fur on a bear. Squint-eyes also afford them much amusement. They are smart, attentive and patient. They have no qualms of conscience about telling an untruth, but my experience with them shows appreciation and gratitude for benefits received. An Indian whom I had occasion to treat to a good meal, many months afterward at a feast came up and said to me, "You were good to me when I was very hungry," ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... Barrister mean other or more than this, if he really mean the whole religion and revelation of Christ, even as it is found in the original records, the Gospels and Epistles, he escapes from the silliness of a truism by throwing himself into the arms of a broad brazenfaced untruth. What! Is the sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel so distinct and specific in its design, that any modest man can wonder that the best and most learned men of every age since Christ have deemed it mysterious? Are ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... her father's presence had not brought with it the happiness she had anticipated, and yet unwilling either to acknowledge that fact or tell an untruth, was at ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... to reform the world. I traveled through many lands. I saw the ruins of Rome And the ruins of Athens, And the ruins of Thebes. And I sat by moonlight amid the necropolis of Memphis. There I was caught up by wings of flame, And a voice from heaven said to me: "Injustice, Untruth destroyed them. Go forth Preach Justice! Preach Truth!" And I hastened back to Spoon River To say farewell to my mother before beginning my work. They all saw a strange light in my eye. And by and by, when I talked, ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... sure of what you say, Jack? You wouldn't take advantage of my situation to tell me an untruth?" ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... sake it is good that the work is finished. It has overmastered my understanding too long and caused me to judge all things by their relation to this one truth or untruth. It has debarred me from that sereine contemplation de l'univers, wherein my peace and better growth were found. I am free once again to look upon things ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... closed them nervously, unable to frame an untruth, and equally unable to tell what she knew. She looked helplessly at Veronica. The room became very still. The others looked at her in astonishment. Agent Sanders bored her with his little, keen eyes. Sahwah felt ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... that we had been captured by the train robbers!" replied George, telling the untruth with a great deal of satisfaction as he saw the ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... dropping his more formal tone, addressed Tom almost as if he were his own son. "Not that I believe you guilty," he added. "Far be it from me to suspect one of my students when he has assured me that he is innocent. I have never yet known an Elmwood Hall lad to tell an untruth!" and the doctor drew ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... wine; but if I had told him of that, he would probably have fined me for having a blow. [It appears that the mild dissipation of wine-drinking in vogue at Bowdoin at that time was called having a "blow;" probably an abbreviation for the common term "blow-out," applied to entertainments.] There was no untruth in the case, as the wine cost fifty cents. I have not played at all this term. I have not drank any kind of spirits or wine this term, and shall ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... a word I say is for myself. I am but begging you to be that which God, making you, intended you to be. I would have the star shine through the cloud—shine on the heart of the watcher! the real Lufa lies hidden under a dusky garment of untruth; none but the eye of God can see through to the lovely thing He made, out of which the false Lufa is smothering the life. When the beautiful child, the real Lufa, the thing you now know you are not, but ought to be, walks out like ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... of which she knew nothing and desired to know nothing. Though she herself 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 ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... believe 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... particularly pleasant ride, or enjoyed myself much during the day, I thanked GOD specially in my evening prayers. I remember that whatever I wished for I prayed for, in the complete belief that this was the readiest way to obtain it. And it would be untruth to my childish experience not to add that I never remember to have prayed in vain. I also picked up certain little quaint superstitions from Nurse Bundle, some of which cling to me still. Neither she nor I ever put anything on the top of a Bible, and we sometimes sat long ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of, "Not at home," or "Engaged," are more frequently questioned than any other social custom. Nevertheless their use is often a necessity, while, on the contrary, their abuse is to be regretted. No suspicion of an untruth need apply to either, for the phrase, "Not at home," is used with the accepted signification of, "Not at home, for the time being, to any visitors." If, however, conscience rebels against this so transparent fraud, there is always the alternative of "Engaged," which carries not the least ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... question 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 or ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... in silent darkness born, Relieve my anguish, and restore the light, With dark forgetting of my cares, return; And let the day be time enough to mourn The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth; Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn Without the torment of the night's untruth. Cease, Dreams, th' imag'ry of our day-desires, To model forth the passions of the morrow, Never let rising sun approve you liars, To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow. Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain; And never wake to feel ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... captures the refined mind, while slang only holds captive the coarse mind. In a plain and intended to be truthful statement of any occurrence, the injection of three or four adjectives will change the whole tenor of narration, and give it a vraisemblance of untruth which it is hard for the hearer's mind to erase. As a matter of fact, an adjective ought to be a thought, not a word. A fact should be stated without embroidery, and we should think whether it is beautiful, lovely, and the like. There are ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... other matters of untruth. That, for instance, of the ermine collar embroidered with emeralds. If an understandable reason be required for this, it would be to draw attention away from the green lights which were seen in the room, and especially in the well-hole. Any unprejudiced person would accept the green lights ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... advice. In fact, they carried their mutual attempts at deception to a point that was not only harmful to themselves, but ridiculous, making it a principle to violate oaths and to debase the currency of good faith in every possible way. There was also much untruth in private life. Unfortunately, lying in the interests of piety was justified by Luther, while the Jesuits made a soul-rotting ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... 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 hypocritical assumption of courage before Dowler when he found ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... not get up, Or turn and not return?"(372) Why then are this people turning 5 Persistently turning(373)? They take fast hold of deceit, Refuse to return. I have been heeding, been listening— 6 They speak but untruth! Not a man repents of his evil, Saying, "What have I done?" All of them swerve in their courses Like a plunging horse in the battle. Even the stork in the heavens 7 Knoweth her seasons, And dove and swift and swallow Keep time ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... Chesterton was able (to quote The Mikado) to get from her husband a good deal of "corroborative detail designed to give verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative." Of these details some are true, some false, all arranged to support the main untruth of Frances and Gilbert's relation to one another. The thesis of the book is that Gilbert was an unhappy and frustrated man (a) because Frances shrank from consummating their marriage, and (b) because she dragged him away from his London life and friends to bury him in a middle ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... I said, "cannot suspect a fellow-townsman, whose character is as high as mine, of untruth and theft. And to whom else have you communicated the facts connected with a memoir and a request ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Which is true in a sense, as she does not think of the Gerry her daughter knows. And the partial untruth does not cross her mind—a tacit recognition of the powers of change. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... precision, exactness, correctness; verity, fact; truism, axiom; fidelity, constancy, loyalty, fealty, steadfastness; candor, frankness, ingenuousness. Antonyms: See untruth. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... relationship to each other, but Vincent slightly shook his head. It was not worth while to undeceive the woman, and although they had agreed to pass as brother and sister, Vincent was determined not to tell an untruth about it unless deceit was absolutely ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... declare her their enemy, and to avow eternal separation from her, it may be easily conceived how a large portion of the colonists would feel that their confidence had been betrayed; that the representations they had made to English statesmen would bear the stamp of untruth; that their hopes had been blasted, and that they were now to be treated as rebels and traitors for adhering to the faith of their forefathers; for, as Mr. Allan remarks, the Declaration of Independence "left no neutrals. He who was not for independence, unconditional ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... 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 never ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... friends of whose friendships he had never before been aware. With a few of the visitors, however, with whom he had been previously acquainted, he entered into conversation, speaking frankly of his actual circumstances, and of the entire untruth of the rumours which asserted his sudden wealth. Among the friends who gained his confidence to this extent was a Mr. Clark, editor of a literary magazine, who, with the view of making a little article out of his visit, questioned and cross-questioned Clare in the most minute ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... his house at Hunger Hill, by Amersham. He was eleven years younger than John Bunyan, and years younger than George Fox, the founder of that faithful band of worshippers known as the Society of Friends. They turned from all forms and ceremonies that involved untruth or insincerity, now the temple of God in man's body, and, as Saint Paul said the Corinthians, "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you," they sought to bring Christ into their hearts, and speak and act as if Christ was within governing ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... than the white-haired superintendent would have known that the young man before him could no more have committed a crime or told an untruth than an oak. The policeman who had clubbed him, perhaps with the best intentions in the ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... passionately any similar crisis anywhere. You cannot judge the people or the question out of the 'Times' newspaper, whose sole policy is, it seems to me, to get up a war between France and England, though the world should perish in the struggle. The amount of fierce untruth uttered in that paper, and sworn to by the 'Saturday Review,' makes the moral sense curdle within one. You do not know this as we do, and you therefore set it down as matter of Continental prejudice on my part. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... they ain't." The farmer's wife did not know exactly where the girls were, so she had told him no untruth. ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... ridicule—then as they do now. We discount the "Hierosolymarius." We do not quite believe that Bibulus never left the house while an enemy was to be seen; but we think that a man may be expected to tell the truth of himself; at any rate, to tell no untruth against himself. We think that Cicero of all men may be left to do so—Cicero, who so well understood the use of words, and could use them in his own defence so deftly. I maintain that it has been that very deftness which has ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... or contests true statements, surpass my expectations, although I have been led to expect a good deal in this direction. These qualities are supplemented by a surprising degree of coolness in dropping a subject or making a change of front, as soon as the untruth which he has taken as his point of departure is identified beyond the possibility of evasion. In case of necessity he covers a retreat of this sort by an ebullition of moral indignation, or by an attack, often of a very personal character, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... inadequacy which may be urged against natural science, not in the spirit of detraction, but for the sake of a more sound belief concerning reality. The philosopher falls into error no less radical than that of the dogmatic scientist, when he charges the scientist with untruth, and attaches to his concepts the predicate of unreality. The fact that the concepts of science are selected, and only inadequately true of reality, should not be taken to mean that they are sportive or arbitrary. They are not "devices" or abbreviations, in any sense that does not attach to such ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... 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
... you do not yet know the poor weakness of even maturest manhood, and the feeble gropings of the soul toward a soul's paradise in the best of the world! You do not yet know either, that ignorance and fear will be thrusting their untruth and false show into ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... not belie me. The effect of a letter is often most important. I cannot but consider this letter very ingenious. But the moment I hear it is jesuitical I forswear it. But then my dilemma remains. I cannot consent to give pain to my brother Edward: nor will I speak an untruth, though it be to save him from a wound. I am indeed troubled. Mr. Patrick, I cannot consent to despatch a jesuitical letter. You are sure of your impression, my ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... signed by the Head Staff Doctor at Potsdam, one Geronne, by name. He divides his contradiction into ten clauses. Each of the first nine contains an absolute untruth. ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... Wharton, a man of great learning and experience, and of equal freedom to communicate it; one that loves me and my art; one to whom I have been beholden for many of the choicest observations that I have imparted to you. This good man, that dares do anything rather than tell an untruth, did, I say, tell me he had lately dissected one strange fish, and he thus described ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... to grant me a testimonial to the following effect: "That I wrote the Grand Mass expressly for Y.R.H.; that it has been for some time in your possession; and that you have been pleased to permit me to circulate it." This ought to have been the case, and being no untruth, I hope I may claim this favor. Such a testimonial will be of great service to me; for how could I have believed that my slight talents would have exposed me to so much envy, persecution, and calumny. It has always been ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... would be unjust to say that this system prevails universally throughout Russia. There 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 rare. ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... wilful, unsparing of her tongue for 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
... man is a very remarkable personality," he said, "very difficult to penetrate, yet nevertheless very sincere. I do not believe that the slightest untruth has ever crossed his lips. I enjoy working with him. Ah! that reminds me, I have invited him to dine with us on Thursday. He is very anxious to be presented to you, and Esperance already knows him, so I thought you would find ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... 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
... electing so dangerous a Radical infidel to represent them in 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 ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... 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
... our profession. I assert that it does immensely greater harm than obvious falsehood, because, indeed, the unvarnished lie is much more easily discoverable than the probable truth which is still untruth. Moreover, lies come generally from people with regard to whom one is, for one reason or another, already cautious, while these insinuating approximations are made by people who are not mistrusted ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... of Shelley's genius, in itself an inducement; he also knew of his deeds of bounty; and lastly, from their frequent intercourse, he had full faith in the sincerity of his proposal; for a more crystalline heart than Shelley's never beat in human bosom. He was incapable of an untruth or of a deceit in any ill form. Keats told me, that, in declining the invitation, his sole motive was the consciousness, which would be ever prevalent with him, of his not being, in its utter extent, a free agent,—even within such a circle as Shelley's,—himself, nevertheless, the most ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... his Essay on Man—and also declared his particular attachment to Young and Akenside. "But our Shakspeare and Milton, Sir—what think you of these?" "They are doubtless very great and superior to either: but if I were to say that I understood them as well, I should say what would be an untruth: and nothing is more disgusting than an affectation of knowing what you have, comparatively, very little knowledge of." We continued our route towards the convent, at a pretty brisk pace; with great surprise, on my part, at the firm and rapid movements of the Professor. Having reached the convent, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... learned to loathe his God as intensely as he loathed Mrs. Jennett; and this is not a wholesome frame of mind for the young. Since she chose to regard him as a hopeless liar, when dread of pain drove him to his first untruth he naturally developed into a liar, but an economical and self-contained one, never throwing away the least unnecessary fib, and never hesitating at the blackest, were it only plausible, that might ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... him that spake it to have put more truth and untruth together in few words, than in that speech, Whatsoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god. For it is most true, that a natural and secret hatred, and aversation towards society, in any man, hath somewhat of the savage ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... rather sharply as to where I had been. I half pacified him by delivering Lord Windermear's polite message; but he continued his interrogations, and although I had pointed out to him that a De Benyon would never be guilty of an untruth, I am afraid I told some half dozen on this occasion; but I consoled myself with the reflection, that, in the code of honour of a fashionable man, he is bound, if necessary, to tell falsehoods where a lady is concerned; so I said I had driven ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... 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. As the Revised Version ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... arms to heaven, and, looking up to the light of the Sun, she said, "Son, I swear to thee, by this beam, bright with shining rays, which both hears and sees us, that thou, that thou, {I say}, wast begotten by this Sun, which thou beholdest; by this {Sun}, which governs the world. If I utter an untruth, let him deny himself to be seen by me, and let this light prove the last for my eyes. Nor will it be any prolonged trouble for thee to visit thy father's dwelling; the abode where he arises is contiguous to our regions.[116] If ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... [Sidenote G: "Cursed," he says, "be cowardice and covetousness both!"] [Sidenote H: Then he takes off the girdle and throws it to the knight.] [Sidenote I: He curses his cowardice,] [Sidenote J: and confesses himself to have been guilty of untruth.] [Sidenote ...
— Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight - An Alliterative Romance-Poem (c. 1360 A.D.) • Anonymous
... advised him to make his peace with James. How was that to be done? Gowrie entreated for the kind offices of Melville and Arran. They advised him to write to the King confessing that he had been in several conspiracies against his person which he could reveal in a private interview. 'I should confess an untruth,' said Gowrie, 'and frame ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... knew she had been puzzled by his presence in France, but his explanation, he hoped, had been sufficient. He had assured her that the only motive of his journey had been to be near her, which was, indeed, no untruth. ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... 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 dying ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... next 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
... a walk—this lovely day," said Janet miserably. She felt that she was telling an untruth and this hurt her horribly—especially when it was to Randall. This was what came of truck with witches—you were led into falsehood and deception straightaway. Again Janet was tempted to drop Granny's pill box ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... would not gain by a literal detail of facts. Like the wanderer in the 'Excursion,' this schoolmaster was made up of several, both of his class and men of other occupations. I do not ask pardon for what there is of untruth in such verses, considered strictly as matters of fact. It is enough if, being true and consistent in spirit, they move and teach in a manner not unworthy of a ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the embodiment of the principle of natural life, so the meanest character is the product of an ideal of goodness, and the most confused opinion of ignorant mankind is an expression of the reality of things. Without it there would not be even the semblance of knowledge, not even error and untruth. ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... and bribes, or by exciting a desire for applause: considering little what the inward motive may be, so long as the outward conduct conforms; and thus cultivating hypocrisy, and fear, and selfishness, in place of good feeling. While insisting on truthfulness, she constantly sets an example of untruth by threatening penalties which she does not inflict. While inculcating self-control, she hourly visits on her little ones angry scoldings for acts undeserving of them. She has not the remotest idea that in the nursery, as in the world, that alone is the truly ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... "Ah, Bors, ye may make no boast. For all you I might have been slain. When ye saw two knights leading me away, beating me, ye left me for to succour a gentlewoman, and suffered me to remain in peril of death. Never before did any brother to another so great an untruth. And for that misdeed now I ensure you but death, for well have ye deserved it. Therefore guard yourself from henceforward, and that shall ye find needful as soon as ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... what Dio says about it, but he seems to be telling an untruth, whether voluntarily or involuntarily; I am more inclined to think it is voluntarily. It surely must be so, for he was not ignorant of the fact that one company of the soldiers had the special name of "The Thunderbolt" (he mentions it in the list along with the rest), [Footnote: ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... are still hunting for him?" she asked with a sudden, yearning eagerness that went to the heart of the Indian. He could not speak an untruth, nor could he admit the great fear that almost stopped ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... class, who, where love is concerned, can feel but one impression, which becomes in their hearts the distinctive seal and mark of their lives, for good or for evil. Corona was indeed so loyal and good a woman, that the strong pressure of her love could not abase her nobility, nor put untruth where all was so true; but the sign of her love for Giovanni was upon her for ever. The vacant place in her heart had been filled, and filled wholly; the bulwark she had reared against the love of man was ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... a 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 kiss ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... 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 no ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... is far distant," returned Content, "and I will not lay untruth to my soul by presuming to say whether justice or injustice hath been done them in the partition of the lands. But in this valley hath wrong never been done to the red man. What Indian hath asked for food and not got it? If he hath been a-thirst, the cider came at his wish; ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... than the fortresses of fair warriors; which, if it be hard to get them out of, it is not for the strength that is in them, but the briars and thorns, and the obscurity of the thickets they are beset with. For untruth being unacceptable to the mind of man, there is no other defence left ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... members of an assembly are conversant with morality, nothing improper should be permitted by them to happen. Where, in the presence of the virtuous members of an assembly, righteousness is sought to be overpowered by unrighteousness, and truth by the untruth, it is those members themselves that are vanquished and slain. When righteousness, pierced by unrighteousness, seeketh the protection of an assembly, if the arrow is not extracted, it is the members ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... given by custom and veneration." He even adds that Shakespeare has "perhaps not one play which, if it were now exhibited as the work of a contemporary writer, would be heard to the conclusion." Whether that is true or not of Johnson's day or of our own—and let us not be too hastily sure of its untruth—at least the man who wrote it in the preface to an edition of Shakespeare lacked neither honesty nor courage. And he had then, as he has still, the reward which the most popular of the ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... love him, we must leave him alone; for without love there can be no peace-making, and words will but occasion more strife. To be kind neither hurts nor compromises. Kindness has many phases, and the fitting form of it may avoid offence, and must avoid untruth. ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... account I meant to give to the party to whom I intended to apply, it would depend on circumstances. If the French remained on the spot, I could relate the affair with the prize-crew of the Speedy; if the English, that of the Polisson. In neither case would an untruth be told, though certain collateral facts might be, and probably ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... let her 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
... no, you threw down the square blocks that Amy had laid with so much care; you spread the dung of deception over the dying seeds, and by the help of the unnatural heat which this foulness generated, brooding down from above, you sprouted the germs of untruth in the boy's soul, and set a-growing plants whose ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... playing with the cat upstairs, mamma," said Emily. But when she told this sad untruth she felt very unhappy, and her complexion changed once or twice ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... L'Aigre, after a short pause, "instead of simply answering my questions you reply with a high-sounding speech, which contains an untruth, for it is not true that you can lay any claim to the throne of France. The descendants of bastards have claims neither to the name nor the rank of their fathers. Since, in respect to your name and rank, you ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... forsake us," nodding toward Father Waite, "and yet we welcome their return when they have tired of the husks. The press teems with slander against us; we are reviled from east to west. But our reply is that such slander and untruth can best be met by our leading individual lives of such an exemplary nature as to cause all men to be attracted ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... 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 seem to be a rendezvous ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... and I could only make one answer: "Our Lady looked very beautiful; I saw her come towards me and smile." But noticing that the nuns thought something quite different had happened from what I had told them, I began to persuade myself that I had been guilty of an untruth. ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... in hers. Both had disobeyed the law which we feel to be right when we look into the very recesses of our soul, and that these laws seem foolish and illogical when criticised by the light of reason does not prove their untruth. There is something beyond reason, and to become concentric, to enter into the conventions, seemed to her in a vague and distant manner to be indispensable. She was weary of living in the inhospitable regions outside of prejudice and authority.... She felt that it was prejudice ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... felt as I did when I took my total abstainer's protest to a celebrated scientist who had exposed certain misstatements regarding the effect of small quantities of alcohol: "Is not the untruth of these exaggerated statements less dangerous than the untruth of dispassionate, scientific statement? So long as the child mind takes in only an impression, is it not better to write this impression ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... the thought suggested that maybe the sailor, dying in the Boston hospital, had told him an untruth, and such a shuddering, overwhelming feeling of disappointment came over the poor fellow at that moment that he grew dizzy and sick at heart, and ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... black and white, and thereby ushering into existence the manifold worlds and the beings that inhabit them! Thou wielder of the thunder, the protector of the universe, the slayer of Vritra and Namuchi, thou illustrious one who wearest the black cloth and displayest truth and untruth in the universe, thou who ownest for thy carrier the horse which was received from the depths of the ocean, and which is but another form of Agni (the god of fire), I bow to thee, thou supreme Lord, thou Lord of the three worlds, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... blushing cheeks convict you of untruth, and then you ought to know me sufficiently; you know that my looks can penetrate the ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... "so much the main thing that any imperfection or coarseness or untruth which interferes with it ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... 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 ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... All schools 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, no knowledge, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... catalogue of them was given up to Artaxerxes, Ctesias says, they were nine thousand, but that they appeared to him no fewer than twenty thousand. Thus far there is something to be said on both sides. But it is a flagrant untruth on the part of Ctesias to say that he was sent along with Phalinus the Zacynthian and some others to the Grecians. For Xenophon knew well enough that Ctesias was resident at court; for he makes mention of him, and had evidently met ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... I like you—that I pity you; but you forbid me to say that—well it is true, I say, that I like you; but I can't say more. The only girl I love in the sense you mane, is Mave Sullivan. I could not tell you an untruth, Sarah; nor don't desave yourself. I like you, but ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... in the same ungracious dilemma, instead of justifying himself by reason or argument, had recourse to recrimination. In the paper which he sent me next day, he insisted in general that he had carefully perused the case (which you will perceive was a self-evident untruth); he said the theory it contained was idle; that he was sure it could not be written by a physician; that, with respect to the disorder, he was still of the same opinion; and adhered to his former prescription; but if I had any doubts I might ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... 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 ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I explain my absence? I had hitherto preserved my lips untainted by prevarication or falsehood. Perhaps there was no occasion which would justify an untruth; but here, at least, it was superfluous or hurtful. My disappearance, if effected without notice or warning, will give birth to speculation and conjecture; but my true motives will never be suspected, and therefore will excite no fears. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... of reward? Yes, you have the Church with you there. It deals with our ordinary everyday morality, in very much the same way. Tells a maximum of untruth so that a necessary minimum may spring out of it. How many Christians to-day really believe in ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... was fascinated by this untruth, and, to cut the matter short, I persuaded him to begin with me a series of secret sittings, in which I proposed to try to impart to him, to infuse into him, as it were, some of my undoubted power—the power which he daily saw me exercising in the pulpit and over the minds of men in my ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... dignity Eldon answered—"Your Royal Highness condescends to be personal. I beg leave to withdraw;" and suiting his action to his words, the Chancellor made a low bow to the angry prince, and retired. The prince sneaked out of the position by an untruth, instead of an apology. On the following day he caused a written assurance to be conveyed to the Chancellor, that the offensive speech "was nothing personal, but simply a proverb—a proverbial way of saying a man was governed by his wife." It is ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... out as a realist, in the modern sense of the word, and if he detested the Church it was largely because it represented untruth. He did not deflect opinion to the same extent as his great contemporary Rousseau, but he represented it more; and of the men of the Revolution, it was Robespierre, who reigned less than four months, who stood for Rousseau, while Bonaparte, who ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... the delight of Camille 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 practically of the ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... 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
... presume it was Will—and though I do not know what he may have told you, yet I will undertake to say that he has told you nothing but the truth. I am always safe in believing him, and do not believe he would tell me an untruth for any thing that could ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... prudence, yea, of justice, toward grown-up people, should be much more observed toward children, namely, that one should never judgingly declare, for instance, 'You are a liar,' or even, 'You are a bad boy,' instead of saying, 'You have told an untruth,' or 'You have done wrong.' For since the power to command yourself implies at the same time the power of obeying, man feels a minute after his fault as free as Socrates, and the branding mark of his nature, not his deed, must seem to ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... young woman attached to the service of his little Allegra, being unwilling to avow, for fear of dismissal, that Allegra had had a fall, though the child bore the mark of it, told an untruth instead. No intercession could prevail on Lord Byron to pardon her, and she was ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... satisfy some other demands than that of veracity, he has blunted his 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 it is ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... our sudden marriage being a renewal of an old love-affair is more of an untruth than I am used to letting pass, and yet has enough truth in it to make it reality, since you were the hero of my girlish dreams. So we will let the explanation thus worded, which you have written to my uncles and stated verbally to Mrs. Keller, stand; also, that the undue haste was caused by your ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... suppressing some part of the truth in them, or concealing some circumstances about them which might serve to explain, to excuse, or to extenuate them. In such a manner easily, without uttering any logical untruth, one may yet grievously calumniate. Thus suppose a man speaketh a thing upon supposition, or with exception, or in way of objection, or merely for disputation sake, in order to the discussion or clearing of truth; he that should report him ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... been out in the barn for the last half hour—what were you doing over there, I'd like to know?" Their mother spoke sharply, for untruth ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... case—and so wilt thou, if thou respectest her as thou oughtest: for thou knowest that men and women, all the world over, form their opinions of one another by each person's professions and known practices. In this lady, therefore, it would be unpardonable to tell a wilful untruth, as it would be strange if I kept my word.—In love cases, I mean; for, as to the rest, I am an honest, moral man, as all who know ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... 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 he could bring no witnesses to show that he had really ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... 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 ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... criminal conspiracy on the part of surgeons; that a sufficient cure for appendicitis, "as any honest doctor would tell you," is an injection of molasses and water! The endless harm done by such outright untruth is swelled by a joining stream of slapdash misinformation and vicious sensation, ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... not tell an untruth with those eyes," thought the mother, smiling at her agitation and happiness. The princess smiled that what was taking place just now in her soul seemed to the poor child so immense ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... which is more sacred than anything else to scouts and gentlemen; the disdain of telling or implying an untruth; ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... mingled horror and astonishment. "You poor wretch!" he answered, as calmly as before, but with evident contempt; "how can you dare, such a thing as you, to apply these vile words to your moral superiors? Adultery it was indeed, and untruth to her own higher and purer nature, for this lady to spend one night of her life under your roof with you; what she has taken now in exchange is holy marriage, the only real and sacred marriage, the marriage of true souls, to which even the wiser of yourselves, the poets of your nation, ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... Its faith the pair should ever keep in view: The path of honour steadily pursue. If some mishap howe'er should chance to glide; And make you limp on one or t'other side, Endeavour, of the fault, to make the best, And keep the secret locked within your breast; Your own consideration never lose; Untruth 'tis pardonable then ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... greatness in that? It is the suicide's plea for his own self-pity. You live under tyranny, corruption, dynastic lies hard to bear, despotic enemies hard to bear, I know. But you forget—what all followers of your creed ever forget—that without corruption, untruth, weakness, ignorance in a nation itself, such things could not be in its rulers. Men can bridle the ass and can drive the sheep; but who can drive the eagle or bridle the lion? A people that was strong and pure no despot could ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... one impression, which becomes in their hearts the distinctive seal and mark of their lives, for good or for evil. Corona was indeed so loyal and good a woman, that the strong pressure of her love could not abase her nobility, nor put untruth where all was so true; but the sign of her love for Giovanni was upon her for ever. The vacant place in her heart had been filled, and filled wholly; the bulwark she had reared against the love of man was broken down and swept away, and the waters flowed softly over ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... wrote to the newspapers that it was an admitted and notorious fact that a sister of Mr. Gladstone's under his own influence had gone over to the church of Rome.[200] The fable was retracted, but at once revived in the still grosser untruth, that he habitually employed 'a Jesuitical system of argument' to show that nobody need leave the church of England, 'because all might be had there that was to be enjoyed in the church of Rome.' ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... far enough to see the bridge, "There, madam," says I, "there is my entrance, where the sea pours into this lake from yonder cavern."—"It is not possible," says she; "this is another untruth; and as I see you would deceive me, and are not to be believed, farewell; I must be gone. But, hold," says she, "let me ask you one thing more; that is, by what means did you come through that cavern? You could ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... in their way, as what else should they be, children of men and women as they are? Just as with human friends so with book friends, first impressions are often misleading; good literary coin sometimes seems to ring untrue, but the untruth is in the ear of the reader, not of the writer. For instance, Trollope has many odd and irritating tricks which are apt to scare off those who lack perseverance and who fail to understand that there must be something admirable in that which was once much admired ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... partiality, and for putting on every day a fair, open, catholic, Christian mind, commend me to the public life and the public journals of our living day. And it is not that this man may be up and that man down; this cause victorious and that cause defeated; this truth vindicated and that untruth defeated, that public life rolls on and that its revolutions are reported to us. Our own minds and our own hearts are the final cause, the ultimate drift, and the far-off end and aim of it all. We are not made for party and for the partialities and prosperities of party; party ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... swept over her 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 ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... given by money, but that from virtue come money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching; and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, my influence is ruinous indeed. But if anyone says that this is not my teaching, he is speaking an untruth. Wherefore, O men of Athens, I say to you, do as Anytus bids or not as Anytus bids, and either acquit me or not; but whatever you do, know that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... singular declaration made by Chateaubriand to Joubert, while relating the details of a nocturnal voyage: "The moon shone upon me in a slender crescent, and that prevented me from writing an untruth, for I feel sure that had not the moon been there I should have said in my letter that it was shining, and then you would have convicted me of an error in ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... the less likely he is to be. While he himself has been unable in two or three instances to keep promises made to withhold from sexual intercourse with certain attractive individuals, he has never otherwise been guilty of untruth ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... times in error, commonly called "sin." "Sinful pleasures," against which our parents, the clergy, and all moral philosophers have warned us, do not exist. There is no pleasure in sin. Our race beliefs, based upon untruth and ignorance, have bequeathed us a heritage of appetites, passions and desires which are wrong, and ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... with the younger girls, and was no doubt very unhappy. But she was still indignant, and would yield nothing. When Georgina, the fourth daughter, pointed out to her that, in accordance with all rules of good breeding, she should have abstained from asserting that her brother had spoken an untruth, she blazed up again. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... had contained the smallest untruth, if there had been the least false statement in it, they would have stigmatized him as a calumniator and scandalizer of majesty. But Gotzkowsky had only told the truth. They could not, therefore, ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... not a few, who laid bare this iniquitous scheme of presenting the untruth, and declared that they would no more give ear to any teaching ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... when evil men are strong, No life is good, no pleasure long, A weak and cowardly untruth! Our Clifford was a happy Youth, And thankful through a weary time That brought him up to manhood's prime. Again, he wanders forth at will, And tends a flock from hill to hill: His garb is humble; ne'er was seen Such garb with such a noble mien; Among the shepherd grooms no mate ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... to have 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
... second untruth, which is closely connected with the first, is this: That there are but two classes of those who pass hence and are no more seen; classes sharply distinguished, clearly outlined,—on the one hand, of those who at death go straight to heaven, and, on the other, ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... and never was a scintilla of truth for the charge of wholesale slaughtering of wounded dervishes, nor that the Sirdar ever issued such an order, or that any reputable person ever received it, or ever had it hinted to him. The accusation is an unmitigated untruth, and absolutely at variance with all that was said and done by the Sirdar before and during the course of the battle and the pursuit. I certainly never heard of the matter until Mr Bennett made the accusation, and I cannot trace its authorship beyond himself. ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... art telling me an untruth, and thou knowest it. Show me thy business instantly, or I will carry thee off to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... 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 though breath had failed him. "What do you ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... he said, to convince the sergeant of the untruth of this statement, he sent him with some trifling commission to Lieutenant von Trenck. The sergeant returned triumphantly; the baron was not at home, and his servant was most anxious about him, The captain shrugged his shoulders silently. ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... told me you always grew angry when you heard anything about the Ellsworth ghost. They warned me that you would never forgive the mention of it. But I can not tell you an untruth. Since you ask me, I must own everything, and ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... him on this point even by an untruth, for she might be driven, for the sake of Peggy and the children, to go back into that ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... 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. It could do ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... admitted that a design made by someone else was taken to her, but that she made certain changes in it. Now, that is all there is in the Betsy Ross claim; yet the growing youths of the nation are being misled and taught an historical untruth when it is asserted that Mrs. Ross designed, originated and made the first American flag, and a lithograph has been issued showing that historical untruth, which has not as good a foundation, in fact, as the two paintings to which I have referred, because the events sought to be depicted in those ...
— The True Story of the American Flag • John H. Fow
... telling an 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 happy, ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... that it is around thirty that for the first time the man and the woman meet on an equality, without sham, shame or pretense. Before that time the average woman abounds in affectation and untruth; the man is absurdly aggressive and full ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... 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, John Wingfield, in his egoism. ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... 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 reason ...
— Waltoniana - Inedited Remains in Verse and Prose of Izaak Walton • Isaak Walton
... 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
... feelings will secure you from all unpleasant circumstances Connected with me save only one, viz., the evasion of a specific madness. You will never hear any thing 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. No sixty hours have yet passed without my having taken laudanum, though for the last ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... her face, confronting him with this untruth, he saw enough of the last perversion and distortion of good surviving in that miserable breast, to be stricken with remorse that he had ever ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... gigantic, extensive, vast, massive, unwieldy, bulky. Laughable, comical, comic, farcical, ludicrous, ridiculous, funny, droll. Lead, guide, conduct, escort, convoy. Lengthen, prolong, protract, extend. Lessen, decrease, diminish, reduce, abate, curtail, moderate, mitigate, palliate. Lie (noun), untruth, falsehood, falsity, fiction, fabrication, mendacity, canard, fib, story. Lie (verb), prevaricate, falsify, equivocate, quibble, shuffle, dodge, fence, fib. Likeness, resemblance, similitude, similarity, semblance, analogy. Limp, flaccid, flabby, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... 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 ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... necessary that, in order to vindicate the intellectual dignity of military activity, we should resort to untruth and silly pedantry. There never has been a great and distinguished Commander of contracted mind, but very numerous are the instances of men who, after serving with the greatest distinction in inferior positions, remained below mediocrity in the highest, ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... deeply hurt, and had lain awake weeping during the small hours of the morning). The mother, seeing nothing for it but either to get rid of Alice before Janet's return or to be detected in a spiteful untruth, had to pretend that Janet was spending the evening with some friends, and to urge the unkindness of leaving Miss Carew lonely. At last Alice washed away the traces of her tears and returned to the castle, feeling very miserable, and trying to comfort herself ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... year 1813, and at page 458 find in full, 'The Speech of Miss Polly Baker, delivered before a court of judicature in Connecticut, where she was prosecuted.'" Raynal, therefore, would have been right if instead of Massachusetts he had said Connecticut; and either Franklin told an untruth, or else ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... his anger. Dorothy had lied to him. Of that there could be no doubt; but her deception was provoked by his own conduct and by the masterful love that had come upon her. I truly believe that prior to the time of her meeting with Manners she had never spoken an untruth, nor since that time I also believe, except when driven to do so by the same motive. Dorothy was not a thief, but I am sure she would have stolen for the sake of her lover. She was gentle and tender to a degree that only a woman can attain; but I believe she would have done murder ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... calm frankness in the god, with its effect of personal clearness from all sense of guilt, suggests the measure of Wotan's distinguishing simplicity. Referring later to the dubious act which so effectually laid the foundation of sorrows, he says, "Unknowingly deceitful, I practised untruth. Loge artfully tempted me." He explains himself to Fricka, when she asks why he continues to trust the crafty Loge, who has often already brought them into straits: "Where frank courage is sufficient, I ask counsel of no one. But slyness and cunning are needed to turn to advantage the ill-will ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... 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., ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... Percivale; "so much the main thing that any imperfection or coarseness or untruth which interferes with it becomes of ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... believe in a 'kind of a lie,'" she replied, "A thing is either true or untrue, and I don't think it could ever be right to tell an untruth under ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... had proceeded some distance, I bethought me of the piece of gold in my vest pocket. 'What,' said I to myself, 'I told that man I had no money, when I had by me all the time this gold pocket-piece. This was an untruth, and I have done wrong.' I kept reproaching myself in this way until I stopped, and took from my pocket the ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... gave birth to these sects and largely moulded their peculiar doctrines. One extreme begot another, and while each of these denominations emphasized some neglected religious truth, it emphasized it so strongly as to often twist it into an untruth or out of proper relationship to other truths. The people in free America are not interested in the polemical controversies that resulted from religious and political conditions in the old countries. ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... presence, a doubt of him. It was when he had gone that all the facts which he had ignored came back to her with torturing insistence, and that she blamed herself for not having refused to be reconciled to him until she had ascertained the truth or untruth of a report that had reached ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... well. 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
... short, as the saying goes, the poor players cleared over three hundred dollars by the night's show, while the distinguished artists who gave grand opera in homeopathic doses in another end of the town sang to almost empty benches. Handy told no untruth when he announced on the bills that "those who witnessed the performance will ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... some of the newspapers now-a-days may be classed as fiction. Even party politics are full of fictions, more or less. Surely the public must find it very difficult to winnow the truth from all the political lies, both spoken and written. To me, elections are all mere campaigns of untruth." ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... Nekhludoff, feeling that he was saying an untruth; that if there was anything he would try hard to do it was not to be present at the lawyer's amid the ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... 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, not hearing ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... of the State. No, these will not be your greatest sins. If men go into Parliament, and through Parliament into the Government, who profess, as philosophers, not to know God, but who rise up in the name of Truth against this arbitrary tyranny of Untruth, they are serving God better than you and will be more pleasing to God than you, who believe in Him as an idol and not as the Spirit of Truth, than you who dare to talk of the putrefaction of Catholicism, you who stink of falsity. Yes, who stink ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... 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 ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... might have been slain. When ye saw two knights leading me away, beating me, ye left me for to succour a gentlewoman, and suffered me to remain in peril of death. Never before did any brother to another so great an untruth. And for that misdeed now I ensure you but death, for well have ye deserved it. Therefore guard yourself from henceforward, and that shall ye find needful as soon ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... "in conflict with the existing and abiding right of the person spoken to." If right here means something binding in commutative justice (Ethics, c. v., s. ix., n. 6, p. 106), we deny that any such right is violated by what is called a simple lie, that is, an untruth not in the matter of religion, and not affecting the character, property, or personal well-being of our neighbour. For if a simple lie is a violation of commutative justice, it carries the obligation of restitution (Ethics, c. v., s. ix., n. 6, p. 107); that is, we are bound to tell the truth ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... cousin 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 ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... reason—now that the untruth is properly and satisfactorily established—that one person should not know that John Mayrant broke that engagement." And I told her the whole of it. "If I'm outrageous to share this secret with you," I concluded, "I can only say that I couldn't ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... Night, Brother to Death, in silent darkness born, Relieve my anguish, and restore the light, With dark forgetting of my care, return. And let the day be time enough to mourn The shipwreck of my ill-advised youth; Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn, Without the torments of the night's untruth. Cease, dreams, the images of day-desires, To model forth the passions of to-morrow; Never let the rising sun prove you liars, To add more grief, to aggravate my sorrow. Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain, And never wake to feel ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... imputed it to ridiculous and blasphemous causes. And besides, the apostle used to provoke(231) to the very testimony of five hundred, who had seen Jesus rise from death, which is not the custom of liars, neither is it possible for so many, as it were, of purpose, to conspire to such an untruth, as had so many miseries and calamities following on the profession of it, 1 ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... come without you? She's got more sense than I thought. But don't be silly—there are few times in life when an untruth is justified, but many times when you don't have to tell all you ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... talking now if I had not stamped my foot and stopped his rambling. His insinuations sounded as if I were a feeble-minded creature and couldn't tell truth from untruth, or know when a man meant or didn't mean what he said, and had never heard things of the same sort before. I've heard them before, and in several different places. I am a good many things I ought not to be, but I am not feeble-minded. I told him— It does not matter ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... of the wild eye and wicked smile protect me! I have seen the witch buried fathoms deep in brine, and the glittering water falling from her tresses like golden stars; but never have I read an untruth in her pages. There is good intelligence between her and some on board; and, trust me, she knows the paths of the ocean too well, ever to steer a wrong course. But we prate like gossiping river-men.—Wilt see the ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... living through a horrible nightmare—horrible and at the same time absurd. But she made a great effort to remain calm, and to prove herself a sensible woman. So she added quietly: "I can't tell—I can't in the least guess—why this woman is telling such a strange, silly untruth. It is easy to prove the truth of what I say, Mr. Burton. My husband's name is John Dampier. He is an artist, and has a studio ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... with the mother country, to declare her their enemy, and to avow eternal separation from her, it may be easily conceived how a large portion of the colonists would feel that their confidence had been betrayed; that the representations they had made to English statesmen would bear the stamp of untruth; that their hopes had been blasted, and that they were now to be treated as rebels and traitors for adhering to the faith of their forefathers; for, as Mr. Allan remarks, the Declaration of Independence ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... 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 ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... to insert one 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 as ever ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... position of being able to bear neither to think of the children's intercourse with any one tainted with falsehood, nor to dismiss a person implicitly trusted by their father. She could only decide that the first detected act of untruth should ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... carried their mutual attempts at deception to a point that was not only harmful to themselves, but ridiculous, making it a principle to violate oaths and to debase the currency of good faith in every possible way. There was also much untruth in private life. Unfortunately, lying in the interests of piety was justified by Luther, while the Jesuits made ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... right became confounded with wrong, by reason of the will of man and his capability and greed of gain, which is the voluntary side of him together with the weakness of human nature; wherefore Allah created penitence for man, to turn away from him Untruth and stablish him in Truth, and He created for him also punishment if he should abide in the obscurity of Falsehood." Quoth the Prince, "Tell me how came Untruth to invade Truth, so as to be confounded therewith, and how became man liable to punishment and so stood in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... had served many years on board of a man-of-war, and had been in every climate: he had many strange stories to tell, and he might be believed even when his stories were strange, for he would not tell an untruth. He could navigate a vessel, and, of course, he could read and write. The name of Ready was very well suited to him, for he was seldom at a loss; and in cases of difficulty and danger, the captain would not hesitate to ask his opinion, and ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 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 turned to hatred ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... is pleasanter indoors." And, stopping with this single untruth, he permitted himself the briefest glance about the room; then his eyes returned to his ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... with envy to hear her say that, for she feared that Katipah was too good and simple to tell her an untruth, even in mockery. But she put a brave face upon the matter, saying only, "I will believe in that fine husband of yours when I ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman
... beam, bright with shining rays, which both hears and sees us, that thou, that thou, {I say}, wast begotten by this Sun, which thou beholdest; by this {Sun}, which governs the world. If I utter an untruth, let him deny himself to be seen by me, and let this light prove the last for my eyes. Nor will it be any prolonged trouble for thee to visit thy father's dwelling; the abode where he arises is contiguous to our regions.[116] If only ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... obligations. Though in some ways a true backwoods Donatello, he was a man of much shrewdness and of great courage and resolution. Moreover, he possessed what only a few men do possess, the capacity to tell the truth. He saw facts as they were, and could tell them as they were, and he never told an untruth unless for very weighty reasons. He was pre-eminently a philosopher, of a happy, sceptical turn of mind. He had no prejudices. He never looked down, as so many hard characters do, upon a person possessing a different ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... brief, decided, and without trace of hesitation. I need not add that they should be true. We cannot teach children the danger of telling lies to men without realising, on the man's part, the danger of telling lies to children. A single untruth on the part of the master will destroy the results of ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... neighbors. I don't take much interest in the living, you know. But I pitied her, poor thing, for she was to be pitied, and there was nobody but me to do it. Just inquire of the vote-cribber.' I knew the simpleton never told an untruth, being in no way connected with our ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... to come before she had time to think of it; it tripped off her tongue as though some will, other than her own, controlled her speech. But now that the untruth was spoken she determined to abide by it, ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... 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
... Shylock. "If he is like this at twenty, what will he be at fifty?" groaned the Colonel. "I'd rather Clive were dead than have him such a heartless woriding as this." And yet the young man was not ungenerous, not untruth-telling, not unserviceable. He thought his life was good enough. It was as good as that of other folks he lived with. You don't suppose he had any misgivings, provided he was in the City early enough in the morning; or slept badly, unless he indulged too freely over-night; or twinges ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "I cannot but think a man's heart is gone something wrong when he begins to meddle with casuistry. The very minute that Adam fell from innocence, he took refuge in casuistry. There was not one word of untruth in what he said to the Lord: he was afraid, and he did hide himself. Yet there was deception, for it was not all the truth—no, nor the half. As methinks, 'tis alway safest to tell out the plain truth, and leave the ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... laudable make-believe—a make-believe that requires some 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 ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... Untruth, then, is a considerable fault, one that is quite widespread and one that embraces many sub-divisions. Under this category falls especially the use of mythological propositions, the common vehicle of poets when they have nothing to say. We have rejected many epigrams that are faulty in this kind, ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... was a Christian, as in fact I am, and not a mere pretended one, or outwardly, but a true Catholic Christian. It availed me nothing with those charged with our sad expatriation to protest this, nor would my uncles believe it; on the contrary, they treated it as an untruth and a subterfuge set up to enable me to remain behind in the land of my birth; and so, more by force than of my own will, they took me with them. I had a Christian mother, and a father who was a man of sound ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Russia. There 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 ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... a great lie to save other hearts from being crushed as life has been crushed out of mine. I thought of telling them that my husband had died up here—in the North. And I was fearing suspicion ... the chance that my father might learn the untruth of it, when you came. That is all, Philip. You understand now. You know why—some day—you must go away and never come back. It is to save the boy, my father, my ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... first house. There is no reasonable doubt, however, that the fire was accidental. An inscription on the Monument long attributed it to the Catholics; but it is removed now, and was always a malicious and stupid untruth. ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... "Mary Raymond, you don't know what you are talking about," she flamed. "I can guess who told you that untruth. It was Mignon La Salle. It was not Constance who took my butterfly pin. ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... 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 ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... There are some frayed and shaded strands, fair Kate, But lines of purest gold illuminate Our wedded lot, as stars the heavenly dome, And come what may, sunshine or chilling rain, Prosperity and peace or woe instead, Untruth and selfishness shall never stain The web of love and hope illustrated. Not even death unravels when we die, The woven work approved of God ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... drummer boy still hoped that by putting a bold face on the matter, and prevaricating a little, he might still keep clear of that thing he had been taught always to abhor—a downright untruth. ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... looked quite frightened at his master—the first time he had heard an untruth from him. "What shall I ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... numbering ten thousand horsemen; also that he was sent by his sire with this force to gain prevalence for the King of Constantinople." "O my lady," said Sharrkan, "I adjure thee by thy religion, tell me the cause of all this, that sooth may appear to me clear of untruth, and with whom the fault lies." "Now by the virtue of thy faith," she replied, "did I not fear lest the news of me be bruited abroad that I am of the daughters of Roum, I would adventure myself and sally forth single handed against the ten thousand horsemen and slay their leader, the Wazir ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... that 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 should know ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... be urged against natural science, not in the spirit of detraction, but for the sake of a more sound belief concerning reality. The philosopher falls into error no less radical than that of the dogmatic scientist, when he charges the scientist with untruth, and attaches to his concepts the predicate of unreality. The fact that the concepts of science are selected, and only inadequately true of reality, should not be taken to mean that they are sportive or arbitrary. They are not "devices" ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... from herself: in case of her being already dead before me, the box and all its contents should be burnt without opening or disturbing anything. And lest anyone should plead ignorance of the contents, I swear by the God I worship and by all that is most sacred that no untruth is here asserted. If anyone should contravene my wishes that are just and reasonable in this matter, I charge their conscience therewith in discharging my own in this world and the next, protesting that such is my ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... 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," which makes the universe out to be a huge "swine's trough" ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... presumed to follow the great Las Casas, who called all the historians of the Conquest of Mexico liars; and though his labored refutation of their fictions has disappeared, yet, fortunately, the natural evidences of their untruth still remain. Having before me the surveys and the levels of our own engineers, I have presumed to doubt that water ever ran up hill, that navigable canals were ever fed by "back water," that pyramids (teocalli) ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... first time the thought suggested that maybe the sailor, dying in the Boston hospital, had told him an untruth, and such a shuddering, overwhelming feeling of disappointment came over the poor fellow at that moment that he grew dizzy and sick at heart, and came nigh losing ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... made 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 aberration of ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... attended a lady who had been frightened by a large green frog at or about the middle of pregnancy, and that she gave birth to a monstrosity, the head of which was that of a large frog in shape, with the eyes and mouth and even the coloring of a frog, then he is either telling an untruth, or he shows himself as ignorant and credulous as any illiterate old woman can be. The doctor should know that at the middle of pregnancy the child is fully formed and that there is no possibility of an already formed human being changing its shape into that of an animal. ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... having forgotten her message. But the fact was, Kate, who was neither an untruthful nor deceitful girl, shrank from telling a direct lie. She had yielded to the temptation last Sunday because, as she had persuaded herself then, she was not required to tell an untruth, but merely to hold her tongue about the message; but now she found that to hide that wrong-doing a direct lie must be told, and, although it made her uncomfortable and unhappy, it was done. But she protested ...
— Kate's Ordeal • Emma Leslie
... me, my dear, I should not reproach you for that; on the contrary, I should be grateful to you. Nothing is so legitimate, so human, as to deceive pain. What would become of us if women had not for us the pity of untruth? Lie, my beloved, lie for the sake of charity. Give me the dream that colors black sorrow. Lie; have no scruples. You will only add another illusion to the illusion ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... Walter never could learn. With him, ten was ten, eight eight—no matter who the customer was. To take an unfair advantage, or tell a lie never occurred to him. From fear or embarrassment he might possibly tell an untruth; but if he had ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... for six-and-twenty years, and mother of seven, looking the world squarely in the eye and telling a large and beautiful untruth, carving it in marble to protect your husband's name, I kiss ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... damn him." "He was the most sincere and candid soul," wrote his friend Maucroix, who had been intimate with him for more than fifty years, "that I have ever known; never a disguise; I don't know that he spoke an untruth in all ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... publike favour. 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 ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... offspring 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 ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... away." But when I looked into Dicky's hammock, he was sleeping away with such unfeigned soundness that I could scarcely fancy that he had played any trick; and the next morning he assured me, on his word of honour, that he knew nothing whatever about the matter. I had never known Dicky to tell an untruth, and I felt very sure that he would not conceal anything he had done from me; indeed, the great pleasure he had in playing any mischievous prank was, to tell me of it afterwards, if I happened not to be a partaker of it,—a very rare ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... of whose friendships he had never before been aware. With a few of the visitors, however, with whom he had been previously acquainted, he entered into conversation, speaking frankly of his actual circumstances, and of the entire untruth of the rumours which asserted his sudden wealth. Among the friends who gained his confidence to this extent was a Mr. Clark, editor of a literary magazine, who, with the view of making a little article out of his visit, questioned ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... hard for him that spake it to have put more truth and untruth together in few words than in that speech: "Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god." For it is most true that a natural and secret hatred and aversation towards society in any man hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... It was all over town that Yasmini had been closeted with the commissioner on the morning of her recent escape. She herself had deliberately sown the seeds of that untruth. ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... upward to the goal without impediment. I was struck a few days ago with the untruth, so far as Hawthorne is concerned, of a passage in the Preface to Endymion. Keats says: "The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... believed, or at least was willing to believe, that they misrepresented Christianity, they awoke all his old feelings of instinctive repulsion, and overclouded his discrimination. Almost as little could he endure the unnature as the untruth of what he heard. It had no ring of reality, no spark of divine fire, no appealing radiance of common sense, little of any verity at all. There was in it, as nearly as possible, nothing at all to mediate between mind and mind, between truth and belief, ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... remember that she had not been quite open about it. Somehow, since that first foolish concealment, she had constantly been forced into little crooked paths where she could not walk quite straight, but she consoled herself by the reflection that she had not told any untruth. ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... disease occurring 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 a humane man and a conscientious observer, striving to learn ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... at the feet of a slave- owning King. Were it not so, how could we hope in our heart to meet him! Our King honours each one of us, thus honours his own very self. No littleness can keep us shut up in its walls of untruth for aye. Were it not so, how could we have hope in our heart to meet him! We struggle and dig our own path, thus reach his path at the end. We can never get lost in the abyss of dark night. Were it not so, how could we hope in our heart ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... truth? You see where truth is, and where untruth is, but I seem to have lost my sight and see nothing. You boldly settle all important questions, but tell me, dear, isn't it because you're young, because you haven't had time to suffer till you ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... could be imposed upon by them, when the actual character of the book in question was carefully misrepresented, and when the self-evident trend, tenor, and aim of the ostensible review were to excite public prejudice against the author on grounds wholly irrespective of the truth or untruth of ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... Eastern and near-Eastern people of the sort who lie instinctively (and it may be that this applies to the West as well) it's a good plan to establish, if you can, a basis of truth for them to build their tale on; because the truth acts like acid on untruth. They're going to lie in any case; but lies told without any reference to truth knit better than when invented at a moment's notice to explain away another's straightforward statement. There's a plausible theory ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... not 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
... answer your questions as well as I can," he said; "but it is hard to deal with generalities. You see how useless, for that very reason, my answers have as yet been! Still I have something more to say, and hesitate only because it may imply more confidence than I dare profess, and of all things I dread untruth. But I am honest in this much at least, that I desire with true heart to find a God who will acknowledge me as his creature and make me his child, and if there be any God I am nearly certain he will do so; for surely there cannot be any ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... no such speech as the following was ever 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 of fact, as that of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... wretched 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 ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... would not have denied any wrong-doing of which he had been guilty, if taxed with it; but he would not scruple to conceal that wrong, or to evade the consequences thereof, by any means short of a deliberate untruth. His faults were those with which his father and mother had the least patience and sympathy, and those which needed a large share of both; had he ever received these, the faults would probably never have attained to such a growth, for he was in mortal dread of both parents, especially of his ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... circumstances aside, be it known to your son, or to any man else, that if there be any one who beareth the name of gentleman, and whose words are of reputation in his county, that doth say, or dare say, that I have done unjustly, spoken an untruth, stained my credit and reputation in this matter, or in any matter else, wherein your son is exasperated, I say he lieth in his throat, and my sword shall maintain my word upon him, in any place or province, wheresoever ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... dance. Without giving her time to answer I put in my application for the position of escort. Then"—Elfreda paused, a slight flush rose to her round face, "then she looked me in the eye and told me a deliberate untruth. She said she had refused one invitation because she had not been interested in the reception, but that she had changed her mind. She thanked me and said she would be pleased to go. I bowed myself out without further ado, but Miss Taylor gave ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... "don't talk that way! Yes—I believe you, without testimony. You never said, or thought, an untruth; and your explanation will be enough not only for me, but for the whole neighborhood, if all witnesses are dead or gone away. If you knew of the shameful report, why didn't you deny it at once? Why let it spread and ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... a great deal of untruth spoken of mother's love, a great deal of misconception about it, as there is about most very strange, and very wonderful and beautiful things. But are you so sure that if your husband had stamped himself upon a boy this force within ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... into character and motives, so long as appearances were fair and decorous. How far the individual may be affected by putting on the garb of qualities and feelings that do not exist may be a question for the moralist; but this conventional untruth has its advantages, not only in reducing to a minimum the friction of social machinery, and subjecting the impulses to the control of the will, but in the subtle influence of an ideal that is good and true, however far one may in ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... said, "cannot suspect a fellow-townsman, whose character is as high as mine, of untruth and theft. And to whom else have you communicated the facts connected with a memoir and a request of ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thyself the sacred city of Dwarka, abounding in wealth and agreeable unto the Rishi themselves, and thou wilt submerge it at the end within the ocean! O slayer of Madhu, how can crookedness be in thee, devoid as thou art, O thou of the Dasarha race, of anger and envy and untruth and cruelty? O thou who knowest no deterioration, all the Rishis, coming unto thee seated in thy glory on the sacrificial ground, seek protection of thee! And, O slayer of Madhu, thou stayest at the end of the Yuga, ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... even analyze the feeling I have for you, or call it by name. I know this is an unheard-of-way to talk to a girl, especially one so impressionable as you; but I cannot help it. There is something about you, Florence, that keeps me from untruth, when probably under the same circumstances I would lie to any other woman in the world. I simply know that you impersonate a desire of my nature ungratified; that without you I have no wish ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... Grand-Inquisitor succeeds in discovering this untruth, and in exciting the King's anger against his favorite. Carlo, much embarrassed, obtains an interview with the King, and confessing the whole truth assures him, that the Queen knows as yet nothing and implores him to give his thoughts ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... Marjorie, turning away with a burning face. She felt rather guilty, as though she had gone near to speaking an untruth, although no actual falsehood had passed her lips. Nobody heeded her as she slipped through the crowd of donkey boys and onlookers. Some offered her their beasts, but she smiled and shook her head, and hurried back to the main route through the larger arcades. Once there, she went leisurely, ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... of some of his new student friends. His 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, ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... 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
... this was an untruth; but I bided my time, judiciously watching for an opportunity to pay ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... 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, no ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... 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 ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the bygone time. And that letter—God is good, for that! For it was that told of how she died—that wicked poison-bite! My child, it has never gone quite out of my heart to think your mother died so far away in such pain—never in all these years! And now I know it for an untruth. I thank ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... been captured by the train robbers!" replied George, telling the untruth with a great deal of satisfaction as he saw the effect ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... of the world, and desiring above everything to be honest—a naturalist, in fact, with positive ideas of right and wrong, and incapable of the confusion of mind or laxity of conscience which denies, on the one hand, that wrong may be pleasant in the doing, or claims, on the other, with equal untruth, that because it is pleasant it must be, if not exactly right, at all events, excusable. So she endeavoured to represent things as she saw them, things real, not imaginary; and when her characters spoke they ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... an untruth," she said to Miss Lyster; "I could not if I tried. How could I excuse ...
— Marion Arleigh's Penance - Everyday Life Library No. 5 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... the most well-intended falsehood escape your lips; for Heaven, which is entirely Truth, will make the seed which you have sown of untruth to yield ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
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