"Libellous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... expired, I shall now attend with such a homily, as shall lay before ye, first the inventors of it to be those whom ye will be loath to own; next what is to be thought in general of reading, whatever sort the books be; and that this Order avails nothing to the suppressing of scandalous, seditious, and libellous books, which were mainly intended to be suppressed. Last, that it will be primely to the discouragement of all learning, and the stop of truth, not only by disexercising and blunting our abilities in what we know already, but by hindering and cropping the ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... ended in conflicts between the crowd and the soldiers, in which some of the rioters were slain. Wilkes at once published the letter of the Secretary of State with comments on it as a cause of bloodshed; and the ministry accepted the step as a challenge to combat. If his comments were libellous, the libel was cognizable in the ordinary courts of law. But no sooner had Parliament assembled in 1769 than the House of Commons was called to take the matter into its own hands. Witnesses were examined at its bar: the forms of a trial were ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... "Libellous as usual, Nora," Dartrey murmured, without turning his head. "Mr. Tallente is providing me with a few minutes of intense enjoyment. He has assured me that his time is ours. Soon I shall finish my tea, light a cigarette and talk. Just now you may exercise the ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... peers, in their memorable petition against this removal, complained, that the parliament would at Oxford be exposed to the bloody machinations of the papists and their adherents, "of whom too many had crept into his majesty's guards." The aid of ballads and libellous prints was called in, to represent this alteration of the usual place of meeting as a manoeuvre to throw the parliament, its members, and its votes, at the feet of an arbitrary monarch[1]. It is probable that this meeting, which rather resembled a Polish diet than a British parliament, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... by the serjeant-at-arms, Sir Jocelyn was taken, in the first instance, to the Star-Chamber, where some of the Lords of the Council were sitting at the time, and examined respecting the "libellous language and false scandal" he had used in reference to the proceedings of that high and honourable court. The young knight did not attempt to deny the truth of the charge brought against him, neither did he express contrition, or sue for forgiveness; ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... to excite laughter by the boldest and most ludicrous caricature; and provided that end was attained the poet seems to have cared but little about the justice of the picture. Towards the end of the career of Aristophanes the unrestricted licence and libellous personality of comedy began gradually to disappear. The chorus was first curtailed and then entirely suppressed, and thus made way for what is called the Middle Comedy, which had no chorus at all. The latter still continued to be in some degree political; but persons ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... the law of love! Super-disinterested benevolence! And if it be doing to others as we would have them do to us, to make them work for our own good alone, Paul should be called to order for his hard sayings against human nature, especially for that libellous matter in Ephes. v. 29, "No man ever yet hated his own flesh, but ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... pointed with his hand. Besides, it was a way that Andrew had at all times. He indicated persons and things with that part of him which was most convenient at the time. He would point with his elbow stuck sideways at an acute angle in a manner that was distinctly libellous. He would do it menacingly with his head, and the indication contemptuous of his left knee was a triumph. But the finest and most conclusive use of all was his great toe as an index-finger of scorn. It stuck out apart from all the others, red and uncompromising, a conclusive ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... be suffering from hallucinations, but I could swear that just now I saw looking through that door the same improper young woman clothed in a few flowers and nothing else, whose photograph in that abominable and libellous book was indirectly the ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... I am following the instructions of my client, Mr. Beenstock, and the remark you have just let fall, before witnesses, appears to me to bear a libellous reflection on the action ...
— Hobson's Choice • Harold Brighouse
... virtue of a warrant from the Governor and Council; and a concurrence of the House of Representatives in the prosecution was requested. The House, however, declined. The Governor and Council then ordered the libellous papers to be burned by the common hangman, or whipper, near the pillory. But both the common whipper and the common hangman were officers of the corporation, not of the Crown, and they declined officiating at the illumination. The papers were therefore burned by the sheriff's deputy ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... nothing was broken—not even the pot of guava-jelly. They included a superannuated watch in a loose silver case, a medal (in bronze) struck to commemorate Lord Howe's famous victory of the First of June, two pieces-of-eight and a spade guinea (much clipped); a small china mug painted with libellous portraits of King George III. and his consort; a printed pamphlet on Admiral Byng; two strings of shells; a mourning-ring with a lock of hair set between two pearls under glass; another ring with a tiny picture of a fountain and urn, and a weeping willow; ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... set of verses containing advice which the bride's mother is supposed to give her on this occasion, in which the desire imputed to the caste to make money out of their daughters is satirised. They are no doubt libellous as being a gross exaggeration, but may contain some substratum of truth. The gist of them is as follows: "Girl, if you are my daughter, heed what I say. I will make you many sweetmeats and speak words of wisdom. Always treat your husband better than ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... an anecdote of Sir James Mackintosh, which bears directly on this subject. It was at a dinner given by Sir ——, that some one inquired if he (Sir James Mackintosh) had ever discovered the author of a certain libellous attack on himself. "Not absolutely, though I have no doubt that —— was the person. I suspected him at once; but meeting him in Pall Mall, soon after the article appeared, he turned round and walked the whole length of the street ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... before my eyes and the eyes of all decent people as he did the first day he came amongst us. It is only such as you, who delight in hearing and spreading scandal, that are prejudiced against him; and such, too, as are influenced by your libellous reports. It is a shame, Mr. Webster, that you, a man who pretends to membership in a Christian Church, should be guilty of believing malicious reports respecting a Christian minister, and more particularly that you should spread them abroad in the very neighbourhood where he labours. This ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... no licensers. Every book should bear the printer's name, and 'mischievous and libellous books' were to be burnt by the common hangman, not as an effectual remedy, but as the 'most effectual remedy man's prevention ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... to interfere at this time. Then the advertisement appeared once more, and this time the offender was arrested. The gentleman thereupon wrote to the Public Prosecutor, blaming him for not having taken action on the first occasion. The Public Prosecutor regarded this as libellous, and actually brought an action for libel against the philanthropic gentleman. Happily the Public Prosecutor lost his case; but none the less, in view of what happened, a good citizen may well hesitate in future ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... with all was supposed to be religion Past was once the Present, and once the Future Sages of every generation, read the future like a printed scroll Sewers which have ever run beneath decorous Christendom Wrath of that injured personage as he read such libellous truths ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... and orthodox divines from the pulpits, had, from the commencement of this 'memorable Parliament,' under the notion of reformation and extirpation of popery, infused seditious inclinations into the hearts of men against the present government of the church with many libellous invectives against the state. But now they contained themselves in no bounds, and as freely and without controul inveighed against the person of the King, prophanely and blasphemously applying whatever had been spoken by God himself or the Prophets, against the most wicked ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... journal, written with some pleasantry, and great audacity and impudence, had a considerable number of readers. Forty-four numbers had been published when Bute resigned; and, though almost every number had contained matter grossly libellous, no prosecution had been instituted. The forty-fifth number was innocent when compared with the majority of those which had preceded it, and indeed contained nothing so strong as may in our time be found daily in the leading articles of the Times and Morning Chronicle. But Grenville was ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... number of minor points that would tell in their favour, Ocock dilated upon the libellous aspersion that had been cast on Mahony's good faith. "My experience has invariably been this, Mr. Mahony: people who suggest that kind of thing, and accuse others of it, are those who are accustomed to make use of such means themselves. In this ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... Here is Holbein's famous picture of him; a picture that represents a man so gross, so sensual, so disgusting in appearance, that one recognizes its truth, and wonders that the court-painter did not lose his head for such a libellous sincerity. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... "That libellous, scandal-seeking press," said Amadieu gravely, "is a dissolving agent which will bring France to ruin. We ought to ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... somewhat misty. It is true that Eden had taken advantage of her friendless position, and had lied to her, and worn a mask, and deliberately planned to make her his mistress; but he would no more have taken another man's name in order to see her than he would have picked a pocket or sent a libellous post-card. Being ignorant of these fine distinctions, she went down to the little sitting-room on the ground floor greatly fearing. Her visitor was standing at the window on the opposite side of the room, and turned round as she entered; a natty- looking man, middle-aged, with brown ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... now and then misapplied his pen to abuse his own enemies or those of his friends, for we know that the honourable Mucius Scaevola was violently attacked by him; [17] and there is a story that being once lampooned in the theatre in a libellous manner, the poet sued his detractor, but failed in obtaining damages, on the ground that he himself had done the same to others. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt whatever that on the whole he nobly used the power he possessed, that his trenchant pen was mainly ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... letters in the style of Junius—generally signing them Decimus or Probus—that kind of vague libellous ranting which will always serve to voice the discontent of the inarticulate. He wrote essays—moral, antiquarian, or burlesque; he furbished up his old satires on the worthies of Bristol; he wrote songs and a comic opera, and was miserably ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... it in," groaned Alan as he glanced at the head lines, which were almost libellous in their vigour, and the summaries of the financial careers of Sir Robert Aylward and Mr. Champers-Haswell. "It will make them hate me more than ever, and I say, Barbara, we can't live in an atmosphere of perpetual warfare for the ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... loved by their fellows, save only when satire has mingled with their song and filled their victims' minds with thoughts of vengeance. In the last chapter we have noticed some examples of satirical writers who have clothed their libellous thoughts in verse, and suffered in consequence. But the woes of poets, caused by those who listened to their song, have not been numerous. Shakespeare classes together "the lunatic, the lover, and the poet" as being "of imagination all compact"; and perchance the poet has shared ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... Many years previously, Mr. Whiston published Cathedral Trusts and their Fulfilment, which ran through several editions, and was immediately followed by his dismissal from his mastership, on the ground that he had published "false, scandalous, and libellous" statements, and had libelled "the Chapter of Rochester and other Chapters, and also the Bishop." Much litigation followed—appeals to the Court of Chancery, the Court of Queen's Bench, and Doctors' Commons, which resulted in ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... reference was living; and the only alteration which I have made in it since his death, has been the necessary changes in the tenses of the verbs. My assertions have been scrupulously regulated by truth; but I am still aware that they might have been pronounced libellous in a court of justice; and I have been advised by some of my friends to cancel them, on the ground that the recollection of injuries should not be prolonged beyond the grave. The applicability, however, ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... declaration, as 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 by party-spirit, and by those pamphleteers, who of late years have foisted themselves uncommissioned ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... brighter and brighter, coming and going, or rather ever coming fresh and never going, till the reflection from her countenance would illumine the whole room, and light up the faces of all around her. But now she almost blushed black. She had delighted hitherto in all the little bits of libellous tittle tattle to which her position as a young old maid had given rise, and had affected always to assist their propagation; but there was a poison about this old female snake, a sting in the tongue of this old adder which ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... point to a fact which is not uncommon; from the limited number of our nobility, and consequently the rare opportunities for really studying their habits, it is easy to see that in sketches of this order, (whether libellous amongst mob-orators, or serious in novels,) the pretended portrait has been founded on a vague romantic abstraction of what may be supposed peculiar to the condition of a patrician order under all political circumstances. Haughtiness, exclusiveness, indolence, and luxury, compose ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... brought before the Governor. That is he seated at the table, the soldiers showing him the libellous representations of the Croats found in Brown's portfolio. The latter expects to be ordered for instant execution; but Jones assumes an air of great dignity, and ...
— The Foreign Tour of Messrs. Brown, Jones and Robinson • Richard Doyle
... the instinct for secretiveness. Children just love to have secrets, and if there are none on hand, they have to be invented. A child will tell another a secret on condition that it be kept a secret; but when the secret is told it turns out to be a falsehood—perhaps even something libellous. Now, the child cannot feel that he has done anything wicked, for to his mind the big thing is that Nellie promised not to tell, and she broke her promise! If she had not broken her promise to keep the secret, it never would have come out, and no harm would have been done. ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... to his Land of the Dollar and I find New York writ down "uncouth, formless, piebald, chaotic." "Never have I seen," says Mr. Steevens, "a city more hideous.... Nothing is given to beauty; everything centres in hard utility." Mr. Steevens must forgive me for saying that this is simply libellous. It is true, I do not quote him fairly: I omit his laudatory antitheses. The truncated phrase in the above passage reads in the original "more hideous or more splendid," and after averring that ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... scarcely believing the evidence of his eyes:-"The song, entitled 'Working-men Freed,' has been declared libellous. Numerous copies of it have been found among the papers of a secret society, the leaders of which are about to be incarcerated, as being concerned in ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... poetic exaltation in which the old bard must be read, if we would really see the divinities, and grasp the spirit of their dealings with man. Speak not, then, of epical machinery in Homer, the word is misleading to the last degree, is indeed libellous, belieing the poet in the ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... through the interdict; and she entreated Renard to procure her a fresh supply from Flanders, blessed by the excellent hands of the Bishop of Arras. But the oil was not the gravest difficulty. As the rumour spread of the intended Spanish marriage, libellous handbills were scattered about London; the people said it should not be till they had fought for it. A disturbance at Greenwich, on the 25th of September, extended to Southwark, {p.060} where Gardiner's house was attacked,[135] and a plot was discovered to murder him: in the day ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... The love of detraction is unhappily a thoroughly English vice, flourishing under all circumstances, and quite as prevalent, though not, perhaps, equally hurtful, in great cities as in the smallest village. The same people who in London delight in the perusal of newspapers of the most libellous description, and who read with avidity every publication which attacks private character, will, when removed into a congenial sphere, pick their neighbours to pieces; an amusement which cannot be enjoyed in the metropolis, where happily we do not know the ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... physicians, who, in the interest of the profession, felt bound to maintain its various grades,—especially against a man who had not been to either of the English universities and enjoyed the absence of anatomical and bedside study there, but came with a libellous pretension to experience in Edinburgh and Paris, where observation might be abundant ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Williams had ever divulged these letters; but it was held that the concealment of a libellous letter was a high misdemeanor. Williams was therefore adjudged to pay five thousand pounds to the King and three thousand to the Archbishop, to be imprisoned during pleasure, and to make a submission; Osbaldiston to pay a still heavier fine, to be deprived of all his benefices, to be imprisoned ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... were in a fury. He wants all the world to know that you are the greatest villain unhung, that you are ruining Madame d'Urfe with your impious lies; that you are a sorcerer, a forger, an utter of false moneys, a poisoner—in short, the worst of men. He does not intend to publish a libellous pamphlet upon you, but to accuse you before the courts, alleging that he wants reparation for the wrongs you have done his person, his honour, and his life, for he says you are killing him by a slow poison. He adds that for every article he possesses ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Boer War," Dr. Conan Doyle has, on the whole, gained the admiration of the Afrikanders by his moderate language. But here and there, where he has been carried away by his English sympathies to use bitter and libellous language with respect to the Boers, that admiration has been changed into contempt. Dr. Conan Doyle attempts to defend the British Army by abusing the Boers. Abuse is not argument. To prove that Van der Merwe is a thief does not exonerate ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... Tars of Old England, a successful play which at last brought about a reconciliation with his old enemy, Garrick. Two years later, in 1759, as editor of the Critical Review, Smollett was led into a criticism of Admiral Knowles's conduct that was judged libellous enough to give its author three months in the King's Bench prison, during which time, it has been conjectured, he began to mature his plans for the English Quixote. The result was that, in 1760 and 1761, Sir Launcelot Greaves came out in various ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett |
