"Veracity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his veracity, he explained his possession of her photograph, which fact she had long ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... rather serious thing to get a copy of a book from the writer of it. It has made my adjectives sweat pretty hard, I know, to put together an answer returning thanks and not lying beyond the twilight of veracity, if one may use a figure. Let me try a little of my book on you, in divided doses, as ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... under other circumstances, would have captivated my entire attention. All the stories that I had heard of mishaps in these endless prairies, recurred in vivid colouring to my memory, not mere backwoodsman's legends, but facts well authenticated by persons of undoubted veracity, who had warned me, before I came to Texas, against venturing without guide or compass into these dangerous wilds. Even men who had been long in the country, were often known to lose themselves, and to wander for days and weeks over these oceans of grass, where ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... by pieces. Fearing of being accused of poetic exaggeration he appeals to the testimony of two ancient governors of Moesia, who could establish the facts like himself. The author who would give such accounts of the Black Sea in our days would risk his reputation for veracity. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... something of abstruse in all these Beutelsbachers, from Ulrich with the Thumb downwards: a mute ennui, an inexorable obstinacy; a certain streak of natural gloom which no illumination can abolish. Veracity of all kinds is great in them; sullen passive courage plenty of it; active courage rarer; articulate intellect defective: hence a strange stiff perversity of conduct visible among them, often marring what wisdom they have;—it is the royal stamp of Fate put upon these men. What are called fateful ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... address a fellow-man, full of his own tempers: and to tell truth, rightly understood, is not to state the true facts, but to convey a true impression; truth in spirit, not truth to letter, is the true veracity. ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not usual in private correspondence to quote authorities, I have sometimes done so; but satisfied, as I hope you are, with my veracity, I should have thought the frequent productions of any better pledge than the word of a man of honour an insult to your feelings. I have, besides, not related a fact that is not recent and well known in our fashionable and political societies; and of ALL the portraits I have delineated, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the persons and river are alone changed in this extraordinary story. The actors are still living, and are persons of undoubted veracity and respectability. ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... new and always beautiful ways; through tunnels where feet and voices rang with ghostly boomings most pleasant to the ear; over bridges whence they saw—in partial proof of Isaac Borrachsohn's veracity—"mans und ladies ridin'." Of a surety they rode nothing more exciting than horses, but that was, to East Side eyes, an unaccustomed sight, and Eva opined that it was owing, probably, to the shortness of their watch that they saw no lions and tigers similarly ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... has started out with the assumption that these books are in no respect different from other sacred books; that they are no more a revelation from God than the Zendavesta or the Nibelungen Lied is a revelation from God; and it has bent its energies to discrediting, in every way, the veracity and the authority of our Scriptures. But much of this criticism has been thoroughly candid and reverent, even conservative in its temper and purpose. It has not been unwilling to look at the facts; but it has held toward the Bible a devout and sympathetic attitude; it believes it to contain, as ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... dowager's story; notwithstanding her unbelieving smile, it alarmed her, for she could not refuse to give it some degree of credit, when she learnt that Mrs. Margaret Delacour was the authority from whom it came. Mrs. Delacour was a woman of scrupulous veracity, and rigid in her dislike to gossiping; so that it was scarcely probable a report originating with her, however it might be altered by the way, should prove to be totally void of foundation. The name of Virginia ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... possible, but unquestionable fact. You see," he added complacently, "nothing can happen without its coming sooner or later to me. My informant was staying at the hotel all the time. You will allow me to vouch absolutely for her veracity." ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... story was nice; we liked to believe it. There are natives and natives—there is even a Booker Washington—all men are not liars. The Press, too, attached credence to the tale, and that went far to convince us of its truth. A glance at the paper next morning established the veracity of the Bantu. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... Baiae. It does not require any more sinking; it is low enough as it is, so low that some of its ancient villas and palaces can only be visited in a diving-bell. So dreary and deserted is the site, that at first glance the visitor feels mightily inclined to question the veracity of the historian, and to doubt whether Baiae—Baiae the gay, the fashionable, the dissolute, the beloved of emperors, statesmen and poets—ever existed. But when he is shown the enormous sub-structures ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... in the Kreuz Zeitung or the Times; and the mystification became such that the shrewdest and keenest heads were constantly misled, to which side to incline in a controversy where all the wires were pulled by one hand. Many a discussion on the authenticity of a document, or the veracity of a conversation, would take place between the two young men; Kearney not having the vaguest suspicion that the author of the point in debate was then sitting opposite to him, sometimes seeming to share the very ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... it must be true. He did not wish to question the gentlemen's veracity. He did not remember himself what he had done, but there seemed to be plenty ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... guilty enjoyment of it, which they ought not to have had. Open and outrageous love-making is not half so delicate a pastime as that in which nothing distinct dare be said, but all is implication, conveyed and understood without words. I know it is a dangerous thing to confess, but veracity requires the confession; you may say it was the playing of the cat with the mouse, if you wish to give a disagreeable version of it; but, however you choose to explain it, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... moment—at his expression of agreeable veracity; and, with that justness that he admired, she replied, "Say what you please. Tell my story in the way that seems to you most—natural." And she bent her forehead ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... he, to morrow I will have him at my House, don't fail being there at Dinner; I will be denied to every one else, and hope his Reasons will convince you; for I have, I own, a greater Opinion of your Veracity, in what relates to this Affair, ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... during the persecutions of Queen Mary in 1555. When on one occasion the truth of his words was called in question by his enemies, he stamped his foot upon the stone on which he stood, which ever after bore the ineffaceable impression as a miraculous testimony to his veracity. This story must have been an after-thought, to account for what we may suppose to have been a prehistoric ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... a strong, muscular man, an old bear hunter, one who has fought Indians in the Florida swamps; a person withal, of unquestionable veracity, and in all respects the last man to impose on others, or be imposed upon by anything, fish, flesh, ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... will you not allow yourself to be persuaded," said Francis after reading the Reflections, "that polish is material to preservation?" Burke always accepted the rebuke, and flung himself into vindication of the sense, substance and veracity of what he had written. His writing is magnificent, because he knew so much, thought so comprehensively, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... veracity, truthfulness; accuracy, precision, exactness, correctness; verity, fact; truism, axiom; fidelity, constancy, loyalty, fealty, steadfastness; candor, frankness, ingenuousness. Antonyms: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... not interrupt me, Lieutenant Munroe, with these ill-timed remarks, which are merely intended to throw discredit on my character for truth and veracity. I remarked, that I stepped into the uniform of the defunct major-general. To abbreviate the narrative somewhat, I walked through the Austrian lines for three hours, till I had discovered the position of the infantry, ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... had less than twelve thousand men at Vera Cruz. He had been promised by the administration a very much larger force, or claimed that he had, and he was a man of veracity. Twelve thousand was a very small army with which to penetrate two hundred and sixty miles into an enemy's country, and to besiege the capital; a city, at that time, of largely over one hundred thousand inhabitants. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... as a suitable vehicle for a translation of Homer need not concern us here, but another innovation on which he lays considerable stress in his prefaces helps to throw light on the practice and the standards of his immediate predecessors. With more veracity than Pope, he represents himself as having followed his author even in his "plainer" passages. "The passages which will be least noticed, and possibly not at all, except by those who shall wish to find me at a fault," he writes in the preface to the ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... the worshippers. 'A ragged set,' forsooth! The slander may be uttered in the city of Washington, at an anniversary of the American Colonization Society; but no man, who regards his character for veracity and intelligence, dare publish ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... Sword and Queue brought forth many a contemptuous grimace from the higher-priced seats in the Court Theatres. But it needs only a perusal of the Memoirs of the Markgravine of Baireuth, Princess of Prussia, to give the grotesque picture a certificate of historical veracity. Not only the character-drawing, but the very plot, is founded on those Memoirs, written in a less sophisticated age than our own, and the authenticity ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... adviser. But my books, and the register of the prisons, would show that the Drainsville prisoners sent hither by Gen. Joseph E. Johnston were discharged by Gen. Winder, and that their expenses home were paid by the government; and officers of unimpeachable veracity are ready to testify that Gen. Stuart was ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... Allies at the end of what has been a very bad month for the Central Empires. English newspapers have been excluded from Germany, and Berlin has added truthless to meatless days. But the Germans have long since found a substitute for veracity as well as for leather and butter and rubber and bread. They are said to have found a substitute for International Law, and it is an open secret that they are even now in search of a substitute for victory. We might even suggest a few more substitutes which have not yet been utilised. As, ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... only too well established in the nursery that Clarence's veracity was on a par with his courage. When taxed with any misdemeanour, he used to look round scared and bewildered, and utter a flat demur. One scene in particular comes before me. There were strict laws against going into shops or buying dainties without ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... clad in my Armour; but in the mean Time, before I can possibly prove my Assertion, I insist upon being admitted into Court, in order to give my Solutions to such AEnigmas as shall be propos'd. 'Twas put to the Vote. As the Reputation of his being a Man of the strictest Honour and Veracity was so strongly imprinted on their Minds, the Motion of his Admittance was carried in the ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... States that she had committed the forgery of the document produced in that case, and had attempted to support it by perjury and subornation of perjury, and had also been guilty of acts and conduct showing herself to be an abandoned woman, without veracity. ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... circumstance of his having a large red nose, and winning her money whenever they played at the same card-table. Strange stories were afloat respecting the menage of Mrs. Welborn; my bed-maker affirmed, upon her (?) honour and veracity, that a lady and gentleman, who had favoured her with a visit, had quitted her residence thrice thinner than they were when they entered it; and that a gentleman had hastily departed from the shelter of her hospitable roof, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... say a mass for Don Estevan's soul, for this man spake of the justice of God, which was accomplished in the desert. These words are serious, and the manner with which they were pronounced, leaves no doubt as to their veracity." ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... carefully, and then said that the antecedents of these people, or even their guilt, if they had been guilty, had nothing to do with the case except in so far as it might affect the opinion of the jury as to their veracity. They had been called conspirators. Even though they had conspired to raise money by threats, than which nothing could be more abominable,—even though by doing so they should have subjected themselves ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... tale of a mysterious hunter is given in the Letters of Lord Lyttelton, the truth of which, it is said, was attested by gentlemen whose veracity was beyond question. We give an abridged version of ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... answering to the life, or rather its sign, before us, that here sits in judgment. Still the question remains unanswered; and again we are asked, Why is it that our own works do not always respond with equal veracity? Simply because we do not always see them,—that is, as they are,—but, looking as it were through them, see only their originals in the mind; the mind here acting, instead of being acted upon. And thus it is, that an Artist may suppose his conception realized, while that ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... of linguistic gymnastics, by the way, the military Commissioner asks no odds of any one. He began by gently remarking that Mr. Whistler, in his published remarks, had soared far out of the domain of strict veracity. This was not bad for a "starter," and was ably supported by the following ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... their teeth in fishing. Bears are expert in this amusement, and where their game is plenty they eat only the heads and backs. The fish are very abundant in the rivers, and no great skill is required in their capture. Men with an air of veracity told me they had seen streams in the interior of Kamchatka so filled with salmon that one could cross on them as on a corduroy bridge! The story has a piscatorial sound, but it ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... archbishops, that no contract or promise of marriage had ever passed between them: he received the sacrament upon it, before the duke of Norfolk and others of the privy council; and this solemn act he accompanied with the most solemn protestations of veracity.[*] The queen, however, was shaken by menaces of executing the sentence against her in its greatest rigor, and was prevailed on to confess in court some lawful impediment to her marriage with the king.[**] The afflicted primate, who sat as judge, thought ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... glowing account of it to his countrymen. According to him the island was brimful of wealth, and the jewellers' and silversmiths' shops in Bridgetown rivalled those of Paris. I should be inclined to question Father Labat's strict veracity. This worthy priest declared that the planters lived in sumptuous houses, superbly furnished, that their dinners lasted four hours, and their tables were crowded with gold and silver plate. The statement as to the length ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... 1580. It was a work of great power by a man justly considered the leading thinker in France, and perhaps in Europe. All the learning of the time, divine and human, he marshalled in support of the prevailing theory. With inexorable logic he showed that both the veracity of sacred Scripture and the infallibility of a long line of popes and councils of the Church were pledged to it, and in an eloquent passage this great publicist warned rulers and judges against any mercy to witches—citing the example of King Ahab condemned by the prophet to die for ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... say, further, that as to the order you started to me by Captain Baxter, I do not understand there is any question of veracity between us. You tell me, that from the battle-field you dispatched a verbal order by the officer named, to be delivered to me, at Crump's Landing, directing me to march my division to Pittsburg Landing by the road, parallel with the river; and, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... either end of the beam to preponderate, by acting the part of Old Nick as before exhibited to you; though I decidedly believe that Gaguin had some authority for his tale, but, by neglecting to quote it, he has left the minds of his readers to uncertainty, and his own veracity to suspicion. ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... a feat beyond my prowess to convict this woman in her own eyes of a dubious and considering veracity. So I merely wondered, in tones that would easily reach her, how the gentlemen might relish her diplomacy when they discovered it on the morrow. I preceded the word diplomacy with a ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... dollars should be paid to him on the disposal of the prize. This demand (aware as he was—or rather as he purposed—that I was to play the part of the captured instead of that of the captor), was intended to lull me into even greater reliance on his veracity. I had difficulty in restraining my indignation, for I felt that the fellow was laughing at me in his sleeve; however the reflection that, in less than twenty-four hours, the tables would be turned upon him, operated ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... conscience, Master Varney," said the Countess, "and your veracity will not, I think, interrupt your preferment in the world, such as it is. But touching Tressilian—I must do him justice, for I have done him wrong, as none knows better than thou. Tressilian's conscience is of ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... and they do now—why an indulgence should be believed in; when honesty and common sense could give but one reason for thinking otherwise. Cleverness and imposture get on excellently well together—imposture and veracity, never. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... the True Stories contain, we may surmise, traces of the imaginative faculty. The escapes of Benvenuto Cellini, of Trenck, and of Casanova must be taken as the heroes chose to report them; Benvenuto and Casanova have no firm reputation for veracity. Again, the escape of Caesar Borgia is from a version handed down by the great Alexandre Dumas, and we may surmise that Alexandre allowed it to lose nothing in the telling; he may have 'given it a sword and a cocked hat,' as was Sir Walter's wont. About Kaspar Hauser's mystery we can hardly speak ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... speak the truth, but that they will feel confident that we have neither mistaken the facts, nor added any coloring, nor kept back any thing, to make it appear different from the reality. The following story shows how great an advantage one may derive from having this confidence in his strict veracity established: ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... How far his assertions were true I do not know, for the people of that country, who have doubled the Cape, consider themselves entitled to tell any falsehoods which they think proper, and to shoot you if you venture to express a doubt as to their veracity; one of my chief reasons for disliking the English is, that ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Colley Cibber, he narrowly escaped a serious scrape in a house of a certain description,—Colley, by his own account, "helping out the tomtit for the sake of Homer!" This statement, indeed, Pope has denied; but his veracity was by no means his strongest point. After writing a "Farewell to London," he retired, in 1715, to Twickenham, along with his parents; and remained there, cultivating his garden, digging his grottos, and diversifying his walks, till ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... had arisen. Slumberous Europe, rotting amid its blind pedantries, its lazy hypocrisies, conscious and unconscious: this man is capable of shaking it a little out of its stupid refuges of lies and ignominious wrappages, and of intimating to it afar off that there is still a Veracity in Things, and a Mendacity in Sham Things,' and so forth, in the well-known strain.[17] It is impossible to overrate the truly supreme importance of the violent break-up of Europe which followed the death ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... success in life would have consisted in his never having committed himself about the work, as it was called, of his friend Morgan Mallow. This was a subject on which it was, to the best of his belief, impossible with veracity to quote him, and it was nowhere on record that he had, in the connexion, on any occasion and in any embarrassment, either lied or spoken the truth. Such a triumph had its honour even for a man of other triumphs—a man ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... more accurate ideas of touch and of sight than most other creatures. The two following instances of the sagacity of these animals may entertain the reader, as they were told me by some gentlemen of distinct observation, and undoubted veracity, who had been much conversant with our eastern settlements. First, the elephants that are used to carry the baggage of our armies, are put each under the care of one of the natives of Indostan, and whilst himself and his wife go into the woods to collect leaves and branches ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... country, combined with the ferocious habits of the natives, seem to have equally repelled the friendly visits of inquisitive strangers and the hostile incursions of invading armies. The first distinct account which we have is from Arrian, who, with his usual brevity and severe veracity, narrates the march of Alexander through this region, which he calls the country of the Oreitae and Gadrosii.[2] He gives a very accurate account of this forlorn tract, its general aridity and the necessity of obtaining water by digging in the beds of torrents; describes the food ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... incredulity. Several jurymen were seen to wrinkle their foreheads in meditation. Mr. Tutt had sown a tiny—infinitesimally tiny, to be sure—seed of doubt, not as to the killing at all but as to the complete veracity of ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... those of native masters, such as Fielding, and too much informed and transformed by individual genius. Some may think—it is a point at issue not merely between Frenchmen and Englishmen, but between good judges of both nations on each side—that in absolute veracity and likeness to life, in limiting the operation of the inner consciousness on the outward observation to strictly artistic scale, Thackeray excelled Balzac as far as he fell short of him in the powers of the seer and in the gigantic imagination of the prophet. But the relations ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... I don't. I think it was in the Bois, one evening when you came to meet us on the Island. You had been dining with the Princesse des Laumes," she added, happy to be able to furnish him with an exact detail, which testified to her veracity. "At the next table there was a woman whom I hadn't seen for ever so long. She said to me, 'Come along round behind the rock, there, and look at the moonlight on the water!' At first I just yawned, and said, 'No, I'm too tired, and I'm quite happy ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... other. "You gave the essence of the thing. That is a higher veracity than any literal reporting which would be dull and unreadable. I thought I recognized the fictional quality in ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of the church, not remarkably for veracity, complaining that a tradesman of his parish had called him a liar, Macklin asked him what reply he made him. "I told him," said he, "that a lie was among the things I dared not commit." "And why, doctor," ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... ill wind," answered the noble gourmand, "which blows nobody good. An excellent proverb, the veracity of which is daily attested; for, however unpleasant a keen wind may be, there is no doubt of its being a marvellous whetter of that greatest of Heaven's blessings—an appetite. Little, however, did I expect, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... always asserts the sanctity of the general principle; and, on this account, he holds that "in order that the exception may not extend itself beyond the need, and may have the least possible effect in weakening reliance on veracity, it ought to be recognised and, if possible, its limits defined; and if the principle of utility is good for anything, it must be good for weighing these conflicting utilities against one another, and marking out the region within which one or the other preponderates[1]." He holds ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... carried his demands of unconditional veracity to so extravagant a length as to affirm, that, if a man were to see an innocent person escape from a murderer, it would be his duty, on being questioned by the murderer, to tell the truth, and to point out the retreat of the innocent person, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... a malady which indeed may often be observed to affect the whole system. It is caused by decay of tissue from old age and is generally aggravated by repeated brushing. A peculiar feature of the complaint is the lack of veracity on the part of the patient in reference to the cause of his uneasiness. Another invariable symptom is his aversion to outdoor exercise; under various pretexts, which it is the duty of his medical adviser firmly ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... Theodorus Lector, and other most faithful writers of that and the following age, mention the most wonderful actions of this saint. The severest critics do not object to this history, in which so many contemporary writers, several of them eye-witnesses, agree; persons of undoubted veracity, virtue, and sagacity, who could not have conspired in a falsehood, nor could have imposed upon the world facts, which were of their own nature public and notorious. See ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... frisson; he discovers, let us say, that the President of the Republic has murdered three wives. Our yellow journalists invent quite as unscrupulously as this; their moral condition is, as regards careful veracity, about the same. But it is their mental calibre which happens to be such that they can only invent calm and even reassuring things. The fictitious version of the massacre of the envoys of Pekin was mendacious, but it was not interesting, except to those who had private ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... observation we have fixed upon this plan: If any one writes us in defamation of another, we adopt the opposite theory. If the letter says that the assaulted one lies, we take it as eulogistic of his veracity; or that he is unchaste, we set him down as pure; or fraudulent, we are seized with a desire to make him our executor. We do so on logical and unmistakable grounds. A defamatory letter is from the devil or his satellites. The devil hates only the good. The devil hates Mr. ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... be made with that breadth of veracity which is the special privilege of hotel-keepers all the world over; for the abbe was asleep when Lory entered his apartment. He awoke, however, with a characteristic haste, and his first conscious movement was suggestive of a readiness to ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... bepraised by the men he is always vilifying, especially by Stanley himself, of whom he had spoken in the early part of the same night in such terms as these: 'The honourable gentleman, with his usual disregard of veracity, ...' and again 'he attacked him, but took care how he attacked others, who he knew were not restrained by obligations such as he was under to bear with his language;' in other words, calling him a liar and a coward; and after this Stanley condescended to flatter him and applaud his speech. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... and I trust he thinks that as I respect his character, and in general admire his conduct, I am one of those who feel no common interest in his reputation. Yet I do not hesitate wholly to disallow the calculation of 1781, without any apprehension that I shall appear to distrust his veracity or his judgment. This peace estimate of revenue was not grounded on the state of the Carnatic as it then, or as it had recently, stood. It was a statement of former and better times. There is no doubt that ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... face—whack!—so that all the table may hear. Tell him, with his pardon, that the king-crab is no more a crab than you are a jelly-fish, or that Mill has been superseded these ten years. Ask: "How can you say such things?" From thence to his general knowledge is a short flight, and so to his veracity, his reasoning powers, his mere common sense. "Let me tell you, sir," is the special ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... in town" bore down the first three of these charges, it is to be hoped, for the sake of their veracity, that they knew their candidate chiefly as the very good company that he always was; and had paid as little attention, as good company usually does, to so solid a work as the Treatise. Hume expresses a naive surprise, ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... be true—and whoever impeached the veracity of Burke in any thing?—the more effectually his enemy was trampled the better: malice can be punished sufficiently ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... was told that it was necessary to fight President Kruger because Englishmen in the Transvaal were being ill-treated and denied their legitimate rights. In reality, this was one of those conventional reasons, lacking common sense and veracity, upon which nations are so often fed. If we enter closely into the details of existence in the Transvaal, and examine who were those who shouted so loudly for the franchise, we find that the majority were either foreigners or Jews hailing ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... he attempted to look very indignant at the attack made on his veracity; but no sooner did he recognise me than his good feelings got the better of his love of trying to make himself of importance; and jumping up, he seized my hand ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... beak of this extraordinary bird may serve to explain the statement of the Minorite friar Odoric, of Portenau in Friuli, who travelled in Ceylon in the fourteenth century, and brought suspicion on the veracity of his narrative by asserting that he had there ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... importance of veracity so imperiously that Severne was betrayed into saying, "Well, not much, between you and me; and I'll be bound ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... they rest on as good evidence as most other private events of sixty-odd years ago, and there is no reason for doubting their literal truth. With regard to the supernatural element, I am free to confess that I am not able to accept it in entirety. This is not because I question the veracity of those who vouch for the alleged facts, but because I have not received those facts at first hand, and because I am not very ready to believe in the supernatural at all. I think that, in the case under consideration, an intelligent investigation ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... man from henceforward—no, not my father who begat me, nor the brother who lay with me in my mother's womb: should Daniel rise from the dead, I would think him an impostor; and were the genius of truth to appear, would question its veracity!" I told him, that one day it was possible he might be convinced of the injury I had suffered, and repent of his premature determination. To which remark he answered, the proof of my innocence would make his bowels vibrate with joy; ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... much indifference as I could—stood ready waiting for us, and where we were served with a most wonderful repast selected by Dubkoff from the French menu. The meal went off most gaily and agreeably, notwithstanding that Dubkoff, as usual, told us blood-curdling tales of doubtful veracity (among others, a tale of how his grandmother once shot dead three robbers who were attacking her—a recital at which I blushed, closed my eyes, and turned away from the narrator), and that Woloda reddened visibly whenever I opened my mouth to speak—which was the more uncalled ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... England colonists were by no means satisfied that these charges were true. Veracity was not an Indian virtue. Cunning was a prominent trait in their character. An extraordinary meeting of commissioners was held in Boston, in April, 1653. Two messengers had been previously sent by the Massachusetts council, to interrogate three of ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... President Johnson very angry. He had wanted to use General Grant as a cat's-paw for keeping Stanton out of the War Department, and had hoped at the same time to injure Grant in the estimation of the people. He raised a question of veracity with the General commanding, but Congress and the people speedily decided between the soldier, whose reputation for veracity was untarnished, and the President, who had broken his promises ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... neither are all men Shakespeares and St. Augustines. The credit is so much the greater to those of the species which have overcome the disadvantages of a low and repulsive origin. None the less, however, will a strict veracity of mind and speech be careful not to generalize too sweepingly from a few particulars, and also not to make too indiscriminate and imperious a demand upon other people's enthusiasm. Especially will it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... about Seabridge in broad daylight, while she crept forth only after sundown, and saw a hidden meaning in every "Fine evening, Mrs. Banks," which met her. She pointed out to Captain Barber, that his refusal to dismiss Mr. Green was a reflection upon her veracity, and there was a strange light in her eyes and a strange hardening of her mouth, as the old man said that to comply with her request would be to reflect upon the polite ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... was soon to fall under the spell of this bland comradeship: he was to see these men in a light so bright that it blinded him to their vulgarities, their quaint blasphemy and their prodigious lack of veracity as applied to personal achievements. He was to find in them a splendid chivalry, almost unbelievable at first: their regard for the women in the troupe was in the nature of a revelation to him, who came from the land ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... do not think I shall ever dare to become a spiritualist. If you can understand my meaning, so much, so very much depends upon the truth and veracity of its tenets that I cannot go blindly forward, as so many people seem to be able to do, because I realise that disillusion would mean something so terrible that a kind of instinctive faith in another life, without reason, without scientific demonstration, seems far ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... confirmed by St Simon and Duclos, but the name of their authoress remained undivulged. In 1810, however, Boissonade discovered Marianna's name written in a copy of the first edition by a contemporary hand, and the veracity of this ascription has been placed beyond doubt by the recent investigations of Luciano Cordeiro, who found a tradition in Beja connecting the French captain and the Portuguese nun. The letters created a sensation on their first appearance, running through five editions in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... "my story may have sounded strangely, but it was true. I presume that you did not come here solely with the purpose of expressing your amiable opinion of my veracity?" ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... decided therefore, in order to provide against a possible destruction of the one manuscript, to have a small number of copies printed at our own expense. As the value of this autobiography consists in its unadorned veracity, which, under the circumstances, is its only justification, therefore my statements had to be accompanied by precise names and dates; hence there could be no question of their publication until some time after my death, should interest in them still survive ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... historians. His story of his own heroism and of the wickedness of his colleagues has been embodied in almost every American school history. Mr. Charles Dean, in 1860, was the first to question Smith's veracity, and since that date many historians have taken the ground that his works are quite unreliable. Alexander Brown has contended that his account of Virginia was purposely falsified to further the designs of the Court Party ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... will bring you to a hunter's paradise," &c. As Cyprus was an island of only 140 miles in length, there would be a limit to these boundless descriptions; but I had already heard enough to assure me that the usual want of veracity upon this subject was present in the accounts I had received. The newspaper correspondents had just contributed ridiculous reports to their several employers. Because the market of Larnaca was well supplied with woodcocks, ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... however, did not influence him altogether in his first important work. He had been kindled by Howells in Boston to a passion for realism which carried him beyond the suave accuracy of his master to the somber veracity of Main-Travelled Roads, Prairie Folks, and Rose of Dutcher's Coolly. This veracity was more than somber; it was deliberate and polemic. Mr. Garland, ardently a radical of the school of Henry George, had enlisted in the crusade ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... strong a hold of the followers of Christ. To translate the Bible into every tongue, to carry the Gospel message to every people, and to evangelize the masses at home, prodigious efforts have been put forth, and enormous sums of money have been expended. Mental activity, uncompromising veracity, indefatigable energy, have characterized the Church through the century, and its closing years show no abatement in any of these characteristics. A brief sketch of some of the more prominent of these developments can render the fact only ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... Dominicans cannot be trusted. In many cases investigation has shown that these foreigners were misled with regard to some mine, woodland or other property they had come to buy. Persons anxious to sell mines and other undeveloped properties have not distinguished themselves for veracity in any country, and with regard to sincerity in general the Dominicans may be regarded as no better but certainly no worse than the general run of humanity. With their personal friends they are generally loyal and true, but in their political relations the picture ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... detail. Never to have lied, never to have said, for any interest whatever, even in indifference, any single thing which was not the truth, the sacred truth, was Sister Simplice's distinctive trait; it was the accent of her virtue. She was almost renowned in the congregation for this imperturbable veracity. The Abbe Sicard speaks of Sister Simplice in a letter to the deaf-mute Massieu. However pure and sincere we may be, we all bear upon our candor the crack of the little, innocent lie. She did not. Little lie, innocent lie—does such a thing exist? To lie is the absolute form of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... these occasions are supposed to be a profound meditation upon the character and writings of his pet author. I am always glad to have him visit us, as some one of us is sure to be most unflatteringly electrified by his uncompromising veracity. I am, myself, generally the victim, as I make it a point to give him every opportunity for the display of this unusual peculiarity. Not but that I have had disagreeable truth told me often enough, but heretofore people have done it out of spitefulness; but Mr. ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... family, that if Mr. Clute had not been present, we should have been unable to have obtained her history. She, however, soon became free and unembarrassed in her conversation, and spoke with degree of mildness, candor and simplicity, that is calculated to remove all doubts as to the veracity of the speaker. The vices of the Indians, she appeared disposed not to aggravate, and seemed to take pride in extoling their virtues. A kind of family pride inclined her to withhold whatever would blot the character ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... appear to you almost incredible, almost infamous that we—you and I, mother—should have done this thing? The price we offered seemed sufficient to some of her people—not to all, I have learned that past forgetting to-day, thanks to Lord Fallowfeild's thick-headed, blundering veracity. But, thank heaven, she had more heart, more sensibility, more self-respect, more decency, than we allowed for. She plucked up spirit enough to refuse to be bought and sold like a pedigree filly or heifer. I think that was rather heroic, considering her traditions and the pressure ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... portion of the stuff contained in the various "statements" can, under the rules of evidence, be laid before the jury—not, we venture to assert, more than would fill half a newspaper column in all. What will be laid before the jury is, in the main, "questions of veracity" between three or four persons whose credit is already greatly shaken, or, in other words, the very kind of questions on which juries are most likely to disagree, even when the jurymen are entirely unprejudiced. ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... laugh, whether it was a laugh of conviction or of unbelief. It is not improbable that my fair friend's mental constitution may have been somewhat similar to that of the old woman who declined to believe her sailor-grandson when he told her he had seen flying-fish, but at once recognised his veracity when he said he had seen the remains of Pharaoh's chariot-wheels on the shores of ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... creation marked the mere creation of light out of darkness. The vestment itself would alone have suggested the symbol; and Syme felt also how perfectly this pattern of pure white and black expressed the soul of the pale and austere Secretary, with his inhuman veracity and his cold frenzy, which made him so easily make war on the anarchists, and yet so easily pass for one of them. Syme was scarcely surprised to notice that, amid all the ease and hospitality of their new surroundings, this man's eyes were ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... those places there was a gentleman (for whose veracity and intelligent turn we have the greatest veneration) who observed it the moment he got abroad; but concluded that, as soon as he came upon the hill above his house, where he took his morning rides, he should be higher than this ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... to overlook the fact that in these slanderous rumours of incest was excellent matter for epigrammatical verse. Therefore, he crystallized them into lines which, whilst doing credit to his wit, reveal his brutal cruelty. No one will seriously suppose that such a man would be concerned with the veracity of the matter of his verses—even leaving out of the question his enmity towards the House of Borgia, which will transpire later. For him a ben trovato was as good matter as a truth, or better. He measured its value by ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... Traveller, of perhaps common veracity, who presents himself under the to me unmeaning title of The late John Bernard, offers the following sketch of a domestic establishment, the inmates whereof, though such is not stated expressly, appear to have been of that Faith. Thereby shall my German readers now behold an ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... leave him thus in his original and picturesque sin, but the same veracity which compelled me to transcribe his faults and iniquities obliges me to describe his ultimate and somewhat monotonous reformation, which came from ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... be said of this remarkable document, at any rate it bore on the face of it a passionate veracity. But it gave the lie to every word of his letter to his wife. Tyson had dashed it off in hot haste, risen to his work, and then he must have sat down again to write that letter. Taken singly, the three documents were misleading; taken altogether, they formed a masterpiece of autobiography. ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... and sat up. His blind eyes were roving over her with an expression of disbelief. Jinnie knew he was doubting her veracity, so ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... with them. He was going to "take no chances on losing it." He was leaving Paris that night and held that during his stay he had been none too impressed with either Parisian speed or Parisian veracity. ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... supplied facts for such a work as that of Montesquieu? He indeed has been, perhaps justly, charged with abusing this advantage, by the undistinguishing adoption of the narratives of travellers of very different degrees of accuracy and veracity. But if we reluctantly confess the justness of this objection; if we are compelled to own that he exaggerates the influence of climate, that he ascribes too much to the foresight and forming skill of legislators, and far too little to time and circumstances, in the growth of ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... I did?" returned he; "is my veracity so immaculate that my slightest word is received as an oath of probity? But I came not here to keep a lover's tryst. You know, or at least I thought you knew, the bond that unites us; and I ask you again if you will do my ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... little or none; and acting now in a peaceable or even friendly capacity. In the Southampton country he came in contact with the then Bishop of Winchester, afterward Archbishop of Canterbury, excellent Elphegus, still dimly decipherable to us as a man of great natural discernment, piety, and inborn veracity; a hero-soul, probably of real brotherhood with Olaf's own. He even made court visits to King Ethelred; one visit to him at Andover of a very serious nature. By Elphegus, as we can discover, he was introduced ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... the water-spout is sometimes attended with an effect which appears supernatural, and will scarcely find credit in this part of the world; for who will believe that fish should fall from the sky in a shower of rain? A gentleman of veracity, who spent many years in the East Indies, declares to his friends that he has been witness to this several times; but speaks of it with caution, knowing that it will be thought incredible by those who are not acquainted with the cause. I have a servant, a native of the West Indies, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr |
