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Libel   Listen
noun
Libel  n.  
1.
A brief writing of any kind, esp. a declaration, bill, certificate, request, supplication, etc. (Obs.) "A libel of forsaking (divorcement)."
2.
Any defamatory writing; a lampoon; a satire.
3.
(Law) A malicious publication expressed either in print or in writing, or by pictures, effigies, or other signs, tending to expose another to public hatred, contempt, or ridicule. Such publication is indictable at common law. Note: The term, in a more extended sense, includes the publication of such writings, pictures, and the like, as are of a blasphemous, treasonable, seditious, or obscene character. These also are indictable at common law.
4.
(Law) The crime of issuing a malicious defamatory publication.
5.
(Civil Law & Courts of Admiralty) A written declaration or statement by the plaintiff of his cause of action, and of the relief he seeks.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Libel" Quotes from Famous Books



... adopt. In view of the fact that it was impossible to give adequate food to the ordinary population of Petrograd and Moscow, the Government decided that at any rate the men employed on important public work should be sufficiently nourished to preserve their efficiency. It is a gross libel to say that the Communists, or even the leading People's Commissaries, live luxurious lives according to our standards; but it is a fact that they are not exposed, like their subjects, to acute hunger and the ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell

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

... years, professed that he saw through the article. The 'Evening Pulpit' had been, he explained, desirous of going as far as it could in denouncing Mr Melmotte without incurring the danger of an action for libel. Mr Splinter thought that the thing was clever but mean. These new publications generally were mean. Mr Splinter was constant in that opinion; but, putting the meanness aside, he thought that the article was well done. According to his view it was intended to expose ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... though horrible to look at. The doctor came to, and asked feebly for wine. Alfred got it him, and the doctor, with a mixture of cunning and alarm in his eye, said he had fainted away, or nearly. Alfred assented coaxingly, and looked sheepish. After this he took care never to libel Hamlet's intellect again by denying his insanity; for he was now convinced of what he had long half suspected, that the doctor had a bee in his own bonnet; and Alfred had studied true insanity all this time, and knew how inhumane it is to ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... Bayard adroitly proposed as an amendment that "the offenses therein specified shall remain punishable as at common law, provided that upon any prosecution it shall be lawful for the defendant to give as his defense the truth of the matter charged as a libel." Gallatin called upon the chair to declare the amendment out of order, as intended to destroy the resolution, but the speaker declined, and the amendment was carried by a vote of 51 to 47. The resolution thus amended was then defeated by a vote of 87 to 1. The Republicans preferred the ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... on. Wieck exhausted all the devices of postponement in which the law is so fertile. Schumann found himself the victim of a pamphlet of direct assault and downright libel, but all these things were only obstacles to exercise fidelity. The lovers felt that no power on earth could cut them apart. They began to dream of their marriage as more certain than the dawn. Schumann writes to Clara—"Mein Herzensbrautmaedchen"—that he wishes her to study and prepare for ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes

... journal costs twenty francs; we sell it for twenty-three and a half. A million subscribers make three millions and a half of profits; there are my figures; contradict me by figures, or I will bring an action for libel." The reader may fancy the scene takes place in England, where many such a swindling prospectus has obtained credit ere now. At Plate 33, Robert is still a journalist; he brings to the editor of a paper an article ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... cowardly and cruel. I opened your roll; and what did I find—what did I find about my wife? Lies!" he broke out. "They are lies! There are not, so help me God! four words of truth in your intolerable libel! You are a man; you are old, and might be the girl's father; you are a gentleman; you are a scholar, and have learned refinement; and you rake together all this vulgar scandal, and propose to print it in a public book! Such is your ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... differeth from another in irony, there is no reason to deny Defoe's mastery of this penetrating weapon, especially when we find that he imposed on both parties. The judges told him that "irony of that sort would bring him to the gallows," but the eighteenth-century law of libel was more rigid in its constructions than the canons ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

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

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

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

... which was enough to have swamped the whole globe; and it is a world on which the sun never rises, but it looks upon a thousand bloodless battles that are some set-off against the miseries and wickedness of Battle-Fields; and it is a world we need be careful how we libel, Heaven forgive us, for it is a world of sacred mysteries, and its Creator only knows what lies beneath the surface of His ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens

... "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor" to maintain their freedom, could never have been actuated by so unworthy a motive. They knew no weakness or fear where right or duty pointed the way, and it is a libel upon their fair fame for us, while we enjoy the blessings for which they so nobly fought and bled, to insinuate it. The truth is that the course which they pursued was dictated by a stern sense of international justice, by a statesmanlike prudence and a far-seeing ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson

... experience, as well as from statistical facts, one is able to affirm that the great mass of the working population of these islands have nothing whatever in common with the indolent vagrant; and it is a libel on the working-classes to assume that a man is a workman to-day and a beggar to-morrow. As a matter of fact, beggars are recruited from all ranks of the community, when they are not actually born to ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... error may see their own deformity, and many hints which have been given, have afterwards returned to the thoughts of those who have had influence, have been considered as their own ideas, and have been acted upon. The conduct of Captain Tartar may be considered as a libel on the service—is it not? The fault of Captain Tartar was not in sending them on board, or even putting them in irons as deserters, although, under the circumstances, he might have shown more delicacy. The fault was in stigmatising a young man as a swindler, ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... no dealing with unlawful means. To work his ends, there is never aid from any one of the bad passions of our nature. In his writings there is no private scandal—no personal satire—no bribe to human frailty—no libel upon human nature. And among the lonely, the sad, and the suffering, how has he medicined to repose the disturbed mind, or elevated the dejected spirit!—perhaps fanned to a flame the unquenched spark, in souls not wholly lost to virtue. His ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... connection with the heresy trials now coming on. Now let me give you my advice—for what it may be worth. I should say—as you have asked my opinion—have nothing whatever to do with the matter! If anybody else brings you anonymous letters, tell them something of the law of libel—and something too of the guilt of slander! After all, with a little good will, these are matters that are as easily quelled as raised. A charge so preposterous has only to be firmly met to die away. It is your influence, and not mine, which is important in this ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... inference (which I have just proved not to be the case), it is incontestable that to affirm this plagiarism, as a "certain" matter of fact, without any reasonable evidence at all, is not that "fair criticism" which the law justly allows, but, on the contrary, a totally unjustifiable libel. In accusing me personally of plagiarism on no reasonable grounds whatever, as I have just unanswerably proved him to have done, and in making the "certainty" of the plagiarism depend upon an allegation ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot

... you, or any association of men (to come nearer to you) who, out of Parliament cannot be consider'd in a public capacity, to meet, as you daily do, in factious clubs, to vilify the Government in your discourses, and to libel it in all your writings? Who made you judges in Israel? Or how is it consistent with your zeal for the public welfare, to promote sedition? Does your definition of loyal, which is to serve the ...
— English Satires • Various

... peace with the Directory, by writing a bulky libel on England, entitled, the Liberty of the Seas. He seems to have confidently expected that this work would produce a great effect. He printed three thousand copies, and in order to defray the expense of publication, sold one of his farms for the sum of ten thousand francs. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... 88, 'Every Man his Own Lawyer,'" he said, "giving all that it is necessary for any man to know regarding the laws of his native land, including laws of business, how to draw up legal papers, what constitutes libel, et cetery. This one division alone being worth the whole cost of the book, showing among other things what a paper should print and what it should not. Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art is a marvelous work, including as it ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler

... A distinct touch!" cried Holmes. "You are developing a certain unexpected vein of pawky humour, Watson, against which I must learn to guard myself. But in calling Moriarty a criminal you are uttering libel in the eyes of the law—and there lie the glory and the wonder of it! The greatest schemer of all time, the organizer of every deviltry, the controlling brain of the underworld, a brain which might have made or marred the destiny of nations—that's the man! But so aloof is he from general suspicion, ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... recognised by the Roman law stood Furtum or Theft. Offences which we are accustomed to regard exclusively as crimes are exclusively treated as torts, and not theft only, but assault and violent robbery, are associated by the jurisconsult with trespass, libel and slander. All alike gave rise to an Obligation or vinculum juris, and were all requited by a payment of money. This peculiarity, however, is most strongly brought out in the consolidated Laws of the Germanic tribes. Without an exception, they describe an immense system ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... be seen, therefore, that all young persons should endeavor to make each day stand for something. Neither heaven nor earth has any place for the drone; he is a libel on his species. No glamour of wealth or social prestige can hide his essential ugliness. It is better to carry a hod, or wield a shovel, in an honest endeavor to be of some use to humanity, than to be nursed in luxury ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... perception of your tremendous responsibilities! Upon you, rely upon it, depends in a measure you can hardly conceive the future destiny of your race. You—you are to give the answer, whether the African race is doomed to unterminable degradation, a hideous blot on the fair face of Creation, a libel upon the dignity of human nature, or whether it is capable to take an honorable rank amongst the great family of nations! The friends of the colony are trembling: The enemies of the colored man are hoping. Say, fellow citizens, will you palsy the hands of your friends and sicken ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... wiser in future. So far we have only suspicions to go upon, not facts, and it is very likely that if we accused Oily Dave of stealing our stuff he would be clever enough to turn the tables on us, and have us prosecuted for libel, or something of that sort, which ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant

... time had pulled herself together. "If this outrageous story is current, Mrs. Cargill, there was nothing for it but to come back. Your friends know that it is a gross libel. The only denial necessary is for Mr. Cargill to resume his work. I trust his health ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... dripped with sarcasm. "The Red Stack Company will libel him, and if the old man doesn't, me an' ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... says 'people seem to have lost their recollection strangely' when they engraved such a 'blackamoor.' Pray don't seal (at least to me) with such a caricature of the human numskull altogether; and if you don't break the seal-cutter's head, at least crack his libel (or likeness, if it should ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... under the inappropriate title, "GENERAL OBSERVATIONS." To Prosody, including punctuation and the use of capitals, there are allotted six pages, at the end; and to Orthography, four lines, in the middle of the volume! (See p. 41.) It is but just, to regard the title of this book, as being at once a libel and a lie; a libel upon the learning and good sense of Woodbridge;[60] and a practical lie, as conveying a false notion of the origin of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... and that "the Emperor, when presenting her at the balcony on the wedding-day, looked radiant with happiness." My Parisian friend says that young Alexandre Dumas is amongst the people arrested for libel,—a thorough mauvais sujet. Lamartine is quite ruined, and forced to sell his estates. He was always, I believe, expensive, like all those French litterateurs. You don't happen to have in Boston—have you?—a copy of "Les Memoires ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... avowed to me, the very first use which he was determined to make of that supreme power to which his ascent was inevitable, would be to clear the bureaux of France, beginning with Paris, of all those insolent and idle hangers-on, who lived only to purloin the profits, and libel the services, of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... against the proprietors of the Times newspaper for libel. The libel consisted in the statement that the respectable plaintiff—a lady—had conspired with persons unknown to obtain false letters of credit ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton

... to be a portrait painter. She goes into details about the mental anguish that has almost prostrated her since she discovered the fiendish assault on her privacy, and she announces how she has begun action for criminal libel and started suit for damages to the tune ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford

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

... resentment, had forged this document, and printed the pamphlet themselves; but M. de Louvois, who, through his father, the Chancellor, and his brother, the Archbishop of Rheims, was associated with them, maintained that the incendiary libel was really the ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... general terms the old Roman law (i.e. originally the ius divinum) forbade the use of evil spells, as we see in another fragment of the Tables, "qui malum carmen incantassit." In later times this was usually taken as referring to libel and slander, but there can be no doubt that the carmina here alluded to were originally magical, and became carmina famosa in the course of legal interpretation. Cicero seems to combine the two meanings in the de Rep. (iv. 10. 2) when ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... a short distance west of here," replied Harrison. "They wired me there and wanted to libel your craft. You know the United States protects merchants and workmen by seizing the vessel if their bills are ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson

... in the present case," he said. "Do you think Wilton Fern could do evil to a woman? Look in his face once and dismiss that libel ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter

... broadswords and bayonets, and decamped in the disguise of sailors, old women, and dissenting preachers. He had sat three months in Lancaster Castle, the Bastille of England, one day perhaps to fall like that Parisian one, for a libel which he never wrote, because he would not betray his cowardly contributor. He had twice pleaded his own cause, without help of attorney, and showed himself as practised in every law-quibble and practical cheat as if he had been a regularly ordained priest ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... first one in English being published in 1684 by William Crooke, at the Green Dragon, without Temple Bar, in London. The publication of this book was the cause of a libel action brought by Sir Henry Morgan against the publisher; the buccaneer commander won his case and was granted L200 damages and a public apology. In this book Morgan was held up as a perfect monster for his cruel treatment to his prisoners, but ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse

... of wealth, and many pictures have been drawn of the slights and indignities to which boys, whose means are inferior to those of their schoolfellows, are subject. I am happy to believe that this is a libel. There are, it is true, toadies and tuft hunters among boys as among men. That odious creature, the parasite of the Greek and Latin plays, exists still, but I do not believe that a boy is one whit the less liked, or is ever taunted with his poverty, provided ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty

... Russian artists, sculptors, and literary men? Some old literary hack, hard-working and talented, will wear away the doorstep of the publishers' offices for thirty-three years, cover reams of paper, be had up for libel twenty times, and yet not step beyond his ant-heap. Can you mention to me a single representative of our literature who would have become celebrated if the rumor had not been spread over the earth that he had been killed in a duel, gone out of his mind, been ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... predilection be a burden to his interests. Where was the best opening for him? The Tories—I still prefer the name, as being without definite meaning; the direct falsehood implied in the title of Conservative amounts almost to a libel—the Tories were in; but from the fact of being in, were always liable to be turned out. Then, too, they were of course provided with attorneys and solicitors-general, lords-advocate and legal hangers-on of every sort. The coming chances might be ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... other period beyond the Greek Calends that your imagination can conjure up. For the wise men—and the wise women, too—of Gotham are wroth with me, and one says that I am writing on purpose to libel this man or puff that woman, and another charges me with sketching my own life in Fraser, for self-glorification, and a third holds up the last number of Pendennis at me and says, "If you could write like that, there would be some excuse for you, but you won't as long as you ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... it is like steam in an engine without a safety-valve.—The King, for example, does right; if a newspaper is against him, the Minister gets all the credit of the measure, and vice versa. A newspaper invents a scandalous libel—it has been misinformed. If the victim complains, the paper gets off with an apology for taking so great a freedom. If the case is taken into court, the editor complains that nobody asked him to rectify the mistake; but ask for redress, and he will ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... Richard and Mr. Gwynn, the upcome being a wire from Mr. Gwynn to the editor desiring him on all occasions and without alteration or addition to print Richard's dispatches. The editor in retort reminded Mr. Gwynn that the Daily Tory had a reputation and a policy: also there were laws of libel. Mr. Gwynn declined to be moved by these high considerations, and reiterated his first command. After that Richard in each issue gave way to an unchecked column letter, which was run sullenly by the editor and never a ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

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

... the editor of the Balance, a Federalist newspaper published at Hudson, had been convicted of libelling President Jefferson. Chief Justice Lewis, before whom the case was originally tried, declined to permit the defendant to prove the truth of the alleged libel. To this point, in his argument for a new trial, Hamilton addressed himself, contending that the English doctrine was at variance with common sense, common justice, and the genius of American institutions. "I have always considered General Hamilton's argument in this cause," said his great ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

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

... of a fresh libel, in and upon this Court and palace; a commodity I have in my nature no inclination at all to vent, either by wholesale or retail; yet is this fit also, in my humble judgment, for persons of great nearness to his Majesty not ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe

... devoted himself chiefly to his profession. In this period he made many of his most famous law arguments, and acquired the enmity of the Prince Regent by his defense of Leigh Hunt, and his brother, in the case of their famous libel in "The Examiner." In 1816 he commenced those powerful and indefatigable efforts in behalf of education, by which he is perhaps best entitled to the gratitude of mankind. As chairman of the educational committee of forty, he drew up the two voluminous and masterly reports which ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... appeared in numbers, in The British Magazine. This was a sixpenny serial, published by Newbery. The years between 1753 and 1760 had been occupied by Smollett in quarrelling, getting imprisoned for libel, editing the Critical Review, writing his "History of England," translating (or adapting old translations of) "Don Quixote," and driving a team of literary hacks, whose labours he superintended, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... scribblers were certain other agitators, preachers, and writers, refugees from England and Scotland, driven out by the British Government in its effort to keep the sentiments of the French propagandists from taking root in British soil. More libel suits had been instituted in the courts of England during a single year of the French Revolution than in any two previous decades. Among those banished was Thomas Paine, who had returned to London, after lending his pen to the American cause, and ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... allowed, the same shall be delivered to the owners and captors concerned therein, or shall be publicly sold by the marshal of the same court, as shall be finally decreed and ordered by the court; and the same court, who shall have final jurisdiction of any libel or complaint of any capture as aforesaid, shall and may decree restitution, in whole or in part, when the capture and restraint shall have been made without just cause as aforesaid, and if made without probable cause or otherwise unreasonably ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 10. • James D. Richardson

... frankly what he, Peters, thought of the railway, its officers, legal department, road-bed, rolling-stock and claims department; especially claims department! Undoubtedly the company had grounds for libel after the receipt of that epistle, but it ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour

... the world. This is something for a country with a population of only five-and-a-half millions to boast of, and it is not by any means the only thing. We have been spoken of as a people wanting enterprise—a good-natured, phlegmatic set—but it is libel disproved by half a century's progress. We have successfully carried out some of the grandest enterprises on this continent. At Montreal we have the finest docks in America. Our canals are unequalled; our country is intersected ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight

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

... sayin' this is a Middle-Class Woman's Movement. It's a libel. I'm a workin' woman m'self, the wife ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... tried for murder, and acquitted; Rochefort was tried for seditious libel, and condemned. It was an ominous opening for the new Chamber. The emperor had been most anxious that it should contain no deputies violently opposed to his new policy, and the elections had been scandalously manipulated in the interest ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... Those who now assisted him in the editorial work besides Mr. Baker, who edited the English page, were his wife, Emile Sandapa, and Emile Bouchet, a lawyer, who later defended Ollier when he was sued for libel. His editorials framed in animating language aroused his countrymen from their inaction and awakened in them new hopes ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... funds were going down, the bank restriction act was renewed, and Despard's conspiracy still agitated the public mind. In the month of February a strong anti-Gallican sentiment was roused by Mackintosh's powerful defence of the royalist Jean Peltier, accused and ultimately convicted of a gross libel on the first consul. On March 8 came the royal message calling out the militia, which heralded the rupture of ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... have read legends of disastrous dames; Will none set pen to paper for poor me? Canst write a bitter satire? Brainless people Do call them libels. Darest thou write a libel? ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker

... fitted my composition so badly that I was furious at the insult to my work, and thought it necessary to protest against Schott's publication as an entirely unauthorised reprint. Schott then threatened me with an action for libel, as he said that, according to his agreement, his edition was not a reprint (Nachdruck), but a reimpression (Abdruck). In order to be spared further annoyance, I was induced to send him an apology in deference to the distinction he had drawn, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... dip my hand in the accumulation and extract a leaflet by the all too zealous Mr. Murray. In it he denounces various public officials by name as he cheats and scoundrels, and invites a prosecution for libel. ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells

... dare she? But that she is dead, as Juliet told me, I would have her up for libel. Maraquito herself killed the woman. I am sure of ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume

... outrage—you libel! Turn me loose, you fellows! I don't want to see you or your durn lawyers! I know what you want, well enough. You want to bamboozle me into selling my interest in the Copper-bottom for less than it's worth. ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... Opposition period Sir George was dead and buried by the Grits; once over the Union Trust land investigation; again in a libel suit which he lost to the Globe when Rowell was against him. None of these things defeated the able author of Resurgam! who was made Minister of Trade, went for a six-months' journey in the Orient trying to convert the yellow ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... of libel," said my attorney, "at least, if she can't prove the truth of her allegations. My advice to you is to take the matter before the criminal lieutenant, who will be able to give you the satisfaction ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... since the days of the deluge,' 'called for his cloak and his clogs, and walked home, where he wrote a critique for the newspapers of the music which he had composed and directed.' In the Gentlemanly Interest Mr. Titmarsh translates this sorry little libel with the utmost innocence of approval. It is The Paris Sketch-Book over again. That Monsieur Hector Berlioz may possibly have known something of his trade and been withal as honest a man and artist as himself seems never to have occurred to him. He knows nothing of Monsieur Hector except ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... exclaimed, after having taken the paper from the dean, and read the paragraph, "It is a libel, a rank libel, and the author must ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald

... derived, and to insult the power which it is their peculiar province to uphold and protect. What then must we think of the foolish vanity, or the bad taste of a titled Poet, who is the first to proclaim himself the Author of a Libel, because he is fearful it will not be sufficiently read without his avowal. We perfectly remember having read the verses in question a year ago; but we could not then suppose them the offspring of patrician bile, nor should we now believe it without the Author's special authority. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... like Peacock and the Leigh Hunts, was full of private and public troubles, and was not to hold him long. The country was agitated by riots due to unemployment. The Government, frightened and vindictive, was multiplying trials for treason and blasphemous libel, and Shelley feared he might be put in the pillory himself. Mary's sister Fanny, to whom he was attached, killed herself in October; Harriet's suicide followed in December; and in the same winter the Westbrooks began to prepare their case for the Chancery suit, which ended ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow

... who chanced to be on the boat with us repeated Owen Meredith's poem of "The Portrait." At its close he said with sad earnestness, "I am sorry to hear you recite that. Please never do it again. It is a libel on womanhood." ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... his new friend should share his enmities. Boz was always glad to gibbet a notorious public abuse, and here was an opportunity. Maginn's friend, Kenealey, wrote to an American, who was about to edit Maginn's writings, "You have a glorious opportunity, where you have no fear of libel before your eyes. Maginn's best things can never be published till his victims have passed from the scene." How significant is this! Then Pott's "combining his information," his "cramming" critic, his using the lore of the Encyclopedia ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald

... is sheer libel," he answered presently. "Larssen could rook you for goodness knows what damages if ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... am not answered," said Charlton when they were grave again. "What has Fleda done to put such a libel ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... airily; "articles that make dynasties tremble next morning, and which call forth apologies or libel suits afterward, as the case ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

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

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

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

... Newgate, by a Speaker's warrant, for having been guilty of a breach of privilege. This proceeding drew from Sir Francis Burdett an address to his constituents, which was a very able and spirited composition. It was also voted to be a breach of privilege, and a libel upon the House, and the Speaker's warrant was issued for the apprehension and committal of the Honourable Baronet to the Tower. Great riots took place in London, which lasted two days, in consequence of Sir Francis Burdett resisting the execution of this warrant, and ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt

... told her, impossible,—and she would not believe it, except on the word of a lawyer,—public exposure was the only alternative for righting Archie, and she could not, or would not, understand that they would have undergone an action for libel rather than not do their best to clear their cousin, but that they thought it due to Mr. Moy to give him the opportunity of doing the thing himself; she thought it folly, and only giving him time and chance for ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

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

... enough. The Harpoon, like lots of other newspapers, has its social column, and in that column, no doubt, a paragraph like this one about Stella would have a certain sensational value. But supposing it wasn't true! A libel action follows, follows inevitably. A great deal would be said about the unscrupulous recklessness involved; the judge would come down like a cartload of bricks and the paper would get badly stung. ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason

... head worthy of Aristotle, with as fine a heart as ever beat in human bosom, and limbs very fragile to sustain it. There was a caricature of him sold in the shops, which pretended to be a likeness. Procter went into the shop in a passion, and asked the man what he meant by putting forth such a libel. The man apologized, and said that the artist meant no offense. There never was a true portrait of Lamb. His features were strongly yet delicately cut: he had a fine eye as well as forehead; and no ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... burst of applause under the impression that I was somebody else. I have been mistaken in this way for Mr. Briand, then Prime Minister of France, for Charlie Chaplin, for Mrs. Asquith,—but stop, I may get into a libel suit. All I mean is that without a chairman "we celebrities" get ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock

... whose face and mind are a libel upon human nature, has had the insolence to speak to his master's niece as one whom he was at liberty to admire; and when I turned on him with the anger and contempt he merited, the wretch grumbled out something, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... the least provocation is liable to go off into a gangrene and drag one of the main generative, or even all the procreative, apparatus into the general wreck. Nature certainly never intended anything of the kind. To be generous, and not libel nature, we must conclude that the prepuce is a near relative to the fast-disappearing climbing-muscle; very useful in our primitive, arboreal days, when we needed such a muscle to reach our perch for the night, and a prepuce ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... Cooper wrote to the Democratic newspaper of the village. In them he gave fully all the facts in the case. To the assertion paraded in many of the Whig journals of the state, that this meeting showed the spirit of the people in Cooperstown, he made an indignant reply. Such a remark, he said, was a libel on the character of the place. The meeting, he declared, was not composed of a fourth part of the population, or a hundredth part of the respectability of the village. The resolutions he described as being the work of presuming boys, who swagger of time immemorial; of strangers who ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... of the constabulary in the disturbed provinces having been publicly impugned in a long series of articles and reports published in the Manila newspaper El Renacimiento, the editors of that public organ were brought to trial on a charge of libel in July, 1905. The substance of the published allegations was that peaceable citizens were molested in their homes and were coerced into performing constabulary and military duties by becoming unwilling brigand-hunters. Among other witnesses who appeared at the trial ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... the State Department intends to sue me for libel, contained, as they say, in the first volume of my Diary. Well, great masters, if you swallow me, you may not digest ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... Todd's answer to the strictures was a suit at law against the editors of the Genius for five thousand dollars in damages. But this was not all. The Grand Jury for Baltimore indicted them for publishing "a gross and malicious libel against Francis Todd and Nicholas Brown." This was at the February Term, 1830. On the first day of March following, Garrison was tried. He was ably and eloquently defended by Charles Mitchell, a young lawyer of the Baltimore Bar. But the prejudice ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... be said of Lowe is that he possessed distorted human intelligence. He was amiable when he pleased, a good business man, so it is said, and the domestic part of his life has never been assailed; but it would be a libel on all decency to say that he was suited to the delicate and responsible post he was sent to fulfil. In fact, all his actions prove him to have been without an atom of tact, judgment, or administrative quality, and his nature had a big unsympathetic flaw in it. The fact is, there are indications ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... Epist. 432. part II. Epist. 53. The French public strongly suspected the Cardinal of this design. It gave rise to the celebrated libel, entitled "Optatus Gallus," Grotius, (Lit. 982.) notices a prophecy of Nostradamus, then ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler

... have succeeded there, at least, equally well with the former towns, but I should injure the sale of the 'Iris.' the editor of which Paper (a very amiable and ingenious young man, of the name of 'James Montgomery') is now in prison, for a libel on a bloody-minded magistrate there. Of course, I declined publicly advertising or disposing of the 'Watchman' ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... purple nose—a Cyrano de Cognac nose." Tschaikowsky is the Slav gone crazy on vodka. He transformed Hamlet into "a yelling man" and Romeo and Juliet into "two monstrous Cossacks, who gibber and squeak at each other while reading some obscene volume." "His Manfred is a libel on Byron, who was a libel on God." And even Schumann is a vanishing star, a literary man turned composer, a pathological case. But, as I have said, a serious idea runs through all this concerto for slapstick and seltzer siphon, and to me, at least, that idea has a plentiful reasonableness. ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

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

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

... that he has said publicly. The law recognizes this principle. In our own time, men have been imprisoned and fined for saying true things of a bad king. The maxim has been held, that, "The greater the truth, the greater is the libel." And so as to the judgment of society, a just indignation would be felt against a writer who brought forward wantonly the weaknesses of a great man, though the whole world knew that they existed. No one is at liberty to speak ill of another without a justifiable reason, even though ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... to the young man, "I do not know you; I can never have offended you. Will you tell me the motive which has impelled you to make me read a libel for the first time in my life? I generally throw such ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... Teutonic word rick is still preserved in the termination of our English bishoprick. Stubbs, in his libel, The Discovery of a Gaping Gulf, &c. imprinted 1579, says, "The queen has the kingrick in her own power."—Notes to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various

... were therefore a period of constant bitterness and contention between the higher and the lower classes. Mass meetings which were called by the popular leaders were dissolved by the government, radical writers were prosecuted by the government for libel, the habeas corpus act was suspended repeatedly, and threatened rioting was met with severe measures. The actions of the ministers, while upheld by the higher classes, were bitterly attacked by others ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... such an imputation ought not to be charged upon any person whatsoever, upon slight grounds or doubtful surmises; and that those who think I am able to produce no better, will judge this passage to be fitter for a libel than a history; but as the account was given by more than one person who was at the meeting, so it was confirmed past all contradiction by several intercepted letters and papers: and it is most certain, that the rage of the defeated party, upon their frequent disappointments, was so ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... It is a libel on the turtle. He grows to his shell, and his shell is in his body as much as his body is in his shell.—I don't think there is one of our boarders quite so testudineous as I am. Nothing but a combination of motives, ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... have hitherto lived after the manner of the heathen, but since you have now forsaken it, it appears strange to men, and seems shameful and foolish, and they say, "What great fools they are to withdraw themselves from all worldly good and gratification." But let it seem strange to them; let them libel you; they shall yet be compelled to give in their account; wherefore leave it to Him that will ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther

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

... clergyman of the city tells us that no citizen has a right to publish opinions disagreeable to the community! If any mob follows such publication on him rests the guilt. He must wait forsooth till the people come up to it and agree with him. This libel on liberty goes on to say that the want of right to speak as we think is an evil inseparable from republican institutions. If this be so what are they worth? Welcome the despotism of the Sultan where one knows what he may publish and what he ...
— Standard Selections • Various

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

... enough in his present condition to confirm him in his belief that self-destruction was lawful. Evidently he was perfectly insane, for he could not take up a newspaper without reading in it a fancied libel on himself. First he bought laudanum, and had gone out into the fields with the intention of swallowing it, when the love of life suggested another way of escaping the dreadful ordeal. He might sell all he had, fly to France, change his ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith

... the audience, or a large majority of it, along with him, the performer has his action against his malicious assailant, and is adjudged damages as certainly as persons of any of the other professions or trades recover for an assault, a calumny, or a libel. Hence the stage is looked up to as a great school, and the eminent actors are universally looked to as the best instructors in action, elocution, orthoepy, and the component parts of oratory. By following the same liberal and wise system with respect to OUR stage, we may reasonably hope soon to ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... infamy, secret libel, and suborned perjury announce their business and addresses in advertisements in which "success is guaranteed," "no fee required till divorce is granted," "no publicity," etc., while the decree ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... desired, clandestine irregularities are negligible as an alternative to marriage. How common they are nobody knows; for in spite of the powerful protection afforded to the parties by the law of libel, and the readiness of society on various other grounds to be hoodwinked by the keeping up of the very thinnest appearances, most of them are probably never suspected. But they are neither dignified ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw

... at him for a moment in alarm. "Ugh, what a horrible thing to say!" she cried, shuddering. "You libel your good heart, joking about such things. Now I shan't like to stay here in the cellar any longer when you've gone. How can you jest so brutally about life and death? Day and night I go about here trembling for my life, and yet ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... charged the defendant with publishing a libel, containing in one part thereof these words: "Then we are not to meddle with the subject of slavery in any manner; neither by appeals to the patriotism, by exhortation to humanity, by application of truth to the conscience. ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown

... does he "avow and approve the contrare, I mean that regiment in the Queen of England's person; which he avoweth and approveth, not only praying for the maintenance of her estate, but also procuring her aid and support against his own native country?" Knox answered the libel, as his wont was, next Sunday, from the pulpit. He justified the "First Blast" with all the old arrogance; there is no drawing back there. The regiment of women is repugnant to nature, contumely to God, and a subversion of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... "Here is libel on a large scale, and I have purposely refrained from approaching it until I could show my readers something of the spirit in which the whole attack is conceived. 'If he wanted a thing he went after it with ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... provosts, in a letter signed or not signed, which letter shall be left with the doorkeeper of the Academy. Nor shall any person delivering such a letter be seized, molested, or detained, though it should prove to be a libel. But the letters so delivered shall be presented to the provosts; and in case they be so many that they cannot well be perused by the provosts themselves, they shall distribute them as they please to be read by the gentlemen of the Academy, who, finding ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

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

... Parris that could touch the church, as such, or reflect upon the courts, magistrates, or any others that had taken part in the prosecutions. It was necessary to avoid putting any thing into writing, with their names attached, which could in any way be tortured into a libel. Parris lets fall expressions which show that he was on the watch for something of the kind to seize upon, to transfer the movement from the church to the courts. Entirely unaccustomed to public speaking, these three farmers had to meet assemblages composed of ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... of course, is a libel on the hearty folk of Avignon. But Elodie was from Marseilles, which naturally has a poor opinion of the other towns of Provence. She also lied for the comforting ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

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

... Germany a vast workshop, a hive of industry. And this was precisely what the astute Hohenzollern saw through the smoke of battle in far-away Manchuria. He saw a prosperous Germany if the Slav crushed the yellow man. To say he did not would be a libel upon a ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... back the furs at his collar. 'Master Printer John Badge the Younger,' he flickered, 'if you break my crown I will break your chapel. You shall never have license to print another libel. Give me your niece ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

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

... slow in avenging me. The two unfortunate results of the invasions of France, when she had still so many resources, are to be attributed to the treason of Marmont, Augereau, Talleyrand, and Lafayette. I forgive them—may the posterity of France forgive them as I do! I pardon Louis for the libel he published in 1820; it is replete with false assertions and falsified documents. I disavow the 'Manuscript of St. Helena,' and other works, under the title of 'Maxims, Sayings,' etc., which persons have been pleased to publish for the last six years. Such are not ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... quite a libel to call this beautiful creature a hyena. He has neither the ugly form, the harsh pelage, the dull colour, nor the filthy habits of one. Call him a "wolf," or "wild dog," if you please, but he is at the same ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid

... just published Swift's History of the Four last Years of Queen Anne: Pope and Lord Bolingbroke always told him it would disgrace him, and persuaded him to burn it. Disgrace him indeed it does, being a weak libel, ill-written for style, uninformed, and adopting the most errant mob-stories.(883) He makes the Duke of Marlborough a coward, Prince Eugene an assassin, my father remarkable for nothing but impudence, and would make my Lord Somers any thing but the most amiable character in ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... little essay, contains one comment that gives an amusing revelation of his point of view. He says in regard to the fourth part of the story: "It is some consolation to remark that the fiction on which this libel on human nature rests is in every respect gross and improbable, and, far from being entitled to the praise due to the management of the first two parts, is inferior in plan even to the third."[196] This ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... other: he is only a coward. Call him tyrant, murderer, pirate, bully; and he will adore you, and swagger about with the consciousness of having the blood of the old sea kings in his veins. Call him liar and thief; and he will only take an action against you for libel. But call him coward; and he will go mad with rage: he will face death to outface that stinging truth. Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice. Yet all his civilization is ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

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

... producing, when the box was opened, eleven ballot-papers inscribed with two crosses instead of one, and valueless. Here, should the charges against a distinguished and highly respected Government official fail, as in the opinion of the Express they undoubtedly would fail of substantiation was a big libel case all dressed and ready and looking for the Mercury office. "Foolish—foolish," wrote Mr Williams at the close of his editorial ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... Israel in the wilderness, "When we left of them until the morning they bred worms and became foul." There are numerous cases in this country where chestnuts in shipment have been seized and condemned under the provisions of the Food and Drugs Act. Usually the phraseology of the libel has been "because the shipment consisted in part of filthy animal substances, to wit, worms, worm excreta, worm-eaten chestnuts and decayed chestnuts." Altogether the loss to chestnuts from weevil ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various

... yonder comes the famous Mr. Mole, of whom you so often have heard your father tell!" But when their infants were fractious and quite beyond control, they would quiet them by telling how, if they didn't hush them and not fret them, the terrible grey Badger would up and get them. This was a base libel on Badger, who, though he cared little about Society, was rather fond of children; but it never failed to ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... a violent uproar broke out, many of those present protesting against these statements as involving a libel on the entire female sex. It being impossible to restore order, Professor Splurgeson had to be escorted to his hotel by policemen, the date of his second ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various

... giving one a bitter outlook. He preached a sermon whilst we were there. I didn't hear it, but was told about it simultaneously by Suzette, Berthe and Marthe, who informed me that it was directed against soldiery in general. His text had apparently been "Do not trust them, gentle ladies." A gross libel. I retaliated immediately by drawing a picture of him, with a girl sitting on each knee, singing "The soldiers are going, hurrah! ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather

... was a busy intriguer, but not very adroit. He was disposed to make himself useful to government, for he had set his heart upon putting the mitre of Saint Omer upon his head, and he had accordingly composed a very ingenious libel upon the Prince of Orange, in which production, "although the Prior did not pretend to be Apelles or Lysippus," he hoped that the Governor-General would recognize a portrait colored to the life. This accomplished artist ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... of the London Clergy Consultation at Lambeth Palace Petition of the Seven Bishops presented to the King The London Clergy disobey the Royal Order Hesitation of the Government It is determined to prosecute the Bishops for a Libel They are examined by the Privy Council They are committed to the Tower Birth of the Pretender He is generally believed to be supposititious The Bishops brought before the King's Bench and bailed Agitation of the public Mind Uneasiness of Sunderland He professes himself a Roman Catholic Trial ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... frae our ain country, where the men are as rude as the weather, by my conscience, England was a bieldy bit; one would have thought the king had little to do but to walk by quiet waters, per aquam refectionis. But, I kenna how or why, the place is sair changed—read that libel upon us and on our regimen. The dragon's teeth are sown, Baby Charles; I pray God they bearna their armed harvest in your day, if I suld not live to see it. God forbid I should, for there will be an awful day's kemping at the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... excommunication, for no reason but their bearing testimony against that ensnaring oath of abjuration, and a number of other defections. Again, this church, still fond of suppressing the good old cause and owners thereof, framed and prosecuted a libel, most unjustly (some even of themselves being judges), against Mr. John McMillan, minister in Balmaghie, for presenting, in a regular manner, a paper of real and acknowledged grievances; and, because he would not resile from it, but continued to plead ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery

... warning, without being frowned at in that way, and called a deserter. You haven't any right to call a poor cove names, Captain. It ain't because I'm a servant and you're a master, that you're to go and libel me. What wrong have I done? Come, Captain, let me know what my crime is, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... of treason, inciting people to armed resistance to the King's authority. We all feared that it would go badly with him. There was another trial, too, Karl and Engels and a comrade named Korff, manager of the paper, were placed on trial for criminal libel. I went to this trial and heard Karl make the speech for the defence. The galleries were crowded and when he got through they applauded till the rafters shook. 'If Marx can make a speech like that at the 'treason' trial, no jury will convict,' was ...
— The Marx He Knew • John Spargo

... Metropolitan crowd is just crazy to down us, and we must put up the biggest fight we can. Leave it all to Crayford. He knows more than any living man about a boom. And he said just now Madame Sennier was a deed fool to have given us such a lift with her libel. There'll be a crowd of pressmen around at the theater about it to-night, you can bet. Here she comes! Get on your coat, and let's be off, or ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... the hallowed Bible, To sanction crime, and robbery, and blood? And, in Oppression's hateful service, libel Both ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... demanded of her was that she should consent to be almost as completely separated from her family and friends as if she had gone to Calcutta, and almost as close a prisoner as if she had been sent to gaol for a libel; that with talents which had instructed and delighted the highest living minds, she should now be employed only in mixing snuff and sticking pins; that she should be summoned by a waiting-woman's bell to a waiting-woman's duties; ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... sent down by all these great societies to teach. The colored men of the South are to vote, while they deny the ballot to their teacher! It is said that women do not want to vote in this country. I tell you, it is a libel upon womanhood. I care not who says it. I am in earnest. They do want to vote. Fifty-two thousand pulpits in this country have been teaching women the lesson that has been taught them for centuries, that they must not think about voting. But when 52,000 pulpits, or 52,000 ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... she had given it in the belief that Dare, from his answers to her questions, had never been married to the woman at all, in the belief that she was a mere adventuress seeking to make money out of him by threatening a scandalous libel, and without the faintest suspicion that she was his divorced wife, ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... by this revolting spectacle was profound, and was heightened by the universal belief that Marie Antoinette was not less guilty in one direction than Madame de La Motte had been in another. The outbreak of slander and {41} of libel against the Queen goes on accumulating from this moment with ever-increasing force until her death, eight years later. A legend comes into existence, becomes blacker and blacker, and culminates in the atrocious accusations made against ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... throughout that long, dreary day. The Grammar School boys felt as though "there had been a death in the family." Len Spencer was aware of the suspicions against Ab. Dexter, but, through fear of the libel law, he was restrained from putting his suspicions into print until there was some ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock

... prints Jeremiah Stevens' account of the Northamptonshire committee of sequestration in which the character of Pickering, one of the members of that oppressive body, is thus drawn:— "Sir G—— P—— had an uncle, whose ears were cropt for a libel on Archbishop Whitgift; was first a presbyterian, then an independent, then a Brownist, and afterwards an anabaptist. He was a most furious, fiery, implacable man; was the principal agent in casting out most of the learned clergy; a great oppressor of the country; got a good manor for his ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... and insolence of her temper are touched in some other places most admirably. Thus, when she is told that the Romans libel and ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson



Words linked to "Libel" :   libeler, libelous, sully, defamation, slander, calumny, civil wrong, hatchet job, libellous, calumniation, complaint, traducement, tort, defame



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