"Apocryphal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The Story is apocryphal, as has been shown by research undertaken since Child annotated the ballad; so also are other broadsides, The Seamen's Song of Captain Ward and The Seamen's Song of Dansekar, which deal with Ward. He was a Kentish fisherman, born at Feversham about 1555, who turned pirate after ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... 'genuine' work is one written by the author whose name it bears; an 'authentic' work is one which relates truthfully the matters of which it treats. For example, the apocryphal Gospel of St. Thomas is neither 'genuine' nor 'authentic.' It is not 'genuine,' for St. Thomas did not write it; it is not 'authentic,' for its contents are mainly fables ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Gilfillan, with great heat; 'Tobit and his dog baith are altogether heathenish and apocryphal, and none but a prelatist or a papist would draw them into question. I doubt I hae been ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... shown, Jebel 'Atakh, the "Mountain of Deliverance," at the mouth of the Wady Mus, was referred to the Jews at some time after the Christian era, and probably during the fourth and fifth centuries, when pilgrimages to the apocryphal Mounts Sinai became ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... 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 variants—and extremely various they are—were collected by Professor Child in his English and Scottish Popular Ballads (ten parts, 1882- 1898). In one mangled form or another such ballads would drift ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... the pair having met at dinner almost on the eve of Danton's arrest, and parting with sombre disquietude on both sides. The interview, with its champagne, its interlocutors, its play of sinister repartee, may possibly have taken place, but the alleged details are plainly apocryphal. After all, 'Religion ist in der Thiere Trieb,' says Wallenstein; 'the very savage drinks not with the victim, into whose breast he means to plunge a sword.' Danton was warned that Robespierre was plotting his arrest. 'If I thought he had the bare idea,' said Danton ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... was to obtain the payment of an annuity from the exchequer which had been granted to him, but the payment of which was very irregular. The book was dedicated to the Prince of Wales. After mentioning his purpose to translate from the (apocryphal) letter of Aristotle to Alexander and "Gyles of Regement ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... chapters" formed the first CHUAN, adding that there were two other CHUAN besides. This has brought forth a theory, that the bulk of these 82 chapters consisted of other writings of Sun Tzu — we should call them apocryphal — similar to the WEN TA, of which a specimen dealing with the Nine Situations [15] is preserved in the T'UNG TIEN, and another in Ho Shin's commentary. It is suggested that before his interview with Ho Lu, Sun Tzu had only written the ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... H. Maine, in his Early History of Institutions, p. 222, writes:—'Other authors, as Blackstone tells us, explained it ["Borough English"] by a supposed right of the Seigneur or lord, now very generally regarded as apocryphal, which raised a presumption of the eldest ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... relates that the little son of a friend, noticing that his toilet had been more carefully made than usual, asked him where he was going, and that he gloomily responded: "To hell, I suppose." Probably enough, however, these anecdotes are apocryphal; for why the proud and high-tempered Miss Todd should have held so fast to an unwilling lover, who had behaved so strangely and seemed to offer her so little, is a conundrum which has been answered by no better explanation than the very lame one, that she foresaw ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... Catholic mother, he served, after learning what Trinity College, Dublin, could offer him, a long apprenticeship to politics in the upper part of Grub Street. The story that he applied, along with Hume, for Adam Smith's chair at Glasgow seems apocryphal; though the Dissertation on the Sublime and the Beautiful (1756) shows his singular fitness for the studies that Hutcheson had made the special possession of the Scottish school. It was in Grub Street that he appears to have attained ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... piquant references to other writers, as early as the author of the Book of Job, and as late as John Dennys, who betrayed to the world THE SECRETS OF ANGLING in 1613. Walton further seasoned his book with fragments of information about fish and fishing, more or less apocryphal, gathered from Aelian, Pliny, Plutarch, Sir Francis Bacon, Dubravius, Gesner, Rondeletius, the learned Aldrovandus, the venerable Bede, the divine Du Bartas, and many others. He borrowed freely for the adornment ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... startling than a good many with which they have enriched their pages—e.g., those of Patrick, Brigid, and Columba—and after a denunciation of what their authorities call the vana, fictaque vel apocrypha deliramenta, 'the silly, lying, or apocryphal ravings,' simply proceed to give a compilation of isolated notices drawn from a variety ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute
... broken up and shattered to pieces more than the rest, was pointed out by the old woman as the sepulchre of La belle Laure, an honour which, for aught I know, may be claimed by a tomb in every church of Avignon. An assertion apparently still more apocryphal, however, is that one of the small side chapels ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... Greek. Another has a fragment of the lost Book of Jannes and Jambres; another a chapter of the Book of Enoch, valuable as one of our few indications that a Latin version of it was current. John of Salisbury quotes a story about St. Paul which seems to come from the ancient apocryphal Acts of that Apostle. First on the list (twelfth century) of the library of Lincoln Minster (but lined through as if subsequently lost) is a title Proverbia Grecorum. What this book was is obscure; probably it was a translation from Greek by an Irish scholar. It is ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James
... description, this animal is properly ranked with the griffin, the mermaid, the basilisk, the dragon—and sometimes discussed in a supplementary chapter by the current zoologies, under the idea of heraldic and apocryphal natural history. When asked, therefore, whether Ceylon is Taprobane, the true answer is, not by affirmation simply, nor by negation simply, but by both at once; it is, and it is not. Taprobane includes much of what belongs to Ceylon, but also more, and also ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... multiplied and organized, the need of selection from the multitudinous literature of Christianity was felt. Genuine letters had to be distinguished from spurious letters. Accurate knowledge of the life and teachings of Christ had become a vital necessity. The growth of legend and fable, in the Apocryphal Gospels, threatened to swallow up the memory of the real Jesus. A sifting process went on in the churches, by which the unimportant and objectionable writings were gradually winnowed out ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... Mr. Swan, who invariably sympathised with my admiration. The translation of most of the writings of the prophets, as far as Puerot went, has been executed in the same masterly manner, and it is only to be lamented that, instead of wasting much of his time and talents upon the Apocryphal writings, as is unfortunately the case, the ex-Jesuit left behind him no Mandchou version of Isaiah and the Psalms, the lack of which will be sensibly felt whenever his work shall be put in a printed state into the hands of those for whose benefit it is intended, an event ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... carmen graduum, "Song of the Steps." In accordance with which the Jewish writers state, that these Psalms were sung on fifteen steps leading from the Atrium Israelis to the court of the women. In the apocryphal book of the "Birth of Mary," translated by Archbishop Wake, which is to be found in the works of St. Jerome, and which is attributed to St. Matthew, there is an account of a miracle in the early history of the Virgin Mary, in which it is said ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... Wirt's version of Henry's speech for arming militia apocryphal, 149; but admits that outline is authentic, 150; reports statement of Clement Carrington regarding Henry's military failings, 187; on the injustice ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... had survived in the memory of the people; these were collected, classified, and grouped in a regular manner into dynasties, but the people were ignorant of any exact facts connected with the names, and the historians, on their own account, were reduced to collect apocryphal traditions for their sacred archives. The monuments of these remote ages, however, cannot have entirely disappeared: they exist in places where we have not as yet thought of applying the pick, and chance excavations will some day most certainly bring them to light. The few which we do possess ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... follows, however, that it is therefore apocryphal; indeed, Mr. Fynney assured me that it was quite true, although, if he gave me his authorities, I cannot remember them after a lapse ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... topic it is the just remark of Casaubon, that some instances of Csar's munificence have been thought apocryphal, or to rest upon false readings, simply from ignorance of the heroic scale upon which the Roman splendors of that age proceeded. A forum which Csar built out of the products of his last campaign, by way of a present to the Roman people, cost him—for ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... were the times, as announced by the public declaration of the assembled clergy, recorded by Eadmer; and we need add nothing more to vindicate the probability of the scenes which we have detailed, and are about to detail, upon the more apocryphal authority ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... Alfred," an apocryphal compilation made after the Norman Conquest; published by Kemble with the "Dialogue of Salomon ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... 'My Son, meditate on the rewards of the righteous, and examine not over-curiously into the fate of the wicked. (This apocryphal Ezra is supposed to have been written by some Christian in the first age of Christianity.) Second,—that however the doctrine is now broached, and publicly preached by a large and increasing sect, it is no longer possible to conceal it from such persons ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... had "put things to rights" in his room, and the trunk had been moved. This had somewhat disordered its contents, and Miss Mayfield's slipper contained a dozen shot from a broken Eley's cartridge, a few quinine pills, four postage stamps, part of a coral earring which Jeff—on the most apocryphal authority—fondly believed belonged to his mother, whom he had never seen, and a small silver school medal which Jeff had once received for "good conduct," much to his own surprise, but which he still religiously kept as evidence of former conventional ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... There is no inherent improbability in the tale. Dr. Johnson's amplified version, in which Shakespeare was represented as organising a service of boys for the purpose of tending visitors' horses, sounds apocryphal. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Burckhardt, Buckingham, Legh, Henniker, Jowett, Light, Macworth, Irby and Mangles, Carne, and Wilson, have not only contributed valuable materials, but also lent the aid of their names to correct or to conform the statements of some of the more apocryphal among their predecessors. ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... throughout New Spain, that one of their previous kings had consecrated his imprisonment to embroidering a petticoat for the Virgin Mary; and when this announcement was followed by another, a little more apocryphal, that the most holy image had, by a nod, signified her acceptance of the present, there could no longer be a doubt of his title of Most Catholic King, which might from that time onward be interpreted Most Catholic Mantua-maker. The world might now laugh at him, and hold him ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... death of Floracita be apocryphal?" thought Alfred. "Could he be capable of selling her? No. Surely mortal man could not ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... literature? Father Aucher's Grammar, Armenian and English (Venice, 1819), is rather meagre in its details. I have heard it stated, I know not on what authority, that Lord Byron composed the English part of this grammar. This grammar contains the two Apocryphal Epistles found in the Armenian Bible, of the Corinthians to St. Paul, and St. Paul to the Corinthians. Like the Greek and German, "the different modes of producing compound epithets and words are the treasure and ornament of the Armenian language; a thousand varieties of compounded ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 39. Saturday, July 27, 1850 • Various
... The three apocryphal portions of Daniel considered in this book have often been hardly judged. One of them had almost become a byword of contempt for fabulous inventiveness. Yet the writer hopes that he has succeeded in shewing that they are worthy of more serious attention than they have frequently ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... illustrations of biblical history from the Creation to the death of Solomon. These pictures are arranged in pairs one over the other, and to each one is given a description in French, taken sometimes from the canonical text, sometimes from an apocryphal one. The drawings are really exquisite, they are so fine, so delicately yet so cleverly sketched. They are not coloured in full body-colours, but just suggestively, the draperies being washed over in thin tints, ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... men, whom I afterwards saw, informed me that they had, during their abode there, planted sundry garden seeds, such as beans, pumpkin, squash, and onion seeds; but this item of intelligence I look upon to be somewhat apocryphal; at any rate, I would not recommend to any one, who may chance to visit said island, to save his stomach for any pumpkin pies or baked beans he may obtain from it. There is undoubtedly fertile soil enough for ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... chronicle, scarce pin-feathered with the wings of time. It is a history in sippets: the English Iliads in a nutshell: the apocryphal Parliament's book of Maccabees in single sheets. It would tire a Welshman to reckon up how many aps 'tis removed from an annal; for it is of that extract, only of the younger house, like a shrimp to a lobster. The original sinner in this kind was Dutch, ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... in their case, means anything recorded in Scripture. The Miracle Plays had for their subjects the chief incidents of Old and New Testament history; not merely, however, of this history as accepted by the Reformed Church, but of that contained in the Apocryphal Gospels as well. An entire series of these Miracles consisted of short dramatic representations of many single passages of the sacred story. The whole would occupy about three days. It began with the Creation, and ended with the Judgment. That for which the city of Coventry was famous ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... following tale is perhaps the most apocryphal in our series. There has been considerable difficulty in fixing its locality: and, indeed, we are hardly sure that the names, dates, and places we have hit upon, will answer to the facts in every particular. We have done our best to verify ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... end as far as information went, whether authentic or apocryphal. But Dominic, his horizon still bounded by the world of school, greedy of distinction both in learning and in games, away all day and eagerly, if somewhat sleepily, busy over the preparation of lessons at night, was very far from realising that. Poor voluble ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... was an excellent raconteur with a vivid imagination, and it did not trouble his conscience because the narratives he imparted to this wide-eyed youth were largely apocryphal. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... James, Litt.D., of King's College, has kindly given me the following note: In the apocryphal Assumption of Moses Joshua is told to 'cedar' Moses' words ( rolls), and to lay them up in Jerusalem: "quos ordinabis et chedriabis et repones in vasis fictilibus in loco quem fecit [Deus] ab initio creaturae orbis terrarum." Assump. Mos., ed. Charles, I. 17. See also Dueange, s.v. ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... and men, whose dwelling place was the upper air. Above these wicked spirits in high places, but below the heaven of Jehovah, was the paradise whither Enoch and Elijah were supposed to have been translated, and whence they would come again in the last days. The Jewish apocryphal book of Enoch which was written probably about a century and a half before the birth of Christ, and is explicitly quoted in the Epistle of Jude contains a minute account of the final judgment, including in its scope this whole scenery and all these agents, and closely ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... published. The first edition appeared in 1667, and the second in 1674, in which all the faults of the former edition are continued. By these faults, the Doctor means what he considers to be such: for we shall soon see that his "Canons of Criticism" are apocryphal. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Longfellow family has denied that these luminous but not very promising lines were the first offering of his muse. If the anecdote be apocryphal, the boy Longfellow yet began to love poetry and to write it, and he became a newspaper poet, one of those common soldiers of literature, while a student. He read Irving at twelve, and was charmed with the matter and style of "Rip Van Winkle." He felt the charm of Horace a little ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... any one, let him think how many of the shrewdest moralities of human nature are to be found in writings as ancient as the apocryphal Book of the Wisdom of Solomon and of Jesus the Son of Sirach; as Aesop's Fables; as the oracular sentences that are to be found in Homer and the Greek dramatists and orators; as all that immense host ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... In the verbose and voluminous writings of Josephus the resulting text is in most cases far clearer and more useful; for the repetitious clauses found in the original often obscure the real thought of the writer. No apology or explanation is required for the use of such apocryphal writings as I Maccabees, Ben Sira, the Wisdom of Solomon, or Josephus's histories, for these are required to bridge the two centuries which intervene between the latest writings of the Old Testament and the earliest writings of ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... eminence, distinguished men are sure to appear among their posterity. His words are now to be verified, I think, in K'ung Ch'iu. After my death, you must 1 This rests on the respectable authority of Tso Ch'iu-ming's annotations on the Ch'un Ch'iu, but I must consider it apocryphal. The legend-writers have fashioned a journey to T'an. The slightest historical intimation becomes a text with them, on which they enlarge to the glory of the sage. Amiot has reproduced and expanded their romancings, and others, such as Pauthier (Chine, pp. 121-183) ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... a similar legend occurs in the apocryphal book entitled "The First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ." The ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... it contains an incentive to the assassination of the Emperor, appears to him apocryphal: that, if it should prove genuine, it would be unexampled in the history of the world: that the libellous style, in which it is written, gives room to suppose, it ought to be classed among the papers fabricated ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... Wreech of Tamsel, with her complexion of lily and rose, there ensued by and by much whispering, and rumoring underbreath; which has survived in the apocryphal Anecdote-Books, not in too distinct a form. Here, from first hand, are three words, which we may take to be the essence of the whole. Grumkow reporting, in a sordid, occasionally smutty, spy manner, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... when seen and reported by the laity, give rise to most amusing exaggerations and descriptions. The following account is given in New South Wales, obviously embellished with apocryphal details by some facetious journalist: The child, five weeks old, was born with hair two inches long all over the body; his features were fiendish and his eyes shone like beads beneath his shaggy brows. He had a tail 18 inches ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... witnesses, require more application, and understanding, than falls to the share of the bulk of mankind; or else are very precarious in themselves, since we know that in the first centuries there were numberless forged Gospels, and Apocryphal writings imposed upon the credulous as apostolic and authentic; and there were in the Apostles times, as many, and as great heresies and schisms as perhaps have been since in any age of the Church. So that, setting aside ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... after racking her brain in vain for some memory of the cousin question. And, indeed, it would have been nothing short of a miracle if she could have remembered anything about that apocryphal person. ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... the title-page of this book—a thing which young persons very seldom do—you will see that it (the book) contains stories taken "out of some of the less-known apocryphal books of the Old Testament." You will very possibly not understand what that means; but if you will read this preface—another thing which young persons do even seldomer than they read a title-page—you will find the best explanation that ...
— Old Testament Legends - being stories out of some of the less-known apochryphal - books of the old testament • M. R. James
... in the presence of a man. They will fly as frightened from his approach, unless, possibly, in the intense cold and desolation of winter, when driven together and rendered desperate by hunger, they might be emboldened by starvation to attack a man, but even this is among the apocryphal legends of ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... the Areopagite, or the apocryphal book known under that name? He is the first of the Mystics, and perhaps has gone the furthest in his theological definitions. He lives in the rarefied air of the mountain tops, above the gulfs, on the threshold of the other world which he sees ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... Macha by Kimbay. Exact-thinking, scientific France has not hesitated to paint the battles of Louis XIV. with similar hues; and England, though by no means fertile in angelic interpositions, delights to adorn the barren tracts of her more popular histories with apocryphal anecdotes. ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... intruder everywhere. Another flood of anecdotes preserve the stupefying grief of his father after the child's death. Of these latter, the most extreme which portray Lincoln toward the close of February so unnerved as to be incapable of public duty, may be dismissed as apocryphal. But there can be no doubt that his unhappiness was too great for the vain measurement of descriptive words; that it intensified the nervous mood which had already possessed him; that anxiety, deepening at times into terrible alarm, became his ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... OF LANCASHIRE," in leaving the dry and heraldic pedigrees which unfortunately constitute the great bulk of those works that bear the name of county histories, enters on the more entertaining, though sometimes apocryphal narratives, which exemplify and embellish the records ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... common in Italy, a sarcophagus was regularly exhibited as this sentimental relic. That no longer exists: the present one, which was formerly used as a washing-trough, looks so much like that or a horse-trough of the commonest sort that, even without knowing its claims to be apocryphal, the most credulous sentimental tourist would suspect that it had come up rather than gone down in the world. No matter: we were not dupes, but perhaps the full sweetness and sadness of the story never came home to us with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... his extraordinary adventures, the most astonishing of which it was heresy in the eyes of his followers to doubt for an instant, though my love of truth obliges me to confess, that one or two I have heard him relate sounded a little apocryphal. But great and extraordinary characters are not to be judged of by common rules; for instance, his account of the manner in which he obtained the honour of knighthood from the hands of our present gracious sovereign, then Prince Regent, always appeared to me ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... apostles, while the second and the third are attributed to companions of the apostles. The quotations which Justin makes show that these Memoirs were our four Gospels. It has been thought that Justin perhaps used some apocryphal Gospel in addition to our Gospels, but there is no sufficient proof of this. We may explain that he uses the term "Memoirs" in order to make himself intelligible to non-Christian readers who would not understand the ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... believers in Rowley, and continued to collect his reputed writings long after the death of their real author. On Burgum, who had risen in life by his own exertions, the blue-coat boy palmed off the de Bergham pedigree, and other equally apocryphal evidences of the pewterer's descent from an ancestry old as the Norman Conquest. The de Bergham quartering, blazoned on a piece of parchment doubtless recovered from the Redcliffe muniment chest, was itself supposed to have lain ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... to light literature was an apocryphal article which he is said to have written when about eighteen or nineteen. Just then there came into notice a voracious insect, gifted with peculiar powers against pear-trees. Knowing that his uncle was especially concerned in fruit culture, Hawthorne wrote, and sent from ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... North Yeaston, Rhode Island, that he makes a clear and easy profit of five dollars and twenty cents per hen each year, and nearly forty-four dollars to every duck, and might have increased said profit if he had hatched, rather than sold, seventy-two dozen eggs, struck me as wildly apocryphal. Also that caring for said hens and ducks was merely an incident of his day's work on the large farm, he working with his laborers. Heart-sick and indignant, contrasting his rosy success with my leaden-hued failure, I decided to give all my ducks away, ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... Marshall almost rivals Lincoln. Many of the tales preserved are doubtless apocryphal, but this qualification hardly lessens their value as contemporary impressions of his character and habits. They show for what sort of anecdotes his familiarly ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... between their reanimation and their resurrection? The Evangelist appears to state that they rose from death to life at the moment of the earthquake, but did not emerge from the tomb till the third day afterwards, when Christ had risen. Is this credible? or is it an apocryphal marvel, which has been interpolated in the text of St. Matthew? The other Evangelists, while, along with St. Matthew, narrating the rending of the veil, do not touch on this incident at all. The whole representation, it is argued, lacks the sobriety which is characteristic ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... Europe. Lilith tempted to debauchery, and was variously known as child-strangler, child-stealer, and a witch who changed true offspring for fairy or phantom children.[A] The figure of the child-stealing witch occurs in an extremely ancient apocryphal book called the Testament of Soloman, and dates probably from the first or second ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... Spanish literature deserves to be more celebrated than Luis de Leon. He was great in verse, great in prose, great in mysticism, great in intellectual force and moral courage. Many may recall him as the hero of a story—possibly apocryphal—in which he figures as returning to his professorial chair after an absence of over four years (passed in the prison-cells of the Inquisition) and beginning his exordium to his students with the imperturbable remark: 'We were saying yesterday.' Mainly on this uncertain basis is constructed ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... of time, secluded from intrusive elements of fact, and folded in the love and faith of her own simple worshippers. Among the hollows of Arcadia, how many rustic shrines in ancient days held saints of Hellas, apocryphal, perhaps, like this, but hallowed ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... what India signifies, and I have prayed them to tell me what they thought we were up to there. I am not writing without my book in these matters. And beyond a phrase or so about "even-handed justice"—and look at our sedition trials!—they told me nothing. Time after time I have heard of that apocryphal native ruler in the north-west, who, when asked what would happen if we left India, replied that in a week his men would be in the saddle, and in six months not a rupee nor a virgin would be left in Lower Bengal. That is always given as our conclusive justification. ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... this collection. It is entitled "The Psalms of King David, translated by King James." It has portraits of King David on one side of the title-page and that of King James on the other—one of the portraits being, of course, apocryphal. Of prayer-books there is a copy of the "Booke of Common Prayer," printed by Barker in 1604; and also a copy of the book known as John Knox's "Confession and Declaration of Prayers," which was ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... from his family. Typical of this is another story, surely apocryphal, from Chuang Tzu (Ch. 3, 3). At the death of Lao Tzu a disciple went to the family and expressed his sympathy quite briefly and formally. The other disciples were astonished, and asked his reason. He said: "Yes, ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... see what difference the fact of tea being served in one place or another can make to apocryphal visitors, so, with what cheerfulness she can muster, she asks the others which they would prefer. And at once, a little to her surprise, Nancy and Gerald answer simultaneously, "Oh, let us have tea on the ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Merrilies in Guy Mannering—which is one of the most surprising and powerful scenes Scott ever wrote—is an organic part of the story, whereas the transcript is a thing stuck in for effect, and the curse is put in the mouth of an old woman whose connection with the plot is apocryphal, and ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... collection of articles of art, antiquarianism, and vertu, Hazlitt has only good-natured banter. Of what a strange jumble of apocryphal treasures the painter believed himself the possessor! And he was without the doubts and anxieties of ordinary collectors. They strive to believe and to cast aside all suspicion. But Cosway believed without the ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... When for the rest an altar-rail sufficed To obscure the democratic Christ.... Perceiving now his gift, demanding it, The benison of common benefit, Men, women, all, Interpreters of time, Have found that lordly Christ apocryphal While Christ the comrade comes again—no wraith Of virtue in a far-off faith But a companion hearty, natural, Who sorrows with indomitable eyes For his mistreated plan To share with all men the upspringing ...
— The New World • Witter Bynner
... attraction. It was his first surreptitious taste of fame on the Atlantic coast, and not without its delight. The story often told of his being introduced by Ned House, of the Tribune, as a minister, though often repeated by Mark Twain himself, was in the nature of a joke, and mainly apocryphal. Clemens was a good deal in House's company at the time, for he had made an arrangement to contribute occasional letters to the Tribune, and House no doubt introduced him jokingly as one of the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... first place I am going to do what I hope will be more to your benefit than my credit! Send you my rough notes. If you begin at the first page and read straight ahead to where allusion is made to the Apocryphal Lessons, you will have my first Course, and you will see that I was working by degrees straight through the Morning Prayer. But then (like the Turnip Tom-toddies!) we found that "the Inspector was coming"—and though the class was pretty well getting up "Matins"—it knew very little about the ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... of the apocryphal book of Enoch contains a poem, which is prefixed to the body of that work, and which the learned author of "Nimrod" supposes to be authentic. It certainly dates from a vast antiquity. It ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... have written the lighter or broader parts of the play which rather unluckily took its name from these, and Webster may have written the more serious or sentimental parts: but there is not the slightest shadow of a reason to suppose it. An obviously apocryphal abortion of the same date, attributed to the same poets by the same knave, has long since been struck off ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... one word be true Of all the Wizard has told you, 490 Or but one single circumstance In all th' apocryphal romance, May dreadful earthquakes swallow down This vessel, that is all your own; Or may the heavens fall, and cover 495 These reliques ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... them wives of all which they chose." And they forgot their heavenly estate, and made for themselves a Godless dominion upon Earth. This is the Fall of the Angels as it is narrated at greater length in the recently recovered apocryphal Book of Enoch, and alluded to, perhaps in the Epistles of Peter and of Jude, where are mentioned "the angels that sinned," and "the angels which kept not their first estate." Milton's version brings these ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... fact that though evidently written by unskilled men they contain not a trace or token of certain opinions known to have been rife even before the close of the first Christian century; while the (so called) apocryphal Gospels bear, throughout, such vestiges of their later origin as would neutralize the strongest testimony imaginable in behalf of their ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... in his very delightful, though somewhat apocryphal Chronicles of Scotland, tells us, that "quhen Schir James Dowglas was chosin as maist worthy of all Scotland to pass with King Robertis hart to the Holy Land, he put it in ane cais of gold, with arromitike and ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... to somebody? Is not every Scotchman descended from some king, kemp, or cow-stealer of old, by his own account at least? Why, the writer would even go so far as to bet a trifle that the poor creature, who ridicules Boee's supposed ancestry, has one of his own, at least as grand and as apocryphal as old Boee's of ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... concerned with a march through the African desert, he must introduce the reader to a whole host of apocryphal serpents, with details as to the nature of their bites.[294] So terrible are these reptiles that it is a positive relief to the army to enter the region of lions.[295] Before such specimens as this the hyperbole of Seneca seems tame ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... the church; then the refectory, and there they showed us the desk at which one of the community reads to the rest at meal time, triumphantly assuring me that they read the Bible, yet the two books I found on the desk were, one the Apocryphal writings, the other some homilies of St Basil, under whose ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... so walk not in peace, shall the elders and the non-offending party lose all their power? Where then shall that independent church find healing? for appeals to presbyteries and synods are counted apocryphal by them. But enough hath been said to detect the vanity of these new dreams and notions; it is a bad sore that must be wrapped in ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... endeavoring to impress his mother and sisters with the singular virtues and excellences of his American host and hostesses—virtues and excellences that he himself was beginning to feel conscious had become more or less apocryphal in that atmosphere. He heard his mother's voice saying severely, "When you learn, Francis, to respect the opinions and prejudices of your family enough to prevent your appearing before them in this uncivilized aboriginal costume, we will listen to what you ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... may be found described in the local guide-books, with a view of its "South Front," "West Front," and "Great Quadrangle." It was alleged to be based on an encampment of the Romans—that highly apocryphal race who seemed to have spent their time in getting up picnics on tessellated pavements, where, after hilariously emptying their pockets of their loose coin and throwing round their dishes, they instantly built ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... repentant thief is so called in The Story of Joseph of Arimathea; but Dismas in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus. Longfellow, in The Golden Legend, calls him Dumachus. The impenitent thief is called Gestas, but ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... books are now mutilated and falsified; they are but fragments collected by others who have appeared since. The Ellogians attributed to the heretic Corinthus the Gospel and the Apocalypse of St. John; this is why they reject them. The heretics of our last centuries reject as apocryphal several books which the Roman Catholics consider as true and sacred—such as the books of Tobias, Judith, Esther, Baruch, the Song of the Three Children in the Furnace, the History of Susannah, and that of the Idol Bel, the Wisdom of ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... his own way. If He save souls in a quiet way, I shall be happy; if in the midst of cries and tears, still I will bless his name. One painful thing has occurred: a man who pretends to be a missionary for Israel, and who brings forward the apocryphal book of Enoch, has been among my people in my absence, and many have been led after him. How humbling is this to them and to me! Lord, what is man! This may be blessed, 1st, to discover chaff which we thought to be wheat; 2nd, to lead ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... man here, "that is all Utopian, that is apocryphal, that is impossible." No. Yesterday, I cut out of a paper this: "One of the pleasantest incidents recorded in a long time is reported from Sheffield, England. The wages of the men in the iron works at Sheffield are regulated by a board of arbitration, by whose decision both masters and men ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... middle ages the name chorus was given to a primitive bagpipe without a drone. The instrument is best known by the Latin description contained in the apocryphal letter of St Jerome, ad Dardanum: "Chorus quoque simplex, pellis cum duabus cicutis aereis, et per primam inspiratur per secundam vocem emittit." Several illuminated MSS.[1] from the 9th to the 11th century give fanciful drawings, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... of his son Charles, Dryden immediately cast his horoscope. The following account of Dryden's paternal solicitude for his son, and its result, may be taken as embellished, if not apocryphal. Evil hour, indeed—Jupiter, Venus, and the Sun were all 'under the earth;' Mars and Saturn were in square: eight, or a multiple of it, would be fatal to the child—the square foretold it. In his eighth, his twenty-fourth, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... of self-consciously intellectual women, became so annoyed that at last when asked whether he did not rejoice in the higher education of women he broke out with the sentence, "No! I don't like clever women—I like silly girls." The story may be apocryphal. The man at least was human enough to have said it. All that I am pleading for is that men and women should cease to hide from one another the deeper interests and concerns that really are present in their lives—that they should not merely ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... are dull, tasteless, and anomalous. It would be unfair to follow them to Africa for this investigation. We will consider them here, on the same stage with the whites. And where the facts are not apocryphal on which a judgment is to be formed, it will be right to make allowances for the difference of condition, of conversation, and of the sphere in which they move. Many millions of them have been brought to, and born in America. Most of them indeed ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... Captain Delmar's aunt; altogether there was doubt and mystery; and it ended in my mother being supposed to be a much greater person than she really was—everything tending to prove her a lady of rank being willingly received, and all counter-statements looked upon as apocryphal and false. ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... auditor, he prattled on and on, till the lumberman—(Dick Barton, the name of him)—was possessed with the salient points of his past, present and future; embellished by a flood of detail and personal reminiscence. It is to be regretted that the main points were inaccurate and apocryphal, the collateral details gratuitous improvisations, introduced for the sake of ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... bar shot and chain shot (fig. 41), two or more projectiles linked together for simultaneous firing. Bar shot appears in a Castillo inventory of 1706, and like chain shot, was for specialized work like cutting a ship's rigging. There is one apocryphal tale, however, about an experiment with chain shot as anti-personnel missiles: instead of charging a single cannon with the two balls, two guns were used, side by side. The ball in one gun was chained to the ball in the other. The projectiles ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... (Pittsburg) to General Montcalm, describing a grand scene of fire worship on the banks of Oil Creek, where the whole surface of the creek, being coated with oil, was set on fire, producing in the night season a wonderful conflagration. But there is room for the suspicion that this account is apocryphal. Such scenes as are there described have been witnessed on Oil Creek since the beginning of the modern oil trade. During the continuance of several accidental conflagrations, the scene has been awfully grand and impressive. It has been strongly suggestive of the conflagration of the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... two Zenos, over the northern seas, in the 14th century, extending to Greenland, appear to be well attested by the archives of that ancient city. The episode of Estotiland, which is apparently used as a synonyme for Vinland, has been generally deemed apocryphal, or of a date posterior to the other incidents described. To examine and set in order both the true and the intercalated parts of these curious ancient voyages, would involve no little degree of research, but would prove, if well executed, a useful and acceptable ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... tale," said the knight, "for you, Sir Minstrel, a man of sense as you seem to be, to recite so gravely! From what wise authority have you had this tale, which, though it might pass well enough amid clanging beakers, must be held quite apocryphal in the sober hours of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... speech (note on vii. 16), the possibility that the words of St. Paul's description of God's goodness at Lystra (xiv. 17) may have formed part of an ancient sacrificial hymn, the conjecture that Apollos may have been the author of the apocryphal Book of the Wisdom of Solomon, are all interesting and worthy ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... atrophy. Physiologically considered, it is not a fact that the power of secreting semen is annihilated in well-formed adults leading a healthy life and yet remaining continent. No continent man need be deterred by this apocryphal fear of atrophy of the testes, from living a chaste life. It is a device of the unchaste—a lame excuse for their own incontinence, ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... about the hints we receive and woven them into stories which far outrun any true implication of the facts. Thus has much legendary matter gathered about the childhood of our Lord, containing the stories, not always very edifying according to our taste, which are set down in the Apocryphal Gospels. The same eagerness to know more than we are told has produced the developed legend of the childhood of our Lady. We can of course place no reliance on most of the statements that are there made; perhaps the most that ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the squares of the other sides of the triangle. We have already noted the fable that his enthusiasm over this discovery led him to sacrifice a hecatomb. Doubtless the story is apocryphal, but doubtless, also, it expresses the truth as to the fervid joy with which the philosopher must have contemplated the results ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... business looked apocryphal, and that a man does not, in real life, walk into a cellar door at four in the morning and come out of it with another man's cheque for close upon a hundred pounds. But he was quite easy and sneering. 'Set your mind at rest,' says ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON |
