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Libel   /lˈaɪbəl/   Listen
Libel

noun
1.
A false and malicious publication printed for the purpose of defaming a living person.
2.
The written statement of a plaintiff explaining the cause of action (the defamation) and any relief he seeks.



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"Libel" Quotes from Famous Books



... Orleans, Mr. Garrison faithfully denounced in unmeasured terms his fellow-townsman, and asserted the equal wickedness of the domestic slave trade with that of the foreign traffic, which, at that time, was in the law considered piracy. Arrested, tried, and convicted of libel, although the facts were proven, Garrison was incarcerated in the Baltimore jail, April 17, 1830, in default of a fine of $50 with $50 costs. Undaunted in his captivity, he continued to write his protest against slavery and to record in verse his feelings. His famous sonnet, "The Immortal Mind," ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... that the service abhors and represses the one, and despises and often reforms the other. The service never made a good man bad, or a bad man worse: on the contrary, it has always improved the one, and reformed the other. It is, however, no libel to say, that, more than a quarter of a century ago (of course, now, it is all perfection), it contained some bad men among its multitude of good. Such as it then was I ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... moment I discovered that I knew far more about its contents than our pallid guide. He had some enthusiasm, but the most inaccurate smattering of his subject. He mixed up the first murderer with quite the wrong murder, and capped his mistake in the next breath with an intolerable libel on the very pearl ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung

... the tales told by those who have been his juniors of the marvellous skill and address with which FIGTREE has time after time extricated himself from awkward situations into which he had been led by his ignorance of the details of the case in which he happened to be engaged. In the sensational libel case of Bagwell v. Muter, FIGTREE, as you must remember, appeared for the defendant. When the plaintiff's Junior Counsel had opened the pleadings, FIGTREE actually got up, and, had not his own Junior pulled him down, he would then and there have ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various

... by two letters; one the published 'Reproof' of him by Parker in answer to his first attack; 'the second, left for me at a friend's house, dated November 3d, 1673, subscribed J. G., and concluding with these words:—If thou darest to print any lie or libel against Dr. Parker, by the Eternal—I will cut thy throat.' This last reply of Marvel's, however, effectually silenced Parker: 'It not only humbled Parker, but the whole party,' says Burnet, for, 'from the king down to the tradesman, the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... majesty knows that it is so," cried the queen. "It is very generous of you to save my feelings by concealing that which you know must subject me to mortification; but others here are less magnanimous than you, sire. I have already seen the obscene libel to which my pleasure party has given birth. I have ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

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

... trembled at seeing myself well spoken of in it. I do not accept the horrid present. I am persuaded that in sending it me, you did not intend an insult; but you do not know, or have forgotten, that I have the honor to be the friend of a respectable man, who is shamefully defamed and calumniated in this libel." ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... witness stand in a libel suit some fifteen years ago and admitted his ignorance of matters with which even grammar school children are familiar, the country laughed. His ignorance, however, is his own affair, but when he takes no step to curb his personal representative from working with secret foreign ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak

... son, James, my grandfather, born in 1758. His education, as may be anticipated, was desultory. When four or five years old, he was sent to a school at Vauxhall kept by Peter Annet (1693-1769), the last of the Deists who (in 1763) was imprisoned for a blasphemous libel. The elder Stephen was then living at Lambeth, and the choice of a schoolmaster seems to show that his opinions were of the free-thinking type. About 1767 the boy was sent to a school near his mother's family at Poole. There at the early age of ten he fell desperately in love with his schoolmaster's ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... was a concrete emplacement at Maubeuge, and no 42-cm. howitzer was used against that fortress. The property belonged, not to German agents, but to respectable Frenchmen, and the apology of the Matin for the libel upon them may be read by anybody who is interested in these myths ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... I always took care not to know how much tobacco I smoked in a week, and therefore I may be hinting a libel on Primus when I say that while he was with me the Arcadia disappeared mysteriously. Though he spoke respectfully of the Mixture—as became my nephew—he tumbled it on to the table, so that he might make a telephone out of the tins, and he had a passion ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie

... will libel the ship now, and sue us for fifty thousand dollars' salvage on vessel and cargo," and Cappy groaned, for he owned both. "By George!" he continued. "I didn't think Matt would do anything like that to me. No, sir! If anybody had told me that boy could ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... length, he found himself obliged in his own person to give it forth, because an edition was in preparation elsewhere from one of the earlier copies; and he selected the son of Henry as the person to whom he could most becomingly dedicate the libel against ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... years of age. Of his personal appearance at this time we have no description. The portrait of him prefixed to the original edition of his works belongs to a much later moment. Whether or not the bovine features in Marshall's engraving are a libel on the poet, it is to be regretted that oblivion has not laid its erasing finger on that singularly unpleasant counterfeit presentment. It is interesting to note that this same Marshall engraved the head of Milton for the first collection of his miscellaneous ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... one of singular beauty and brightness; it had the expression as if he had been looking on some glorious sight.' And this is the idea which Severn's picture of him gives. Even Haydon's rough pen-and-ink sketch of him is better than this 'marble libel,' which I hope will soon be taken down. I think the best representation of the poet would be a coloured bust, like that of the young Rajah of Koolapoor at Florence, which is a lovely ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... earnestly; that is to say, Miss Bailey was talking earnestly and volubly, and Mrs. Falconer was listening. Mrs. Falconer had reduced the practice of listening to a fine art. She was a thin, wistful-faced mite of a woman, with sad brown eyes, and with snow-white hair that was a libel on her fifty-five years and girlish step. Nobody in Lindsay ever felt very well acquainted with Mrs. Falconer, in spite of the fact that she had lived among them forty years. She kept between her and her world a fine, baffling reserve which no one ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

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

... which, without directly contesting the principle, the whole substance, energy, acid virtue of the privilege, is taken out of it; that is, in the case of a trial by indictment or information for libel. The doctrine in that case laid down by several judges amounts to this, that the jury have no competence where a libel is alleged, except to find the gross corporeal facts of the writing and the ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... because of his own unpardonable carelessness—a carelessness which he could not well explain to the others. He himself had given the roan an evil reputation; a reputation that, so far as he knew, was libel pure and simple. To explain now that he was thrown simply because he never dreamed the horse would pitch, and so was taken unaware, would simply be to insult their intelligence. He was not supposed, after mounting a horse like that, to be taken unaware. He might, of course, say that he had lied ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... for a week on such literary pabulum as 'The Vision of Mirza.' We want something stronger than that. A little scandal about our neighbours, a racy article on field sports, some sharpish hits at the City, a libel or two upon men we know, a social article sailing very near the wind, and one of Addison's papers on cherry-coloured hoods, or breast-knots, patches or powder, thrown in by the way of padding. Our dear Joseph is too purely ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... I shall," said the judge. "But of course I don't know yet what form your libel is going to take. Still, I can hardly imagine that the defamation of any one's character will keep me out of Ballymoy. I have a car waiting for me outside the station, but I'm afraid I cannot offer to drive you down to the hotel. I have a good ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham

... Parliament with this audacious address?—Reject it as a libel? Treat it as an affront to government? Spurn it as a derogation from the rights of legislature? Did they toss it over the table? Did they burn it by the hands of the common hangman?—They took the petition of grievance, all rugged as it was, without softening ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

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

... will have the goodness to forgive. I was also induced to it in my own defence; many hundred copies of it being dispersed abroad without my knowledge, or consent: so that every one gathering new faults, it became at length a libel against me; and I saw, with some disdain, more nonsense than either I, or as bad a poet, could have crammed into it, at a month's warning; in which time it was wholly written, and not since revised. After this, I cannot, without injury to the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... for it in every place but the right one, for the selfish man to lay the whole blame upon this fine world—as if anybody was to blame but himself. Even some professors of religion are too apt to libel the world. "Well, this is a troublesome world, to make the best of it," is not an uncommon expression; neither is it a truthful one. "Troubles, disappointments, losses, crosses, sickness, and death, make up the sum and substance of our existence here," add they, with ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous

... argument of those statesmen who have contended in the House of Commons that such and such classes of men in this nation are not accessible to any loftier influences. Supposing that there were any truth in this assertion, which is a libel not on this nation only, but on man in general,—surely it is the duty of lawgivers not to perpetuate by their institutions the evil which they find, but to presume and gradually ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... profession, Went from Louisville to Congress, And was actor in a drama, As romantic as 'twas gloomy. Mr. Cilley from New England, Challenged Webb to mortal combat, Webb, the editor, to fight him, To atone for printed libel. Webb declined the doubtful honor Of becoming human target, And on Mr. Graves, his second, Fell the duty of the duel. His antagonist, a marksman Of accomplished skill and practice, Yielding up the choice of ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... "that it was like another man's ground abutting upon his house, which might mend his prospect, but it did not fill his barn." He made however a grateful return to the lord treasurer for this instance of patronage, by composing an answer to a popish libel, entitled "A Declaration of the true Causes of the late Troubles," in which he warmly vindicated the conduct of this minister, of his own father, and of other members of the administration; not forgetting to make a high eulogium on the talents and dispositions of Robert Cecil,—now the most powerful ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... to say to you I cannot substantiate in any court of law. Furthermore I'm laying myself open to action for libel, so I must not be quoted. But I want you to understand that Stella was inescapably wound up with all of Manton's financial schemes. His money maneuvers determined her social life, her friends—everything. She was then, as Enid Faye will be now, his come-on, his decoy. Manton has ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve

... annoyed than apprehensive, and she showed it. "Really, this isn't a court-room," she said. "And I'm not a defendant in a libel-suit, either!" ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

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

... yelled the infuriated bridegroom of a day, dashing wildly into the editor's room of the country weekly; "what do you mean by such an infernal libel on me in your ...
— Best Short Stories • Various

... after having acted as the orator of the day, July 4th, in Park Street church, and surprised his hearers by the boldness of his utterances on the subject of Slavery. The causes of his imprisonment at Baltimore scarcely need to be repeated. For an alleged "gross and malicious libel" on a townsman (of Newburyport) whose ship was engaged in the coastwise slave-trade, and whom he accordingly denounced in the "Genius," he was tried and convicted, and sentenced to pay a fine of $50 and costs. The cell in ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

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

... Douglass met to talk over that fatal movement on Harper's Ferry. On the question of temperance, also, the people were in a ferment. Dr. Cheever's pamphlet, "Deacon Giles' Distillery," was scattered far and wide, and, as he was sued for libel, the question was discussed in the courts as well as at every fireside. Then came the Father Matthew and Washingtonian movements, and the position of the Church on these questions intensified and embittered the conflict. This brought the Cheevers, the Pierponts, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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

... Libel suit! That sounded like the law and the grave-digger had a poor man's fear of the law. There was less assurance in his ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... Well, follow me. Thou shalt libel, and I'll cudgel the rascal. Boy, provide me a truncheon. Revenge shall gratulate him, ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... convinced that the voice of truth has been stifled in England, the world needs only to be told that the government regards and prosecutes as a libel that which it should protect.*[1] This outrage on morality is called law, and judges are found wicked enough to ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... become public through the malice of the editor of The People's Banner, Mr. Forster thought that the best refutation would be found in her return to England. At any rate he would advise no further step at the present moment. Should any further libel appear in the columns of the newspaper, then the question might be again considered. Mr. Forster had already been in Portman Square, and this had been the result ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... his father's peculiar teachings. For the most part these young fellows were "professional labor men" of the lowest type. None of them ever worked long or steadily at anything, except with their tongues. They were a gross libel on the real workingmen of the country—the steady, sober, industrious toilers who are the real backbone ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock

... mean a hand, is an astonishing example of parsimony which, for the sake of our national honour, it is to be hoped rarely occurs. Even the haughty, plethoric nobles of a fourth-rate town council (if it be not a libel to mention them in connection with so discreditable an affair) would have judged the manifest fitness of things better than to make any distinction between Admiral Collingwood and his ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... desperate an effort did he make to hide his identity. Supposing, for the sake of an argument in his favor, supposing he had said John Smith or William Jones or John Brown? To this very day he would have been hiring lawyers to extricate him from libel and false-representation suits. Besides, had he given any of these names, would not that hound-like scent of the ever suspicious police have ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath

... a religionist I can be any and everything but an orthodox sectarian. This orthodoxy is a libel against humanity. The world owes to it a great part of all its unnecessary troubles—those which are brought about by the triune devil of ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... break the bail of the sun and moon before I'll give you leave to go brand me with strange names the same as you would tarbrand a sheep! I'll put yourself and your Tribune under the law of libel! ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory

... person to be searched; and if any such spirituous liquor or wine is found, the goods, boats, packages, and peltries of such persons shall be seized and delivered to the proper officer, and shall be proceeded against by libel in the proper court, and forfeited, one half to the use of the informer, and the other half to the use of the United States; and if such person is a trader, his licence shall be revoked and his bond put in suit. And it shall ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... answered," said Charlton, when they were grave again. "What has Fleda done to put such a libel upon mankind?" ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... conscientious answers under examination can certainly be so acquired. We are not here considering people to whom truth is an utter stranger, who are fundamentally liars and whose very existence is a libel on mankind. We consider here only those people who have been unaccustomed to speaking the full and unadulterated truth, who have contented themselves throughout their lives with "approximately,'' and have never had ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... spiritual courts, and especially in the said Courts of the Arches and Audience; where they take for every citation two shillings and sixpence; for every inhibition six shillings and eightpence; for every proxy sixteen pence; for every certificate sixteen pence; for every libel three shillings and fourpence; for every answer for every libel three shillings and fourpence; for every act, if it be but two words according to the register, fourpence; for every personal citation ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

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

... in like pasquinades. But those of Tasso were biting, and he had not contrived to render himself generally popular. His rooms were ransacked, his papers searched; and finding himself threatened with a prosecution for libel, he took flight to Modena. No importance can be attached to this insignificant affair, except in so far as it illustrates the unlucky aptitude for making enemies by want of savoir vivre which pursued Tasso through life. His ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... of Wilkes offered an opportunity for discussing the narrow and corrupt policy pursued by George III. and his followers. Wilkes, outlawed for libel and protected in the meantime through legal technicalities, was returned to Parliament by Middlesex. The House expelled him. He was repeatedly elected and as many times expelled, and finally the returns were altered, the House voting its approval by a large majority. ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke

... character and ambitious measures of Napoleon, immeasurably more calculated to injure the Chief Consul in public opinion throughout Europe, than all the efforts of a thousand newspapers; and, though the jury found Peltier guilty of libel, the result was, on the whole, a signal triumph to the party of whom ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

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

... Britain,—the Scottish peers, headed by the Duke of Argyll, went in a body to the ministers, and compelled them to disown the sentiments which had been expressed by their partisan, and offer a reward of three hundred pounds for the author of the libel, well known to be the best advocate and most intimate friend of the existing administration. They demanded also that the printer and publisher should be prosecuted before the House of Peers; and Harley, however unwillingly, was obliged to ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

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

... me to indicate great weakness of mind, when a person permits his peace to be at the mercy of every anonymous scribbler who, actuated by envy or hatred (the invariable causes of such attacks), writes a libel on him. If a person so attacked would but reflect that few, if any, who have acquired celebrity, or have been favoured by fortune, have ever escaped similar assaults, he would be disposed to consider ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... career than any novel of our days, close upon one quarter of a million copies having been sold. It was praised by some as a superb piece of imaginative literature of the realistic school: by others it has been anathematised as a libel on the great army that made Modern Germany. The truth about it is probably best summarised in the words of a reviewer ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... Kenneth Harper appeared at the veranda steps. "Pardon me, I wasn't eavesdropping, but I couldn't help overhearing your last remark, and I think it my duty to set your mind at rest on that score. Selfishness is not your besetting sin, Miss Patty Fairfield, and I can't allow you to libel yourself." ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells

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

... fellows were beginning to take hold of things "man-fashion," although of course sea legs they had none, their getting about being indeed a pilgrimage of pain. Some of them were beginning to try the dreadful "grub" (I cannot libel "food" by using it in such a connection), thereby showing that their interest in life, even such a life as was now before them, was returning. They had all been allotted places in the various boats, intermixed with the seasoned Portuguese in such a way that the officer ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... and places the person who does so outside all limits of tender consideration. When Miss Vaughan states that Dr Westcott is a Palladist, a diabolist, a worshipper of Lucifer, or however she may elect to distinguish it, I reply that she is guilty of a gross libel, which is at the same time an abominable and cruel falsehood. When she says that she has been received at his house, I reply that she has not been received there, and that Dr Westcott is likely to require better credentials ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... who had written the Credo. Time after time I studied that fragment, and strove to find out what it was that gave it such vigour and force, but it was useless. That was undoubtedly the work of a great genius, and everything I had written was nothing short of a libel upon myself, strung together so as to be quite correct in harmony and counterpoint, but full, nevertheless, of nothing ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... Commentary, which lay on the short, warm turf before him, as if in reproof. Ralph was of opinion that Luther, but for his great protective reputation, and the fact that he had been dead some time, might have been served with a libel for heresy—at least if he had ministered to the ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

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

... time to protest, he touched rapidly but vividly on the inutility and embarrassment of libel suits, and on the devices whereby the legal means of vindication from such attacks may be turned against those who have recourse to them; and Amherst listened with a sickened sense of the incompatibility between abstract standards of honour ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... given fresh subject of offence by publishing "<La Cour du Roi Petaud" ("The Court of the King Petaud," ) a satire evidently directed as strongly against the king as your humble servant. M. de Voltaire had doubtless been encouraged to write this libel by the Choiseul party. He was at a distance, judged unfavorably of me, and thought he could scourge me without compromising himself. It was comte Jean who brought me these verses, in which there was less poetry than malevolence. I read them, was indignant, ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... that more than one Yorkshire schoolmaster lays claim to being the original of Mr. Squeers. One worthy, he has reason to believe, has actually consulted authorities learned in the law, as to his having good grounds on which to rest an action for libel; another, has meditated a journey to London, for the express purpose of committing an assault and battery on his traducer; a third, perfectly remembers being waited on, last January twelve-month, by two gentlemen, one of whom held him in conversation while the other took his likeness; and, although ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... practically identical individuals. The new court for the trial of extortion, constituted by the Calpurnian and renewed later by a Junian law, was controlled by a detachment of the governing body which saw in each impeachment a libel on its own system of administration, and in each condemnation a new precedent for hampering the uncontrolled power exercised in the past or coveted for the future by the individual juror. This class ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... always a-ritin (having been a doctor's boy) and who I nockt down with a pint of porter (as he well recklex) at the 3 Tuns Jerming Street, for daring to try to make a but of me. He has signed Miss H's name to his NONSINCE AND LIES: and you lay yourself hopen to a haction for libel for insutting them ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... noted in their journals. They were all making merry, on October 6, 1687, at Gravesend, when Mrs. Barnaby remarked to her husband: 'My dear, old Booty is dead!' The captain replied: 'We all saw him run into hell'. Mrs. Booty, hearing of this remark, sued Barnaby for libel, putting her damages at 1000 pounds. The case came on, the clothes of old Booty were shown in court: the date and hour of his death were stated, and corresponded, within two minutes, to the moment when the mariners beheld the apparition in Stromboli, ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... published by a London publisher named Stockdale. The House of Commons had ordered the report to be printed and sold by Messrs. Hansard, the Parliamentary publishers, and Stockdale brought an action against Messrs. Hansard for libel. Chief-justice Denman charged the jury that "the fact of the House of Commons having directed Messrs. Hansard to publish their reports was no justification to them for publishing a Parliamentary report containing a libel;" and Stockdale obtained damages, which were duly ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... into Russia a pamphlet charging that the peace of Tilsit had separated the Czar from both his people and his troops. Savary, mindful of his old detective arts, discovered its origin and adroitly laid the facts before Alexander, who burst into angry abuse of the "libel," and bemoaned the lack of able men to support him both in a wise foreign policy and in such internal reforms as the abolition of serfdom, which he was determined to accomplish. Moreover, Napoleon's conduct was such as to produce serious uneasiness. So far from evacuating Prussia, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... happens to die, we lose no time in finding some one to fill the vacant place. Whom shall I attack next, whom shall I hate? Ah! is that the villain I was looking out for? What a prize! Now my friends, at him, give him no quarter. Such is the world, and, without uttering a libel, I may add that it is not what ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico

... the confiding and gamble and thrive, and sniff with self-righteousness at the short-comings of others, and thank God that they were not like other men? What, to immense numbers of men, would be the value of a Heaven where they could not lie and libel, and ply base avocations ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

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

... ministers, and sending all members of the free churches into exile; and so ferociously realistic was the satire that both Dissenters and Tories took the author literally. Defoe was tried, found guilty of seditious libel, and sentenced to be fined, to stand three days in the pillory, and to be imprisoned. Hardly had the sentence been pronounced when Defoe wrote his "Hymn to ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... thought of telling the truth in print, but the mysterious law of libel, which it is written that all mariners shall dread and never understand, scared him; and besides, he was still raw from his recent week's outing in the British Press. So he just went and gave his views to Mr. Isaac Bird personally and privately, threw the ink-bottle ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... heaven! that sots and knaves should be so vain, To wish their vile remembrance may remain And stand recorded at their own request, To future days a libel or a jest." ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol

... laid up with a uniform face. Herrera had no occasion to speak of the use of marble and porphyry in the walls of this house in such a vague manner and upon more vague information. The reference to the thousand or more women as forming the harem of Montezuma is a gross libel. ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... a story of embezzlement in Wall Street. By an incredible blunder the name of the fugitive cashier was coupled with that of the wrong bank. Publication of the Chronicle story started a terrific run on this innocent institution, which won its libel suit against the newspaper in the amount of ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... with her husband, the soldier from Salzburg with one lung. He was having a holiday from his sentry duty at the hospital, and the one lung seemed to be a libel, for while the women had coffee together and a bit of mackerel he sang a very fair bass to the Portier's tenor. Together they pored over the score, and even on their way to the beer hall hummed together ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the best known means for accomplishing the particular end." Those who adopt the principle do most honour to their sagacity; while their shallow admirers, by abandoning the principle, and clinging to their necessarily imperfect mode of applying it, at once libel their good sense, and dishonour those whom they profess to revere. As society is rapidly advancing, paternal affection would undoubtedly have prompted them to advise their descendants to take the benefits of every advance;—and ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall

... had not at all realized, that she had given it in the belief that Dare, from his answers to her questions, had never been married to the woman at all, in the belief that she was a mere adventuress seeking to make money out of him by threatening a scandalous libel, and without the faintest suspicion that she was his divorced wife, whether legally or ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... name; isn't he?" remarked Dud, sarcastically. "Well, first of all, I'll get the date of the occurrence and then search the files of all the city papers. The reporters usually get such matters pretty straight. To misstate such business troubles is skating on the thin ice of libel, and newspapers are careful. ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe

... fullest concurrence and approval. Their object was to drive Mr. Gourlay out of the country, and to this end it would appear that the Compact were prepared to go whatever lengths the necessities of the case might require. A criminal prosecution for libel was set on foot against the doomed victim of Executive malevolence, who was arrested and thrown into jail at Kingston, where he lay for some days. The trial took place on the 15th of August, 1818, when Mr. Attorney-General Robinson put forth the utmost power of his eloquence to secure a conviction. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... when Tisdale brings a suit for libel. Hope he will do it, and that the judgment will swamp them. They must have got his name from ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... follies of classes and professions, of young and old, of men and of women. It sang the lover's hopes or sorrows, or the adventures of some hero of history or romance. It might be a fable, a satire, a libel, a squib, a sacred song or paraphrase, a homily. But about all that it treated it sought to throw more or less the colour of imagination. It appealed to the reader's feelings, or sympathy, or passion. It attempted to raise its subject above the level of ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... handwriting of the late Sir Philip Drayton, Baronet, of Drayton Hall, and of two other respectable witnesses to a formal document, can prove it; dead and rotten—dust, Sir. And in your stupid arrogance, you blundering Irishman, you dare to libel me—your superior in everything—with his villainous name, and the imputation of his crimes—to violate my house at the dead of night—to pistol me upon my own floor—and to carry me off by force, as you purpose, to a common gaol. Kill Dr. Sturk, indeed! Are you mad, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... I have never seen. In truth, without assistance from the magistrates and gentlemen of the country, who give none except Addresses, it is very vain for Government to attempt to see and know, at Whitehall, every libel which may be ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... Situation" proscribed its freedom. This was not altogether unexpected; but a more prudent counsel would have let the Press alone. Several stories appertaining to Saturday's outburst were in circulation. One was that the Editor had been handcuffed and conveyed to gaol—presumably for seditious libel. But Mr. Rhodes, it was said, had intervened and offered himself as a "substitute." He would take responsibility for the famous article; if anybody was to be punished he would act as criminal. The story ran, however, ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... sated,—that but for the Scarlet Woman he would debauch the Vestal Virgin. I do not believe that Almighty God decreed that one-half the women of this world should be sacrificed upon the unclean altar of Lust that the others might be saved. It is an infamous, a revolting doctrine, a damning libel of the Deity. All the courtesans beneath Heaven's blue concave never caused a single son of Adam's misery to refrain from tempting, so far as he possessed the power, one virtuous ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... had purchased (on tick doubtless) the whole and sole Editorship, Proprietorship, with all the rights and titles (such as they were worth) of the Albion, from one Lovell; of whom we know nothing, save that he had stood in the pillory for a libel on the Prince of Wales. With this hopeless concern—for it had been sinking ever since its commencement, and could now reckon upon not more than a hundred subscribers—F. resolutely determined upon pulling down the Government in the first instance, and making both our fortunes by ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... atrocities perpetrated undoubtedly, by brutes who would have been brutes whenever they had been born; but to collect a series of such atrocities, to string them together into a story, and to hold them up, as Mrs. Beecher Stowe has, as a picture of slave-life in the Southern States, is as gross a libel as if any one were to make a collection of all the wife-beatings and assaults of drunken English ruffians, and to publish them as a picture of the average life ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

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

... generations back in the village of Dargaon in Raipur District. Thence they were given the name of Dargaihan, which has been corrupted into Daraihan. Others say that the name is derived from dari, a prostitute, but this is perhaps a libel. In any case they do not care about the name Daraihan and prefer to call themselves Kshatriyas. They have now no connection with the Rajputs of Upper India, and have developed into an endogamous group who marry among themselves. It seems ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

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

... cruel libel and a coarse slander," he muttered, and hastened on his way. "Am I answerable," he asked himself, "for the abuse which others may make of what I take moderately and innocently? Absurd! And yet it's a pity, ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson

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

... Gourlay met these infamous measures by penning some witty doggerel, headed "Gagged, gagged, by Jingo!" The editor in whose paper Gourlay's writings had appeared, was arrested, and the offending sheet was compelled to suspend. Gourlay himself is arrested for sedition and libel at least four times, but each time the jury acquits him. At any cost the governing clique must get rid of this scribbling fellow, whose pen voices the rising discontent. An alien act, passed before the War of 1812, compelling the deportation of seditious persons, is revived. Under the terms ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... satisfaction of not having lived in vain, and of having done something towards the improvement of our common nature; and this at no little expense of time and reputation. The little I have now written is my utmost effort; yet yesterday I thought it necessary to write an answer to a scurrilous libel in The Diary by one Scipio. On my own account he should have remained unnoticed; but our great cause must be ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... now," Lord Erymanth declared, "Avice, yes! A bird whose quills are quills of iron dipped in venom, and her beak a brazen one, distilling gall on all around. I shall inform her that she has made herself liable to an action for libel. A very fit ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... is," he said, "Duncan can't even sue the old scoundrel for libel without making matters worse. Tandy would stick to his story, and as there were no witnesses that story would seem probable to people who don't know Duncan. What are we ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... that some fatuous speculator may be tempted to buy. It is delightful when two of these gentry fall out and expose each other's knavery. The reader is assured that "Codlin's his friend, not Short"; the latter is denounced as a fraud and retaliates, but no action for libel is brought, because both know that on either side ...
— Everybody's Guide to Money Matters • William Cotton, F.S.A.

... street ballads on remarkable events, as early at least as the age of Henry VIII., were written or printed. Knox speaks of ballads on Queen Mary's four Maries. Of these ballads only one is left, and it is a libel. The hanging of a French apothecary of the Queen, and a French waiting-maid, for child murder, has been transferred to one of the Maries, or rather to an apocryphal Mary Hamilton, with Darnley for her lover. Of this ballad twenty-eight ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang

... it will save a lot of trouble, son; that's why the newspapers wouldn't print that stuff about Mr. Farr after your uncle got it ready. Libel cases ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... us that Nonconformist ministers are never seen in the slums; well, that is a libel! But I should like to ask why it is that the Roman Catholic priest is seen there more than the Nonconformist minister? Because the one man's congregation is there, and the other man's is not—which, being translated into other words, is this: the religion of Jesus ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... are avenged! The man humiliated and degraded you. He insulted me also, and did his best to make me resign my portfolio and put my private life on its defence. You set out to undo the effects of his libel and to punish him for his outrage. You've done it! You have avenged yourself for both of us! It's all your work! You are magnificent! And now let us draw the net closer ... let us hold him fast ... let us go ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... Catholic friend. And again, under what roof did the hunted Catholic priest first take refuge from those bloodhounds of persecution? In most cases under that of his charitable and Christian brother, the Protestant clergyman. Gentlemen, could there be a bitterer libel upon the penal laws than the notorious facts which I have the honor of stating ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... contest for life and death, the more furious, of course, triumphed; such is the history of rabble revolution in all ages. The Girondist with his eloquence naturally fell before the Jacobin with his libel; the Girondist, affecting a deference for law, was trampled by the Jacobin, who valued nothing but force; the tongue and the pen were extinguished by the dagger; and this day was the consummation. A debate in the Convention, of singular talent and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... that the corporation should there "admit the drying of clothes by the townswomen, as had been accustomed;" and to this day its western slope is still used as a clothes-drying ground. From this the tradition arose—which, however, Bristol denounces as a libel—"that the queen gave the use of this hill to poor freemen's daughters as a dowry, because she took compassion on the many plain faces which she saw in one of her visits." Some hot springs issue out of St. Vincent's Rocks, and ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... criticised, the weaknesses in the character of the Emperor. For this dangerous undertaking he was three times brought to trial for lese majeste, and spent a year as a prisoner in a Prussian fortress. In 1907 he figured in a libel suit brought by General Kuno von Moltke, late Military Governor of Berlin, who, together with Count Zu Eulenburg and Count Wilhelm von Hohenau, one of the Emperor's Adjutants, had been mentioned by Harden in his paper as members of the so-called ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... be instructed" were of notable service in helping him to form a decision, for he had a certain dislike of other solicitors, and an intimate knowledge of the law of libel and slander; if by any remote chance there should be a slip between the cup and the lip, Charles Ventnor might be in the soup—a position which he deprecated both by nature and profession. High thinking, therefore, decided him ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... I say that I have no ear, you will understand me to mean—for music.—To say that this heart never melted at the concourse of sweet sounds, would be a foul self-libel.—"Water parted from the sea" never fails to move it strangely. So does "In Infancy." But they were used to be sung at her harpsichord (the old-fashioned instrument in vogue in those days) by a gentlewoman—the gentlest, sure, that ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... was whispered, put bread there too to keep them company. But this was probably a libel. Madame Jequier, at any rate, never saw it done. She looked the other way. 'We all must live,' was her invariable answer to such foolish stories. 'One cannot sleep if one's supper is too light.' Like her body, her soul was a bit untidy—careless, that is, with loose ends. Who would have guessed, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... happiness of the poor and the interests of the public would be blended? Can any antiquated feudal right to this useless tract properly supersede the paramount claims of the poor and the public?—From respect to any such right, ought so great a libel on our political economy to be suffered to exist, as a receptacle for the poor in the middle of an uncultivated and unappropriated waste? To dwell further on so mortifying a proof of the fallibility of human wisdom may, however, pique the pride of those who enjoy the power to organize a ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... it not be very dangerous to send this letter? Suppose Beryl did show it to that man who called himself Nicolas Arabian? He might—it was improbable, but he might—bring an action for libel against the writer. Lady Sellingworth sickened as she thought of that, and rapidly she imagined a hideous scandal, all London talking of her, the Law Courts, herself in the witness-box, cross-examination. What ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... "Base libel," asserted Little Billy. "Bosun has imagination, but it functions within narrow limits. He is solely a son of experience. His idea of a pleasant and well spent evening ashore, is to introduce into the physical system an indefinite amount of variously tinted alcohol, ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... that Meeting was! Of course, you have seen the paper. There ought to be some way of punishing those agitators that go about the country, taking away people's characters. Could not you bring him up for libel, or Reginald? I never knew anything so shocking. To come to your own town, your own neighbourhood, and to strike you through your son! It is the nastiest, most underhanded, unprincipled ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... morning hymn, "Awake, my soul, and with the sun," and the evening hymn, "All praise to Thee, my God, this night." Instead of listening to their petition, the king had all the seven bishops sent to the Tower, and tried for libel—that is, for malicious writing. All England was full of anxiety, and when at last the jury gave the verdict of "not guilty," the whole of London rang with shouts of joy, and the soldiers in their ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge

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

... thereupon be sold by the officer making the seizure thereof, at such time and in such manner as shall by him be deemed proper. The officer making such seizure and sale shall within ten days after the time of such seizure file a libel in behalf of the State before a trial justice, or a judge of a police or municipal court of the county in which such seizure was made, setting forth the fact of such seizure, appraisal, and sale, the time and place ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb

... been compelled to read, in order to review, those contributions to refined literature, and had familiarized himself to a vein of conversation abounding with "swell" and "stunner" and "awfully jolly," in its libel on manners and ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... first quarrelled with his king must be antipodal to their own; and that his account of all which has passed for three hundred years since the fall of Wolsey is most likely to be (and, indeed, may be proved to be) one huge libel on the whole nation, and the destiny which God has ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley

... probably awakened her curiosity. This occurrence gave great pain to M. d'Argenson, who was bound to her, as Madame de Pompadour said, by his love of intrigue. This redoubled his hatred of Madame, and she accused him of favouring the publication of a libel, in which she was represented as a worn-out mistress, reduced to the vile occupation of providing new objects to please her lover's appetite. She was characterised as superintendent of the Parc-aux-cerfs, which was said to cost hundreds of thousands of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... better. The lower part of the face of Louis-Philippe is massive, while his forehead, without being mean, narrows in a way to give the outline a shape not unlike that of a pear. An editor of one of the publications of caricatures being on trial for a libel, in his defence, produced a large pear, in order to illustrate his argument, which ran as follows:—People fancied they saw a resemblance in some one feature of a caricature to a particular thing; this thing, again, might resemble another thing; that thing ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... for the British army to have sickness in its ranks when we have thought of sending out medicine? And how can they be without food and clothes when we have given orders to our contractors to have these supplied? It is a malicious libel to assert such things, to say nothing of the lack of commonsense in supposing that the commissariat department does not ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... morsel cancel marvel level travel rebel gravel barrel nickel apparel towel channel kennel chapel citadel revel Mabel libel camel laurel bevel ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins

... told the Senate," said Douglas contemptuously, "that he comes here as a Democrat. Sir, that fact will be news to the Democracy of Illinois. I undertake to assert there is not a Democrat in Illinois who will not say that such a statement is a libel upon the Democracy of that State. When he was elected he received every Abolition vote in the Legislature of Illinois. He received every Know-Nothing vote in the Legislature of Illinois. So far as I am advised and believe, he received no vote except from persons allied to Abolitionism or Know-Nothingism. ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... twenty-two or twenty-three he was a thoughtless young man, who liked hunting and gambling. Since that age he is irreproachable, the proof of which is, that the Austrian Times has not a word to say against him. Their libel about the Orphan Fund was at once refuted by Count Ladislaus Vay, but they would not insert Count Vay's letter, or even acknowledge it. I think, indeed, the Continental Republicans may ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... Furthermore, he appointed Roman Catholics to office in the army and in the civil government. In spite of protests, he issued a second Declaration of Indulgence in 1688 and ordered it to be read in all Anglican churches, and, when seven bishops remonstrated, he accused them of seditious libel. No jury would convict the seven bishops, however, for James had alienated every class, and they were acquitted. The Tories were estranged by what seemed to be a deliberate attack on the Anglican Church and by fear of a standing ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... the man within, sometimes, too, his genealogical tree is appended. Such expressions as "no cheating here" or "I cannot deceive," are common, but, in nearly every case, belie the character of the proprietor, who is a living libel on the word honesty. Honesty! old Shylock even would ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

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

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

... from saying anything more aloud on a particular public question, till they have settled it. Let no mail-steamer pass between here and Europe oftener than once a month,—let all other steamers be forbidden to bring news, and the utterance of news by passengers be treated either as a public libel or nuisance, or as high treason. Leave the awful accidents to the parties whom they concern, and don't trouble us, unless they have the merit of novelty as well as of horror. Tell us only the highest facts, the boldest strokes, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... dared she utter this libel on my memory! Haughty, I might have been to others, but never to her—and coldness was no part of my nature. Would that it were! Would that I had been a pillar of ice, incapable of thawing in the sunlight of her witching smile! Had she forgotten ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... brother-in-law), and he turned against his patron on the matter of Amy's death. Probably the Richard Verney who died in 1575 was the Verney aimed at in 'Leicester's Commonwealth.' He was a kind of retainer of Dudley, otherwise he would not have been selected by the author of the libel. But we know nothing to prove that he was at Cumnor ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang

... to be secure in our good names, which is included in the right of personal security, is protected by the law against slander and libel. A slander is a false and malicious report or statement tending to injure another in his reputation or business, and which, if true, would render him unworthy of confidence or employment; or it is the maliciously charging of another with anything by which he ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young

... in his own style. The tourists—a race who cannot live without rambling through the same continental roads, which they libel for their roughness every year; the same hotels, which they libel for their discomforts; and the same table-d'hotes, which they libel as the perfection of bad cookery, and barefaced chicane—pronounced that the love of travel ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

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

... what the curt word "wounded" means? It conveys no idea to them, and they are too apt to stray off into the dashing details that tell of a great wrestle of armies. One eminent man—whom I believe to have uttered a libel—has declared that women like war, and that they are usually the means of urging men on. He is a very sedate and learned philosopher who wrote that statement, and yet I cannot believe it. Ah, no! Our ladies can ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... occur to us until after we had left the town, and therefore we failed to make inquiries as to how this gentleman was regarded by his fellow-citizens of Oxfordshire. In this connection, soon afterwards I saw an amusing report in the newspapers stating that a libel suit had been brought against a British magazine for having published an article in which the ex-boss was spoken of in an uncomplimentary manner. The report stated that the case had been settled, the magazine editor paying the legal costs and retracting what he ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy

... penalties; and looking at the character and mischievous tendency of The Hanover Rat, I am curious to know if Mary Cooper, the publisher, was put under surveillance for her share in its production; for to me it appears a more aggravated libel upon the reigning family than that of the Norfolk Prophecy—for the publication of which, Boswell says, the great Samuel Johnson had to play at hide and seek with ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various

... with thundering voice, springing toward Leuchtmar and grasping his shoulders with both hands. Glaring fiercely upon him, he repeated, "Desist, I tell you, Leuchtmar, desist, and recall what you have just said, for it is a libel, a slander!" ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... was ready to fly at, and bite them! Ill-natured tongues declared that the tyrant was tolerated merely because she was a channel for the most far-reaching, fresh and sensational gossip. But let us hope that this was a malignant libel! ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... declared. "I wouldn't call any lawyer a cheat. That's too one-sided a deal to be good business. The expense of hirin' counsel is all on one side if it ever comes to a libel suit. And besides, I don't think Daniels is a cheat. I never heard of him doin' anything that wa'n't legally honest. He's sharp and he's smart, but he's straight enough. I was only jokin', Mrs. Barnes. ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln

... his reported blindness, I did not need to ask; he had his sight, so there was an end of that. It became a habit of mine, whenever I saw him at leisure, to go up and ask him things, and he answered quite readily—especially after his acquittal; a libel suit had been brought against him by Thersites, on the ground of the ridicule to which he is subjected in the poem; Homer had briefed ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... should be blackened in revenge for the insult. This happened on the fourth day of the bright fortnight of Bhadon (September), and on that day it is said that nobody should look at the moon, as if he does, his reputation will probably be lowered by some false charge or libel being promulgated against him. As already stated, the Kunbi firmly believes in the influence exercised by spirits, and a proverb has it, 'Brahmans die of indigestion, Sunars from bile, and Kunbis from ghosts'; because the Brahman is always feasted as an act of charity and given the best food, so ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

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

... convicting. Two of the minority soon gave way; the third, Arnold, was obstinate. He declined to argue. Austin said to him, "Look at me. I am the largest and the strongest of the twelve; and before I will find such a petition as this libel, here will I stay till I am no bigger than a tobacco pipe." Arnold yielded at ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden

... the pretended facts of the author. Of course it is all false about the parting of families—husband and wife, parent and child, etc., and all the instances of that sort of cruelty cited in her appendix are trash and a libel upon the beneficent and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... up."—So it was; and "Bravo! bravo!" shouted the ladies, and "Hurrah!" shouted the gentlemen. Never had Mr. Hannibal Fitzflummery Fitzflam seen such wretched acting, or heard such enthusiastic applause. Round followed round, until, worked up to frenzy at the libel upon his name, and, as he thought, his art, he vociferously exclaimed, "Ladies and gentlemen, that man's a d—d impostor! ("Turn him out! throw him over! break his neck!" shouted the gods. "Shame shame!" called the boxes. "You're ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various

... declaring the holding of such public meetings a misdemeanour, while admitting the constitutional right of the people to petition. These proceedings evoked a satirical reply from Gourlay, who was arrested for seditious libel, but the prosecutions failed. It was then decided to resort to the provisions of a practically obsolete statute passed in 1804, authorising the arrest of any person who had resided in the province for six months without taking the oath of allegiance, and ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... your life to be tamed and loved, haven't you, old man?" I asked. "You're nothing but a good pup, and the man who put the hyaeno in your name ought to be sued for libel." ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... been delivered, did not admit that the precise words had been used. Mr. Genet then, in the coarsest terms, averred the falsehood of the certificate which had been published, and demanded from the attorney general, and from the government, that Mr. Jay and Mr. King should be indicted for a libel upon himself and his nation. That officer accompanied his refusal to institute this information with the declaration that any other gentleman of the profession, who might approve and advise the attempt, could be ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall

... that he stacked up more libel suits than a newspaper of limited capital with a staff of local attorneys could handle before he moved to Louisville, where, for three years, he was staff correspondent of The Evening Post. It was here that Cobb discovered ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... listened without protest and perhaps with pleasure to Mrs. Baxter's pungent criticisms. Of course she had been reminded of something—of the strictures which a certain Provincial Editor had passed on the household arrangements of a certain Minor Canon; a libel action had ensued, and the jury had been beguiled into finding for the defendant on a bare literal construction of words which to anybody acquainted with local circumstances bore another and much blacker meaning. This Mrs. ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... a great victory for Mr. Stockton and his friends. It demonstrated the success of their methods of dealing with public servants. Mr. Carey repeated his charges, but the directors failed to prosecute him for libel as they had threatened. He asked that he be permitted to inspect the company's books, but was met with a peremptory refusal. Public opinion was defied, and ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee



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



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