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Falseness   Listen
noun
Falseness  n.  The state of being false; contrariety to the fact; inaccuracy; want of integrity or uprightness; double dealing; unfaithfulness; treachery; perfidy; as, the falseness of a report, a drawing, or a singer's notes; the falseness of a man, or of his word.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Falseness" Quotes from Famous Books



... your audacity far enough to ask to speak to ME about the loss of the Diamond—the Diamond which you yourself had stolen; the Diamond which was all the time in your own hands! After that proof of your horrible falseness and cunning, I tore up my letter. But even then—even when I was maddened by the searching and questioning of the policeman, whom you had sent in—even then, there was some infatuation in my mind which wouldn't let me give you up. I said to myself, 'He has played his vile farce before ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... antecedent to but consequent upon it. What they did was on an unprecedented scale in England because heresy existed on an unprecedented scale; and the result was that the general conscience was awakened to the falseness of the principle. The same ghastly error for which Christendom has forgiven Marcus Aurelius was committed by Mary and endorsed by Pole, both of them by nature little less magnanimous and no whit less conscientious than ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... of a man of honour; but we agree with him, against our consciences, when he remorsefully considers "its astonishing dryness." He is the best of men, but the best of women manage to combine all that and something more. Their very faults assist them; they are helped even by the falseness of their position in life. They can retire into the fortified camp of the proprieties. They can touch a subject and suppress it. The most adroit employ a somewhat elaborate reserve as a means to be frank, much as they wear gloves ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... active promoters of the prosecution, was involved in the indiscriminate charges of the informers, who were beginning to aim at more exalted prey. The minister, alarmed at the unexpected result of his own agitation, was now convinced of the falseness of the whole proceeding. It was a fortunate occurrence. From ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams

... was just, considered the other possible cause. Larry might use the letters against her in the days to come. Show them to others to prove her falseness and ingratitude. This possibility, however, was only transitory. What she had done was inevitable, Mary-Clare knew that, and it seemed to her right—oh! so right. There was only one real fact to face. Larry was ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock

... seemed in the faint light—this woman the story of whose beauty and whose sin shall outlive the solid mass of the mighty pyramid that towered over us! The heaviness of her swoon had smoothed away the falseness of her face, and nothing was left but the divine stamp of Woman's richest loveliness, softened by shadows of the night and dignified by the cast of deathlike sleep. I gazed upon her and all my heart went out to her; it seemed that I did ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... blew, one thing (more than all the rest) worried and perplexed me. This was, that I could not settle, turn and twist as I might, how soon I ought to go again upon a visit to Glen Doone. For I liked not at all the falseness of it (albeit against murderers), the creeping out of sight, and hiding, and feeling as a spy might. And even more than this. I feared how Lorna might regard it; whether I might seem to her a prone and blunt intruder, a country ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... the conditions, nothing had been hidden from them, not the length and hardship of the war, not the violence of battle, not the terrible destruction of the new weapons, not the falseness of the enemy. Nothing stopped them. They accepted the hard life, they crossed the ocean at great peril, they took their places at the front beside us; and now they have fallen in a desperate hand-to-hand ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... history of man. False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and, when this is done, one path toward error is closed and the road to truth is often at the ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various

... selfish." At first, this bleak truthfulness was only momentary. Almost immediately she was swept from the noble pain of knowing that Maurice had been false to himself; swept from the sense of her own share in that falseness, swept back to the insult to herself! Back to self-love. With this was the fear that if she accused him, if she told him that she knew he was false to her, if she made him very angry, he would leave her, and go and live with this woman—who had given him a child ... Yet every morning ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... because he dared to love another; and when death stared her in the face, and open-eyed judgment shook her soul, rose from that death-pallet to grapple and abuse a false woman, penitent for and confessing her falseness; a virgin-monarch, pitiless, relentless, cruel as jealousy; an anomalous woman, were she not a stone-born ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... arm with my one hand, and with the other held before the wretch's eyes the evidence of his cursed falseness. His evil conscience bade him fly. I reached him, seized ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... the heart of the people. He was above all things a sentimentalist, this son of a Genevan clockmaker. Society treated him harshly; and he avenged himself by making fierce war on society. The savage state is the best—society being revolting in its falseness and shallow varnish: all men are naturally equal and free; society is nothing but an artificial contract, an arrangement by which, in the end, the strong domineer over the weak; the state of nature is divine: there is a Garden of Eden for those who will cast society behind ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... in the passage are mine, for they make abundantly clear the falseness of the old view, and show how much the question needs reopening from the common-sense standpoint of opportunity. I shall, therefore, only restate my opinion that it is impossible to assume a fundamental ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... he assured her. Lavinia turned away with an uncomfortable feeling of falseness. "What do you predict— will Gheta take it, understand, or will ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... I am very anxious to show the difference between the practical and the conventional attitude toward this problem. It is to be wished that this question of divorce could be approached free from the falseness of the old prejudices of religious intolerance and ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... into the universal level of subconsciousness, awakens a pleasurable sense of surprise. But now Man is too great a subject to allow of any unrelieved aspects. What the reader sees he must see directly and without insulation, else falseness ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... neither does it crawl. The state of mind which attributes to it these characters of a living creature is one in which the reason is unhinged by grief. All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... was in part due to his excessive sensitiveness to criticism and his resentment of it when hostile. It was partly due, also, to a certain outspokenness of nature which led him to talk of himself as freely as he would talk of a stranger. But his whole conduct showed the falseness of any such impression. From all the petty tricks to which literary vanity resorts, he was absolutely free. He utterly disdained anything that savored of manoeuvring for reputation. He indulged in no devices to revive ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... small pieces. He had decided to leave the report of his death uncontradicted. It was morally certain that five weeks before that day Anna Hethbridge had read the news in the printed column lying before him. He resolved to leave her in ignorance of its falseness. Seymour Michael was not, however, a selfish man. All that he did at this time, and later in life—all the lives that he ruined—the hearts he broke—the men he sacrificed were not offered upon the altar of Self (though the distinction ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... we have a right to regard the ideas of truth, beauty, goodness as objectively embodied in living personalities we have no right to regard the ideas of falseness, hideousness, evil and malice, as objectively embodied in living personalities? To answer this question it is necessary to define more clearly the essential duality which we discover as ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... for the Empire a number of important cities and islands—Nicaea, Chics, Rhodes, Smyrna, Ephesus, Philadelphia, Sardis, and in fact most of Asia Minor (1097-1099). This is ascribed as a credit to his policy and diplomacy by his daughter, by the Latin historians of the crusade to his treachery and falseness, but during the last twenty years of his life he lost much of his popularity. They were marked by persecution of the followers of the Paulician and Bogomilian heresies (one of his last acts was to burn Basilius, a Bogomilian leader, with whom he had engaged in a theological controversy), ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... she must be poor in beauty, that has recourse to shifts so mean; if I would know the secret, by all that is good it were to hate him heartily, and to dispose of my person to the best advantage; which in honour I cannot do, while I am unconvinced of the falseness of him with whom I exchanged a thousand vows of fidelity; but if he unlink the chain, I am at perfect liberty; and why by this delay you should make me lose my time, I am not able to conceive, unless you fear I should then take you at your word, ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... so fresh and strong and true in this little letter, that he could but recognize it. He sighed and thought how strange it was that he should almost resent it, coming as it did in contrast with Gila's falseness. Gila who had professed to love him so deeply, and then had so easily laid that love aside and put on another. Perhaps all girls were the same. Perhaps this Bonnie, too, would do the same if a man turned out not to ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... of other revealed theologies—he sums up the proofs on which Christianity rests, miracles, prophecies, and martyrdoms, with great clearness; proves the absurdity of the doctrine of miracles, as taught by Christian writers, shows the falseness of the so-called prophecies, even granting the utmost warping of the real meaning of the Old Testament texts for Christian purposes, which he asserted were to be compared unfavorably with the oracles of Delphos, and points out that the Mohammedan dying for his prophet, or the Hindoo immolating ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran

... confidence in a multitude of agents, whom he sent into all parts of France. When it happened, on other occasions, that I proved to him, by evidence as sufficient as that in the case of M. Moreau, the falseness of the reports he had received, he replied, with a confidence truly ridiculous, "I can rely on my men." Sieyes had written in his countenance, "Give me money!" I recollect that I one day alluded to this expression ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... almost the last man left of his regiment. He described, in words of fire, the great disaster of Waterloo. His voice was music itself to the Italian girl. Brought up as a Corsican, Ginevra was, in some sense, a child of Nature; falseness was a thing unknown to her; she gave herself up without reserve to her impressions; she acknowledged them, or, rather, allowed them to be seen without the affectations of petty and calculating coquetry, characteristic ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac

... isolated on his rock and severed from active life, the poet meditated on the deep questions of life and death. They were meant to be, the one the prelude, and the other the sequel of his poem of humanity. The leading thought of Dieu is the falseness of all the positive systems of religion which have burdened or inspired humanity, and ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo

... have put off to the last what I have really got to say. Let me know what you are doing and what you wish,—and whether you love me. I have not as yet the power of offering you a home, but I trust that the time may come.' These last words were false. He knew that they were false. But the falseness was not of a nature to cause him to be ashamed. It shames no man to swear that he loves a woman when he has ceased to love her;—but it does shame him to drop off from the love which he has promised. He balanced the matter ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... I wrote to Professor Van Beneden, asking him whether the author was a trustworthy man. I soon heard in answer that the Society had been greatly shocked by discovering that the whole account was a fraud. (The falseness of the published statements on which Mr. Huth relied has been pointed out by himself in a slip inserted in all the copies of his book which then remained unsold.) The writer had been publicly challenged ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... repentance is chiefly made up of these two parts, a hearty sorrow for the follies and miscarriages of the time past, and a full purpose and resolution of amendment for the time to come. And now, to shew the falseness of the heart in both these ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... orthodoxy. His teaching has its roots in a German soil, but it bears the mark of his own strong personality. His style, with a wilful ruggedness, displays the German taste for the humour of an incongruous homeliness, where the subject seems to call for a more dignified treatment. Perhaps this obvious falseness of expression only relieves the weight of his stern earnestness of purpose and makes us the more ready to join in his constant denunciation ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... prevent the return of O'Connell at the memorable election for Clare. But O'Brien was no factious opponent of the national interests; even while he acted thus, he had the welfare of his country sincerely at heart; he steered according to his lights, and when time and experience showed the falseness of his views, he did not hesitate to renounce them. To this period of his political career Mr. O'Brien often adverted in after life, with the frankness and candour that distinguished him. "When the proposal to seek for ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various

... still myself. Have I not traced A seaboard to Bohemia, and made The cannons roar a whole wide century Before the first was forged? Think you, then, That he, the ever-learned Verulam, Would have erred thus? So may my very faults In their gross falseness prove that I am true, And by that falseness gender truth in you. And what is left? They say that they have found [105] A script, wherein the writer tells my Lord He is a secret poet. True enough! But surely now that secret ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle

... over his position, and filled with disgust at his betrayal, was in a mood to accept any suspicion, and the evil thought grew fat within him. He pondered every word of his conversation with the Morgans, and fancied that he saw indisputable evidence of the Doctor's falseness ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton

... of January in 1919, after sixty years of life, full of unwearied fighting against evil and injustice and falseness, he "fell on sleep." The end came peacefully in the night hours at Sagamore Hill. But until he laid him down that night, the fight he waged had known no relaxation. Nine months before he had expected death, when a serious mastoid ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland

... a fellow-man, my comrade, fondled by breeze and brightness, and whispered to by all sweet sounds. I saw Iglesias below me, on the slope, sketching. He was preserving the scene at its bel momento. I repented more bitterly of my momentary falseness to Beauty while ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... aristocracy has made familiar to us all. It would have struck upon a sense of humor like a trivial twitter from the oboe trickling through a lull in the swell of brasses and strings; but Hiram Ranger had no sense of humor in that direction, had only his instinct for the right and the wrong. The falseness, the absence of the quality called "the real thing," made him bitter and sad. And, when his son joined them and walked up and down with them, he listened with heavier droop of face and form to the affected chatter of ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... whilst the others, though they perceived that the expression was of the nature of a smile, answered in such words as "a wicked joke," "trying to laugh," "grinning laughter ... .. half-amazed laughter," &c. Dr. Duchenne attributes the falseness of the expression altogether to the orbicular muscles of the lower eyelids not being sufficiently contracted; for he justly lays great stress on their contraction in the expression of joy. No doubt there is much truth in this view, but not, as it appears to me, the whole truth. The contraction ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... not believe that such falseness could exist in this world of hers at Surbiton Cottage, she could not restrain herself from complaining rather petulantly to her sister, as they were going to ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... is clear, God must stand on our side. We fight for right and truth, for Kultur and civilization, and human progress, and true Christianity, against untruthfulness and hypocrisy and falseness, and un-Kultur and barbarism and brutality. All human blessings, aye, and humanity itself, stand under the protection of our bright weapons.—"War Sermons," by PASTOR H. FRANCKE, quoted in H. ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various

... about such opinions as these is not the exact height and depth of their falseness, but the considerations which could recommend them to a man of so much knowledge, both of books and of the outer facts of life, and of so much natural acuteness as De Maistre. Persons who have accustomed themselves to ascertained methods of proof, are apt to look on a man who vows that ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley

... to leave this point without quoting Nietzsche, who had this insight and stated it most provocatively. In "Beyond Good and Evil" Nietzsche says flatly that "the falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it: it is here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely. The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing...." Then he comments on ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... of all other modes of expression. It is a pity, therefore, that Professor Haeckel should think it necessary to decry one set of ideas in order to support another set. There is room for all in this large universe—room for everything, except downright lies and falseness. ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge

... would have gone there without a complaint. To get away from the place where she had been so miserable was her sole wish. And trusting and believing in her uncle as she now did, realizing that he had been right always and had worked for her interest throughout, and having been shown the falseness and insincerity of the others whom she had once trusted implicitly, she clung to him with an appeal almost piteous. Her pride was, for the time, broken. She was humble and grateful. She surrendered to him unconditionally, and hoped only for his ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln

... questioned the rightness of her own decisions. When she made up her mind, there was no turning her. He went down the path to the barn with his hands stuffed in his trousers pockets, his bright pail hanging on his arm. Try again—what was there to try? Platitudes, littleness, falseness.... His life was choking him, and he hadn't the courage to break with it. Let her go! Let her go when she would!... What a hideous world to be born into! Or was it hideous only for him? Everything he touched went wrong under ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... by Herder. It evinces an unprejudiced and catholic mind, a just, poetic, sensible, clear and secure understanding, as well as the most extensive and thorough acquirements. Before her return to America she also published, in German, a small work on The Falseness of the Songs of Ossian. An article from her pen, entitled From the History of the First Settlements in the United States, published in 1845 in Rumei's Historiches Taschenbuch, is also worthy of notice. In 1847 she brought out at Leipzic, a historical work ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... them may, he thinks, be stated in this question, "How do we rise from falseness into truth?" "We do so after the fashion of the swimmer who brings his nostrils to the level of the upper air, but leaves the rest of his body under water—by the act of self-immersion in the very element from which ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... their work a literary power which has given them considerable notoriety; and has placed them at the head of their particular school; but it is a school whose distinctive characteristics consist in extravagance, unhealthiness of tone, and falseness to nature. ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... "Oh, if you would only try to open my cousin's eyes to his friend's falseness—I know he's false, ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice

... consider frivolously minute. If you had placed before the mouth and lower part of the face a mask or bandage, the whole character of the upper face would have changed at once,—the eye lost its glittering falseness, the brow its sinister contraction; you would have pronounced the face not only beautiful, but sweet and womanly. Take that bandage suddenly away and the change would have startled you, and startled you the ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... you to prove the falseness of this charge. It is for you to show by your life and utterances that you believe in the men who are working with you and about you. There will probably be times when this is a hard task. If you have studied history or literature or science aright, some things which ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser

... only a half sort of lover, meditating a mariage de convenance to oblige an uncle, and by no means required by the terms of my agreement to undergo a very rigid amount of drill. Your position is just the reverse." In saying all which Captain Dale was no doubt very false; but if falseness can be forgiven to a man in any position, it may be forgiven in that which he then filled. So Crosbie went down to ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... the blazing, scorching strength of the sun; in the hard, hot sky, without shred or raveling of cloud; in the creeping, silent, poison life of insect and reptile; in the maddening dryness of the thirsty vegetation; in the weird, beautiful falseness of the ever-changing mirage, the spirit of the Desert issued its ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... towards heaven. It is true, that, as she was endued with a great wit, and was very knowing in the law of Mahomet, there was some need of argumentation; but the Father still clearing all her doubts, the dispute only served to make her understand more certainly the falseness of the Alcoran, and the truth of the gospel. She submitted to the saint's reasons, or rather to the grace of Jesus Christ, and was publicly baptized by the apostle himself, who gave her ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... employment.... The organs of this country are all in accord in saying that the government of the United Kingdom is pernicious to us, that it long since desires and plans our ruin; and when our riches and our prosperity proclaim openly the falseness of these allegations, they wish that England, who makes possible this well-being for us, may not have a deep indignation against those who do not have even enough generosity to recognize the benefits of their mother-country.... As for us, our mission ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... After listening to my story, the judge retains me. Soften for mamma the pain of this blow. Make her understand that they will soon acknowledge the falseness of this accusation; and, on your part, try to make this falseness evident, while on mine, I will ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... that I am a stone," he said, violently, "that you tell me the story of your falseness so quietly, as if it were a tale that I should like to hear? Do you think that I feel nothing, or do you care so little what I feel? You had better have refused me outright at once than kept me dangling at your feet for a couple of years, only to throw me ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... he had just left, the wretched woman, whose falseness and pride had wrought her own undoing, stood listening to the retreating footsteps; she heard them die away in the distance, heard the carriage-wheels roll rapidly down the avenue, then sank upon a low couch with a cry ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour

... decorum, violation of treaties, and deliberate insults to the Executive—and through him to the American people—had been set forth in so clear pointed and dispassionate a manner, that no thinking Republican who read could fail to be convinced of the falseness of his position in supporting this impudent and ridiculous Frenchman. Furthermore, the Secretary of State had been forced, through the exigencies of his position, to sign despatch after despatch, letter after letter, in violation of ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... of fashion, struggling always with narrow means; and there were times when her son's heart grew sick, remembering the falseness, the meanness, the petty cunning maneuvers she had ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme

... soundness in the argumentation that the effect is false because, owing to its being perceived and its being perishable, it cannot be defined either as real or unreal. For a thing's being perceived and its being perishable does not prove the thing's falseness, but only its non- permanency. To prove a thing's falseness it is required to show that it is sublated (i.e. that its non-existence is proved by valid means) with reference to that very place and ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... be touched, and a mind capable of appreciating and being Moused by the truth. That her kindness to him was only hollow acting he never dreamed, and it was well for her that he did not suspect her falseness, for with all her beauty he would have revolted from her at once. He could forgive anything sooner than the meanness of deception. If he discovered the practical joke, it would be a sorry jest for Lottie, for she would have lost a friend who appeared able to help her; and he, ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... do believe that no girl has risen from the reading of my pages less modest than she was before, and that some may have learned from them that modesty is a charm well worth preserving. I think that no youth has been taught that in falseness and flashness is to be found the road to manliness; but some may perhaps have learned from me that it is to be found in truth and a high but gentle spirit. Such are the lessons I have striven to teach; and I have thought that it might best be done by representing to my readers characters ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope

... "Why, she's herself! A girl like her couldn't play anybody false because there's no falseness in her to do it with. What are you going to do ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... was her surprise to find the girl she had come to see with a beautiful diamond locket about her neck, gleaming in the sunshine from the open door! She instantly understood what it meant, and upbraiding the girl with her falseness, quitted the place, and lost no time in telling her son, but first she took the precaution of hiding his gun. As he could not find that weapon, after the first storm of his jealous anger had gone over he shut himself up in ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... absurd or licentious doctrine among our adult population, as a new version of the multiplication table. Nor am I altogether without hope that some day it may enter into the heads of the tutors of our schools to try whether it is not as easy to make an Eton boy's mind as sensitive to falseness in policy, as his ear is at present ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... moustaches. The sorrow, quiet but profound, the amiable smile and the lost arm, were appealing details which at once arrested attention and excited sympathy. But to me this sympathy was mingled with a vague repulsion, occasioned by a certain falseness in the amiable smile, and a furtiveness in the eyes, which I saw—or fancied—and which, with an inexplicable reserve, forming as it were the impregnable citadel in the center of his outwardly polite and engaging manner, gave me something of that vague impression which we express ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... no longer necessary for abolitionists to contend against the blunder of pro-slavery,—that the colored people are inferior to the whites; for these people are practically demonstrating its falseness. They have men enough in action now, to maintain the anti-slavery enterprise, and to win their liberty, and that of their enslaved brethren,—if every white abolitionist were drawn from the field: McCune Smith, and Cornish, and Wright and Ray and a host of others,—not to mention our eloquent ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... bed of pain. I could not clearly distinguish what was passing in my head; it seemed to me that I was under the influence of a horrible dream and that I had but to awake to find myself cured; at times it seemed that my entire life had been a dream, ridiculous and puerile, the falseness of which had just been disclosed. Desgenais was seated near the lamp at my side; he was firm and serious, although a smile hovered about his lips. He was a man of heart, but as dry as a pumice-stone. An early experience ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... time? What if, after this, you are deprived of the power to choose, and forced by that which is evil in you to wander away from ail that is good and pure and pleasant into the turmoil and trouble, the falseness, the illusion, and the maddening unrest of the other life? You know it all. You can imagine what it would be when that last loophole of escape, upon which we all rely—perhaps unconsciously—was closed, when you knew you never could return; when you came to be shut out from hope, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... to Adam Kadmon, 758-u. Corpses of Egyptians duly embalmed were called "Osiris", 588-m. Correct ideas of Deity only obtained by inspiration or philosophy, 674-u. Cortices, the envelopes of the Philosophers' Stone, 779-m. Corruption, degeneracy, falseness of public and private life, 806-m. Cosma, the Monk, held that every star was under the guidance of an Angel, 671-l. Cosmic force: God felt and known when we reverence the mighty, 707-m. Cosmically, when ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... falseness of his wild narratives was established, was it a far cry to Betty Gallup's suspicions and accusations? What and who was this man, who called himself Amazon Silt who had taken Cap'n Abe's place in the store ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... as he is merciful, perfect as my father in heaven is perfect. I believe and pray that he will give me what punishment I need to set me right, or keep me from going wrong. I believe that he died to deliver me from all meanness, all pretence, all falseness, all unfairness, all poverty of spirit, all cowardice, all fear, all anxiety, all forms of self-love, all trust or hope in possession; to make me merry as a child, the child of our father in heaven, loving nothing but what is lovely, desiring nothing ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... about the Romish religion, which she had so many years professed, having led her to a thorough examination of the grounds of it, by consulting the best books on both sides of the question, and advising with men of the best judgment, the result was a conviction of the falseness of the pretensions of that church, and a return to that of England, to which she adhered during the rest of her life. In the course of this enquiry, the great and leading question concerning A Guide in Controversy, was particularly discussed ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... once; and if her fault were the fault of youthful inexperience,—but so much falseness, mean deception, and mental deterioration must have accompanied such transactions, that—in short, I thank Heaven that I have never been put ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... not therefore become afraid of herself, or in the least realise at once the danger of her own position. Her immediate glance at the matter did not go beyond the falseness of men. If it were so, as she suspected,—if Phineas had in truth transferred his affections to Violet Effingham, of how little value was the love of such a man! It did not occur to her at this moment that she also had transferred hers to ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... been. For the lands had been taken from a little priory upon an excuse that the nuns lived a lewd life; and so well had she known the nuns, going in and out of the convent every week-day, that well she knew the falseness of Cromwell's servant's tale. ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford

... She cannot make advances toward man without contravening the conventions and risking her reputation. She therefore has to be more skillful in the art of dissimulation. This gives us no right to accuse her of falseness, for this art is natural, instinctive and imposed by custom. Her desire for love and maternity unconsciously urges her to make herself as desirable as possible to man by her grace and allurements. Her stolen glances and sighs, and the play of her expression ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... to be self-evident—that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by the Creator with inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"—was not the sort of language that appealed to English Whigs (America itself cheerfully admitted the falseness of the statement by keeping the negro in slavery), and the glittering generalities of the "Rights of Man" made no impression on the Whig leaders in Parliament. Paine was back in the old regions of a social contract, and of a popular sovereignty antecedent to government. It was ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... Mexican women of painting and powdering to an inordinate degree perhaps accounts for their love of this hour between the lights, when they imagine the falseness of ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross

... traditions of those who are always 'beginners.' We have had them; we need not look to a foreign and younger race for them; we have them, fruit of our own stock; we have had them, not cloaked with falseness, but exposed in the searching noonday glare of our western science. We have had them, we have them still, with all their mortal frailty and littleness and ignorance confessed, with all their 'weaved-up ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... which is a story of the rejection of a French suitor by an English governess; the ending of a liaison between a coxcomb and a lady much older than himself ("Le Feu et l'Eau"); "L'Ideal de M. Gindre," with a doubtful marriage-close; a discovery of falseness ("Le Pardon"); "La Derniere Idylle" (which may be judged from some of its last words: "I have made a spectacle of myself long enough, and now the play is over"), and "Noces d'Or," the shortest and bitterest of all, in which the wife, who has felt herself tyrannised over for the fifty years, mildly ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... her attentions, and decided that they were 'all falseness.' Wilfred absolutely did tease and annoy her whenever he could, Fergus imitated him, and Valetta enjoyed and abetted him. These three had all been against her ever since the affair of the arrow; but Wilfred had not many opportunities of tormenting ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge

... own mind the four girls who were most likely to do credit to the "establishment;" and these were secretly determined upon, although it was very well to promise the reward to the most diligent. She was really not aware of the falseness of this conduct; being an adept in that species of sophistry with which people persuade themselves that what they wish to do ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... while an Indian agent, tried to speculate in Cherokee lands. [Footnote: See Va. State Papers, III., 560.] Of course the officer's public influence was speedily destroyed when he once undertook such operations; he could no longer do justice to outsiders. Occasionally the falseness of his position made him unjust to the Indians; more often it forced him into league with the latter, and made him hostile to the borderers. [Footnote: This is a chief reason why the reports ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... of England, and was held out to Mary as an ideal husband for her. So long as she had hopes of the Spanish prince she gave but evasive answers; but late in 1564 the cunning diplomacy of Catharine and the falseness of Cardinal Lorraine had diverted that danger; and Philip gave Mary to understand that the match with his son was impossible, Mary's great hope had been founded upon this marriage. Unless she could have a foreign Catholic husband strong enough to defy Elizabeth she ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... to any other man who loved you.... Remember, it had been your seeming sincerity, your truth, your straightness which had first attracted me. And just as I had loved you for your truth, so then I hated you for your falseness—your unbelievable falseness.... Why didn't you deny it all, Ann? Explain—clear the mists away from ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... Chatham, but a Grenville. The results of this frigidity were disastrous. All Frenchmen and many Britons believed that he went out of his way to assail a peaceful Republic in order to crush liberty abroad and at home. History has exposed the falseness of the slander; but a statesman ought not to owe his vindication to research in archives. He needs whole-hearted support in the present more than justification ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... falseness of my friends Has risen the whole of my unprosperous fortunes. The warning should have come before! At present I need no revelation from the stars ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... kin betrothed her to the lord. Alas! it was hid from all, that these two were twin sisters. It was Frene's lot to be doubly abandoned, and to see her lover become her sister's husband. When she learned that her friend purposed taking to himself a wife, she made no outcry against his falseness. She continued to serve her lord faithfully, and was diligent in the business of his house. The sergeant and the varlet were marvellously wrathful, when they knew that she must go from amongst them. On the day appointed for the ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France

... queen, Jocasta, enters. She chides their quarrel, learns from Oedipus that Tiresias had accused him of the murder of the deceased king, and, to convince him of the falseness of prophetic lore, reveals to him, that long since it was predicted that Laius should be murdered by his son joint offspring of Jocasta and himself. Yet, in order to frustrate the prophecy, the only ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... glance, and hurried bearing. Irritable he was; one heard that, as he apostrophized with vehemence the awkward squad under his orders. Sometimes he would break out on these raw amateur actresses with a passion of impatience at their falseness of conception, their coldness of emotion, their feebleness of delivery. "Ecoutez!" he would cry; and then his voice rang through the premises like a trumpet; and when, mimicking it, came the small pipe of a Ginevra, a Mathilde, or a Blanche, one understood why a hollow groan of scorn, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... inwardly. In such moments it was a relief to him to heave a sigh, or take up a pen to vent his grief in rhyme. His misanthropy was quite foreign to his nature. All those who knew him can bear testimony to the falseness of ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... think he loved me then—a little." A soft, sad look overspread the sweet old face; she gazed away across the lake in silence for a few moments. It seemed that, even after all these years, that time of love and falseness held ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties

... unmistakable and I knew that if I were to hold my own with them, I must get all the support I could from the truth, save where it would involve her—from the truth and my own consciousness of innocence, if I had any such consciousness. I was not sure that I had, for my falseness had precipitated this tragedy,—how I might never know, but a knowledge of the how was not necessary to my self-condemnation. Nevertheless my hands were clean of this murder, and allowing the surety of this fact to take a foremost place in my mind, I faced these men ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green

... fresh combination of circumstances. He had himself felt the complex wonder of thoughtful minds before the Church's perpetual miracle of change disguised in immutability; but now he saw only the meaner side of the game, its elements of cruelty and falseness; and he felt himself no more than a frail bark on the dark and tossing seas of ecclesiastical intrigue. For a moment his heart shuddered back ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... wife, "Ach! Fell Reynard, no man can keep himself from thee, thou canst so well utter thy words and thy falseness; but it shall be evil, rewarded in the end. How broughtest thou me once, into the well, where the two buckets hung by one cord running through one pulley which went one up and another down? Thou sattest in one bucket beneath in the pit in ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock

... not long, however, before her heart, always weak where her "sweet Robin" was concerned, relented; and he was summoned back to Court to resume his place at her side. In fact his very falseness and his follies seemed to make him even dearer to the infatuated woman than his loyalty and his love-making ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... ungrateful to note Whitman's limitations, his lack of human passion, the falseness of many of his notions about the American people. The man knew the world merely as an observer, he was never a living part of it, and no mere observer can understand the life about him. Even his work during the war was mainly ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman

... its airy flights and gross descents, in its ludicrous attempt to escape from those particulars or to grapple, without loss of grandeur, those particulars of which man's life consisteth. It is the vain pretension and assumption of those faulty wordy abstractions, whose falseness and failure in practice this school is going to expose elsewhere; it is the defect of those abstractions and idealisms that the Novum Organum was invented to remedy, which is exhibited so grossly and palpably here. It is the height of those great swelling ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... challenges him to appear, saying that he will himself, grievously although he would demean himself by so doing, yet condescend to meet him in the lists with sword and battle-ax, and to prove upon his body the falseness of his averments. Men marvel much," the burgess continued, "at this condescension on the earl's part. We have heard indeed that King Richard, before he sailed for England, did, at the death of the late good earl, bestow his rank and the domains of Evesham upon Sir Cuthbert, the son of the Dame ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty

... human conceptions he can attain of the{249} power, wisdom, and goodness of God, His watchful care, His loving providence for every man, at every moment and in every need; for the Christian knows that the falseness of his conceptions lies only in their inadequacy; he may therefore strengthen and refresh himself, may rejoice and revel in conceptions of the goodness of God, drawn from the tenderest human images of fatherly care and love, or he may chasten and abase himself by consideration of the ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... answered humbly. "Only in a translation." Yet there was a certain falseness in his humility, for he was proud of having read the work. What sort of a duffer would he have appeared had he been obliged ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... arising from the spread of a false philosophy, whose tenets are ultimately incompatible with Christian morals. The worst heresies are moral {63} heresies; and of the views we have been discussing we say roundly that their falseness is sufficiently proved by their ethical implications. "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit; therefore by their fruits ye shall know them." Against all the insidious attempts that are made to-day to minimise or explain away moral evil—attempts with which we ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... now enlightened as to the falseness of Monsieur de Lauzun, entreated the King to give up this gentleman to the blond Queen, or to give him a ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... his seat amidst the warm congratulations of all men of his own class, and early in the month of April his case came on for trial. Every kind of electioneering sin known to the electioneering world was brought to his charge; he was accused of falseness, dishonesty, and bribery of every sort: he had, it was said in the paper of indictment, bought votes, obtained them by treating, carried them off by violence, conquered them by strong drink, polled them twice over, counted those of dead men, stolen them, forged them, and created them by every ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... superstition if he accommodated himself to their belief concerning demoniac possession. His cure, and his infusion of true thoughts of God into the heart, furnished an antidote to superstition more efficacious than any amount of discussion of the truth or falseness of the current explanation of the disease. On the other hand, if we are not ready to conclude that the action of Jesus has demonstrated the validity of the ancient explanation, we may acknowledge that it would do no violence to his power, or dignity, or integrity, if it should be held ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees

... how deeply the writers were stung. They heap maledictions on the Governor, without any of the restraints of courtesy or propriety. They charge him with all sorts of malversation in office, bribery, peculation, extortion, falseness, hypocrisy, and even murder; imputing to him "the guilt of innocent blood," because, many years before, he had, as Chief-justice of New York, presided at the Trial of Leisler and Milburn; and averring that "those men were not only murdered, but ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham

... no sign, no sound of any kind. The thorough falseness of the position weighed on them both. But he was the braver of the two. "I dare say. At first. Did you think of telling him ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... learn to like her still better in time. The women he saw oftenest were mostly nervous, exacting, self-centred creatures, craving constant flattery. Aline was none of these things. She had many charms, and he had seen few defects; but a motive for falseness in the matter of the telegram would suggest itself to his intelligence. He tried to shut the door in its ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... his inability to interrupt her flow of talk, conscious of the falseness of his position, squirming under her caresses, and cursing himself heartily for yielding to the absurd impulse that had placed him in so ridiculous a predicament, Sanderson opened his month a dozen times to make his confession, but each ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer

... artist: the paintings of Raphael and the music of Mozart partook of the gentleness of their life; while the figures of Michelangelo and the compositions of Beethoven were the outcome of their misanthropic ruggedness of temper. The insufficiency, often the falseness, of such explanations became evident when critics began to perceive that the works of one time and country usually possessed certain common peculiarities which did not correspond to any resemblance between the characters of their respective ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... behave like a gentleman, you had better go back to the society of the woman who has given you up—if such a cold-blooded, cowardly creature can be called a woman. (She rises majestically; he makes his chair fly back to the table.) I know you now, Leonard Charteris, through and through, in all your falseness, your petty spite, your cruelty and your vanity. The place you coveted has been won by a man more worthy ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw

... that it is only the prejudices of the ignorant and vulgar which draw the distinction between yourself and the Christian: enlighten him therefore where requisite; associate as much as possible with him; let your press address him; prove by your acts, your words and dealings, the falseness of his assertions against you, and his sneer loses all its sting from its inapplicability. Let the phrase, "He is a Jew in his dealings," be an honourable testimonial, equally as desirable to you as that "He acts like a Christian," is to our fellow-citizens ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown

... men eleven and two have I the bane been, We incite to battle and full many a slaying I remember. That mind which is with treason fraught Seeks to tame men by falseness; Men say 'tis little that it takes ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson

... written it himself and put it in Angie's hands to work what mischief she might with it. There could be no harm in one glance at it; a glance which would prove instantly its falseness, just as she knew it in her heart to ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... another, craving forgiveness for their false accusations, as wrung from them by the pains or dread of torture. They all freely forgave their comrades; for none had been so falsely accused, but that he also had accused others with equal falseness. In particular, George Sharrock, who survived to relate the scene exhibited at this time, knelt down to John Clark, whom he had accused, as before related, earnestly begging forgiveness. Clark freely forgave him, saying, "How shall I look ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... imposing member of his staff. Small, unassuming, and even frail, he gave the impression of being infinitely weary of the world and its fighting, its falseness, and its empty pomp. He spoke practically no English, but when a tiny Indian maid crept near in her quaint velvet jacket and little full skirts, he extended a hand and said quite brokenly: "How are you, Little One?" In fact he spoke very little ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... thing—that viper, that—that—mermaid?' (Miss Squeers hesitated a long time for this last epithet, and brought it out triumphantly as last, as if it quite clinched the business.) 'This is the hend, is it, of all my bearing with her deceitfulness, her lowness, her falseness, her laying herself out to catch the admiration of vulgar minds, in a way which made me ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... overwhelming desire to tell her everything. He had tried to stifle his conscience, to assure himself that the old days were over, and that there was no need to refer to them. And for a while he had imposed upon himself. But lately the falseness of his position had come home to him. He could not allow her to marry him, in ignorance of what he had been. It would be a villainous thing to do. Often he had tried to tell her, but had failed. He saw that it must ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse

... always find me at Villa Mayda. Tell your superiors this: tell them that I shall not stir from Rome, that I fear only one Judge, and let them fear Him also in their false hearts, for He will be more terrible against falseness of ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro



Words linked to "Falseness" :   sincerity, hollowness, untruthfulness, irreality, unfaithfulness, falsity, infidelity, fickleness



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