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Falsity   /fˈɔlsəti/   Listen
Falsity

noun
(pl. falsities)
1.
The state of being false or untrue.  Synonym: falseness.
2.
A false statement.  Synonyms: falsehood, untruth.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Falsity" Quotes from Famous Books



... confute are to answer so as to admit of no reply. To refute a statement is to demonstrate its falsity by argument or countervailing proof; confute is substantially the same in meaning, tho differing in usage. Refute applies either to arguments and opinions or to accusations; confute is not applied to accusations and charges, but to arguments or opinions. Refute is not now applied ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... the Nationalist patriots who know full well the falsity of these and such-like beliefs, are responsible for this invincible ignorance. Hatred and distrust of England are the staple of their teachings, which the credulous peasantry imbibe like mother's milk. The peripatetic patriots who invade the rural communities seem to be easy, extemporaneous ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... the Folly and Falsity of those plausible Insinuations, that such a Naturalization would take the Bread out of Englishmen's Mouths. We are convinced, that the greater Number of Workmen of one Trade there is in any Town, the more does that Town thrive; the greater will be the Demand of the Manufacture, and ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman

... rebuke. But the real issue (he contends) is whether the men of the nineteenth century are to adopt the demonology of the men of the first century, as divinely revealed truth, or to reject it as degrading falsity. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... station-keeper and his two post-boys, who had no right to be in the traveller's room, had entered with threatening mien, and when they refused to retire peaceably, my friend had fired two shots in order to frighten them and bring assistance. The falsity of their statement that he had fired at them as they entered the room was proved by the fact that the bullets were lodged near the ceiling in the wall farthest away ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... thought and action, Truth is in the minority and error has the majority. It is not otherwise in the field of Mind-healing. The man who calls himself a Christian Scientist, yet is false to God and man, is also uttering falsehood about good. This falsity shuts against him the Truth and the Principle of Science, but opens a way whereby, through will-power, sense may say the unchristian practitioner can heal; but Science shows that he makes morally worse the invalid whom he is ...
— Rudimental Divine Science • Mary Baker Eddy

... falsity of this protest was surely of the first importance. If true, nothing but the concealment of its truth could induce our Government to negotiate with the semblance of a government thus created, nor could a treaty resulting from the acts stated ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland

... I will speak a few words to you by way of discovery of the falsity of such opinions; and a word of direction, how ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Guise, Henry of Valois, the Bastard of Angouleme, and their attendants, had reached the admiral's house. The wounded man was almost alone. Could there be any clearer proof of the rectitude of his purpose, of the utter falsity of the charges of conspiracy with which his enemies afterward attempted to blacken his memory?[983] Guerchy and other Protestant gentlemen had expressed the desire to spend the night with him; but his son-in-law, Teligny, full of confidence in Charles's ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... substituted ad vitam aeternam for ad salutem, and afterwards changed this phrase into ad veram pietatem. (Frank 2, 218. 169.) However, as soon as the controversy began, the Lutherans, notably Flacius, clearly saw the utter falsity of ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... intensified as he saw the self-sacrificing devotion with which she earned enough by her spinning to enable him to continue his schooling. At the age of fifteen he was married, and on the bride's arrival the falsity of the middleman through whom the engagement had been long ago contracted was revealed, for the bride was a helpless cripple and a serious burden ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable

... that Safie had been clandestinely visited by some one. Whether it was the thoughtless and momentary indiscretion of a willful woman, or the sequel to some deliberately planned intrigue, did not concern him so much as the falsity of his own position, and the conniving lie by which he had saved her and her lover. That at this crucial moment he had failed to "testify" to guilt and wickedness; that he firmly believed—such is the inordinate vanity ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... praises and honours them; for it says that poets and painters have power to dare, I mean to dare to do whatever they may approve of; and this good insight and this power they have always had, for whenever a great painter (which very seldom happens) does a work which appears to be false and lying, that falsity is very true, and if he were to put more truth into it it would be a lie, as he will never do a thing which cannot be in itself, nor make a man's hand with ten fingers, nor paint on a horse the ears ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd

... not stop this side the farthest line Of Truth, you said, nor hide one little falsity From my sweet faith that was too kind to see. You said a keener vision would divine All failings later, bare each hid design, Each poor disguise of loving's treachery That screened its weaknesses from even me. How oft you said those cherry ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various

... authority did not see fit to discredit it. He repeats the report as he received it, in the words that "the same signs serve as a medium of converse from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico." Its truth or falsity can only be established by careful comparison of lists or vocabularies of signs taken under test conditions at widely different times and places. For this purpose lists have been collated by the writer, taken in different parts of the country at several dates, from ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... It seems to me you've mixed up two different causes, and that's a very unsafe thing to do. But excuse me, if you are God I If the lie were ended and if you realised that all the falsity comes from the belief ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... up, in a low voice, a running commentary on the falsity of men and the foolishness of women. But, at times, her natural kindness of heart asserted itself, to the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... Islands. He says he is told that two British ships struck. Why did he not take possession of them? I took possession of his as fast as they struck. The reason is clear, that he did not believe it: he must have known the falsity of the report. He states that the ship in which I had the honour to hoist my flag fired latterly only single guns. It is true; for steady and cool were my brave fellows, and did not wish to throw away a single shot. He seems to exult that I sent on shore a flag ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey

... dates did not, of course, coincide—I had quickly discovered the falsity of that scent. Neither did the intervals between them, with the exception of those few days in which I had been unable to complete that half-written sentence—the few days immediately prior to my (parallel) acceptance ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions

... self-evident, however, that the author of those statements did not contemplate that reliable parties[29] would see the Donner camps before prowling beasts, or time and elements, had destroyed all proof of his own and his party's wanton falsity. ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... quaint I ought to have chosen to return at least by the dark and narrow way; but mark how luxury unmans us. I was already demoralised. I crossed the threshold of the timbered portal, took a few steps, and retreated. It smelt badly! So I marched back, counting the lamps in their fine falsity. But the other, the crooked and covered way, smelt very badly indeed; and no good American is without a fund of accumulated sensibility to the odour of ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... criminal action for libel it is immaterial whether the matter of it is true or false; and a person prosecuted for libel is not allowed, in justification, to prove to the jury the truth of his statement, since the provocation, not the falsity, is to be punished. And, whether true or false, the libelous publication is equally dangerous to the public peace, and is presumed to have been made ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young

... however, all alike (Liza's mother, Elena's mother), and Lavretsky's mother, who had been a serf, and the humble peasant woman, all Turgenev's girls and women are insufferable in their artificiality, and—forgive my saying it—falsity. Liza and Elena are not Russian girls, but some sort of Pythian prophetesses, full of extravagant pretensions. Irina in "Smoke," Madame Odintsov in "Fathers and Children," all the lionesses, in fact, fiery, alluring, insatiable creatures for ever craving ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... he asked himself this question, and could not understand that, at the very time he had been standing looking into the river, he had perhaps been dimly conscious of the fundamental falsity in himself and his convictions. He didn't understand that that consciousness might be the promise of a future crisis, of a new view of life ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... wrong you have done me, all the beliefs and energy you have killed in me, but because you represent what is most execrable, most hideous under the sun—hypocrisy and lies. This society masquerade, this heap of falsity, of grimaces, of cowardly and unclean conventions have sickened me to such an extent, that I am running away exiling myself so as to see them no longer; rather than them I would have the prison, the sewer, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... self, he professes, that he doth not write it against Geometry, but Geometers; and that his design in it is, to shew, That there is no less uncertainty and falsity in the writings of Mathematicians, than there is in those of Naturalists, Moralists, &c., though he judges, that Physicks, Ethicks, Politicks, if they were well demonstrated, would be as ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... has the land's soul slumbered In wearying dreams of gain, With prosperous falsity cumbered And dulled with bribes, ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop

... the morning parade that promised trouble for the show. A countryman, who had heard that the hide of an elephant could not be punctured, was struck by the happy thought of finding out for himself the truth or falsity of this theory. He had had an argument with some of his friends, he taking the ground that an elephant's hide was no different from the hide of any other animal. And he promised to show ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... Russia" party wanted Peter to renounce war and conquest. Alexis, his own murdered son, worked with this element which was very largely representative of the nation. To them, St. Petersburg, then a new and growing capitol, was typical of change, unrest and falsity; Moscow was in their hearts the only capital, typical of Russia's old comfort and quiet. Many nobles antagonized Peter, but he swept them aside, imprisoning them or sending them to the gallows. Like Russia's slight ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... a fish's mouth, of devils asking to go into swine, of a fig-tree cursed to death because it did not bear fruit out of season—how childish that tale of a virgin mother, who conceived 'without sin,' as it is somewhere naively put—an ideal of absolutely flawless falsity. Even the great old painters were helpless before it. They were driven to make mindless Madonnas, stupid bits of fleshy animality. It's not easy to idealise mere physical motherhood. You see, that was the wrong, perverted ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... Still, he pocketed his disapproval, and came along with lack lustre eye. S. came down, too, just as I was wading in, to see me start, and in a few minutes I announced that a good fish had risen short at the small Killer. This was a timely falsity, as I wanted just then the opportunity of filling my pipe—not an easy thing to do knee-deep in water. By putting your rod over your right arm, and fixing the butt into your pocket, it may, however, be done; the line takes care ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... beautiful. He had a wonderful command of clear and ringing utterance and could appeal when he liked very powerfully to the sensibilities of his readers. Rhetoricians are seldom free from occasional extravagance, and Burke fell under the common danger of his kind. He had his moments of falsity, could heap coarse and outrageous abuse on Warren Hastings, illustrate the horrors of the Revolution by casting a dagger on the floor of the House of Commons, and nourish hatred beyond the bounds of justice or measure. But these things ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... gathered from my Principles. The first is the satisfaction which the mind will experience on finding in the work many truths before unknown; for although frequently truth does not so greatly affect our imagination as falsity and fiction, because it seems less wonderful and is more simple, yet the gratification it affords is always more durable and solid. The second fruit is, that in studying these principles we will become accustomed by degrees to judge better of all the things we come in contact with, and thus ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes

... the subject. It is doubtful if he knew you were going to Burnsville at all, and he never had seen Mr. Burns in his life. How carefully, Hiram, you calculated before you resolved on this delicate method to secure your object! The risk of the falsity of the whole ever being discovered—that was very remote, and amounted to little. What you were about to say would injure no one—wrong no one. If not true, it might well be true. Oh! but Hiram, do you not see you are permitting an element of falsehood to creep in and leaven your whole nature? ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... said I, rising; "we will let conclusions go for the present. My mind must be satisfied in regard to the truth or falsity of a certain theory of mine, for my judgment to be worth much on this or any other matter ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green

... 7:20. The Savior not only knew that men would, in order to defend their unrighteous systems, charge him with having a devil, but he also knew that for the same purpose men would charge him with having connections with such systems; therefore he said, to uncloak the falsity of such charges, "Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not." Mat. 24:26. Jesus gives commandment to preach upon the housetop what ye hear in the ear. Mat. 10:27. "For God shall bring ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... reluctant to let him plant a crop, fearing to get into trouble with the government. He then pushed on to confer with the Pottawatomi, who had a village at Sycamore Creek about forty miles farther on. Here he found similar conditions; also he learned the falsity of the story that he could get ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... movement, with a view to secure them. As each man succeeded in effecting his own object, he was led away by that community of feeling which rules a multitude. The common rush was believed to be with a view to succor Maso, though each man secretly knew the falsity of the impression as respected his own particular case; and box after box began to tumble into the water, as new and eager recruits lent themselves to the task. The impulse was quickly imparted from one to another, until even young Sigismund was ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... enter into habit and habit formation. Youth experiments with habit; old age clings to it. Efficiency is the result of good habits but originality is the reward of some who discard habits. A nation forms habits which seem to be part of its nature, until emigration to another land shows the falsity of this belief. So with individuals: a man feels he must eat or drink so much, gratify his sex appetite so often, sleep so many hours, exercise this or that amount, seek his entertainment in this or that fashion,—until something ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... True, the falsity of an extra-judicial oath, carries with it no temporal punishment; but the moral obligation remains to give it validity. That eternal reward or punishment which the Citizen has taken so much pains to blot out from the mind of his readers, will still continue the delight and terror ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector

... school. He was taught only by nature and consulted only her relationships and tendencies. There is never a mistaking of that. Nature was his influence, and he saw with an untrammelled eye the elemental shape of all things, and affixed no falsity of feeling, or anything, to his forms which might have detracted from their extreme simplicity. He had "first sight," first contact with the image, and sought nothing else beyond this, and a very direct correspondence with ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... unlike God; but he could not have done this if error and sin existed in the Mind of God. What God knows, He also predestinates; and it must be fulfilled. Jesus proved to perfection, so far as this could be done in that age, what Christian Science is to-day proving in a small degree,—the falsity of the evidence of the material senses that sin, sickness, and death are sensible claims, and that God substantiates their evidence by knowing their claim. He established the only true idealism on the basis that God is All, and He is good, and good ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy

... intervals are dropped into the soil of the human mind; and though the mind of the age, in its first impulses of joy, may play wild gambols with it, it is destined in the end to mould and control the thinking of the civilized world. But apart from its truth or falsity, in whole or in part, regarded simply as an intellection, it strikes us as one of the grandest of modern times. Spreading itself over almost illimitable space, grasping back through almost illimitable time, claiming for ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... falsity, I have reproduced in this paper plates taken from leading American and English fashion monthlies during the past three decades, in each of which it is noticeable that extremes have been reached. In 1860-65, the hoop-skirt held sway, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... State. He was himself, above all things, a democrat as well as a Socialist; and in that intellectual sect he began to feel as if he were the only Socialist who was also a democrat. His dogmatic, democratic conviction would alone illustrate the falsity of the contrast between logic and life. The idea of human equality existed with extraordinary clarity in his brain, precisely because it existed with extraordinary simplicity in his character. His popular sympathies, unlike so many popular sentiments, ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... spoke: "Is there any among you who has aught to urge against this royal Harmachis, in that by wickedness of heart or life, by uncleanliness or falsity, it is not fit or meet that we should crown him Lord ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... [Sidenote: His logic] The success of an argument usually depends far less on the truth of the premises than on the validity of the reasoning. And the premises selected by Calvin not only seemed natural to a large body of educated European opinion of his time, but were such that their truth or falsity was very difficult to demonstrate convincingly. Calvin's system has been overthrown not by direct attack, but by the flank, in science as in war the most effective way. To take but one example out of many that might be ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... into each softly uttered word a perfect lusciousness of falsity, Virubov had added to ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... with sincerity. In the light of the facts it is preposterous. Flipper, while at West Point, demonstrated beyond controversy the fallacy of such a position as the first; and there is hardly a college commencement in which some negro in some way does not continue to show its falsity by distinguishing himself by his extraordinary attainments. Even while I write, a letter lies before me from a young colored student, a graduate of Brown University, who is now taking a post-graduate course at the American School for Classical ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... it is said that God made all things for man, and man that he might worship him). I will, therefore, consider this opinion, asking first, why it obtains general credence, and why all men are naturally so prone to adopt it? secondly, I will point out its falsity; and, lastly, I will show how it has given rise to prejudices about good and bad, right and wrong, praise and blame, order and confusion, beauty and ugliness, and the like. However, this is not the place to deduce these misconceptions from the nature of the human mind: ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza

... Aversion, which those under their Care have against their Enemies, whom to blacken and render odious, they leave no Art untried, no Stone unturn'd; and no Calumny can be more malicious, no Story more incredible, nor Falsity more notorious, than have been made Use of knowingly for that Purpose by Christian Divines, ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville

... its signification has undergone changes, and to point out to what sort of a discipline or group of disciplines educated men are apt to apply the word, notwithstanding their differences of opinion as to the truth or falsity of this or that particular doctrine. Why certain subjects of investigation have come to be grouped together and to be regarded as falling within the province of the philosopher, rather than certain other subjects, will, I hope, be made ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton

... had a keen sense of the difficulty with which a debtor escapes subterfuge and equivocation—forms, slightly disguised, of lying. To buy and sell wares in a market place, to chaffer and haggle over prices, was distasteful to him, as apt to involve falsity and unfairness. He was free and open in speech, bold in act, generous, warm-hearted, hospitable. His chief faults were an addiction to self-indulgence and luxury, a passionate abandon to the feeling of the hour, whatever that might happen to be; and a tameness ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson

... been led astray, it seems to me, by his desire to present his argument antithetically (using the term in its logical sense). What he really wished to prove was not so much the truth of the proposition that he was then advancing, but the falsity of quite another proposition. The question for him, the question which he had in his mind, was as follows: Is the people capable of governing the state, of taking measures beforehand, and of understanding and solving ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... internal causes of cold the second is that one of the parties has religion and not the other, n. 241. Of internal causes of cold the third is, that one of the parties is of one religion and the other of another, n. 242. Of internal causes of cold the fourth is, the falsity of the religion, n. 243. With many, the above-mentioned are causes of internal cold, but not at the same time of external, n. 244, 245. There are also several external causes of cold, the first of which is dissimilitude of minds and manner, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... with them. The other example he introduces of "things incredible and wholly fabulous," delivered by Plutarch, is, that "Agesilaus was fined by the Ephori for having wholly engrossed the hearts and affections of his citizens to himself alone." And herein I do not see what sign of falsity is to be found: clearly Plutarch speaks of things that must needs be better known to him than to us; and it was no new thing in Greece to see men punished and exiled for this very thing, for being too acceptable to the people; witness the ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... ecclesiastical uia media, with the relegation of opposing theories to the extremes, which meet in a common fount of falsity, owes something to Aristotle and to our author. Vide ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... opposite spheres that surround man, one from hell, the other from heaven; from hell a sphere of evil and falsity therefrom, from heaven a sphere of good and of truth therefrom; and these spheres do [not immediately] affect the body, but they affect the minds of men, for they are spiritual spheres, and thus ...
— Spiritual Life and the Word of God • Emanuel Swedenborg

... sect, were overshadowed by the darkness of this error, and, in consequence of their erroneous opinions, practised legal violations of the rights of humanity. The pen, and the tongue of reason and truth have convinced thousands of the falsity of those opinions, and such instruments should not be permitted to rest in idleness, until truth and humanity obtain a complete ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... satisfied, by this time, he never would make one—but I could not explain all his obliquities by referring them to ignorance. The manner, moreover, in which he represented himself as the principal actor, on all occasions, denoted so much address, that, while I felt the falsity of the impressions he left, I did not exactly see the means necessary to counteract them. So ingenious, indeed, was his manner of stringing facts and inferences together, or what seemed to be ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... consent to their purely mystical union. What did his torments matter? Later on, perhaps, he might recover possession of himself. Amidst his desolate solitude of mind would there not always be a little joy to sustain him, all that joy whose consoling falsity he would leave ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... powers under whose jurisdiction the seizures were made; and therefore his Prussian majesty could not, consistent with the law of nations, determine these disputes in his own tribunals. They demonstrated, by undoubted evidence, the falsity of ma-ny facts alleged in the memorial, as well as the fairness of the proceedings by which some few of the Prussian vessels had been condemned; and made it appear, that no insult or injury had been offered to the subjects of Prussia. Finally, they observed, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... self-government. The truth is that the situation up to 1837 had been too abnormal to permit the constitutional radicals to show themselves in their true character. Mackenzie himself, in the rather abject letter with which he sought reinstatement in 1848, admitted the falsity of his old position: "Had I seen things in 1837 as I do in 1848, I would have shuddered at the very idea of revolt, no matter what our wrongs might have been. I ought, as a Scotsman, to have stood by the government in America to the last; exerted any energy I ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison

... phrase, Dearest, my lips wax all too wise; Nor have I known a love whose praise Our piping poets solemnize, Neither a love where may not be Ever so little falsity. ...
— Chamber Music • James Joyce

... picture represents it represents independently of its truth or falsity, by means ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein

... at Seligenstadt contained nothing but a little dust. Though greatly annoyed by this "execrable rumour, spread everywhere by the subtlety of the devil," Eginhard had doubtless comforted himself by his supposed knowledge of its falsity, and he only now discovered how considerable a foundation there was for the scandal. There was nothing for it but to insist upon the return of the stolen treasures. One would have thought that the holy man, who had admitted himself to be knowingly a receiver of stolen ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... tortuosities, cloaks and accessories to-day, will, if we are silent and acquiescent, be halfway to reality again in the course of a generation. To our children they are not evidently shams; they are powerful working suggestions. Human institutions are things of life, and whatever weed of falsity lies still rooted in the ground has the promise and potency of growth. It will tend perpetually, according to its nature, to recover its old influence over the imagination, the thoughts, and acts ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... necessary. Bland was seedier than he had been in Tucson, if that were possible. Too evidently he had no part of the seventy-five dollars left, if he had ever possessed that much. Mary V would like to disbelieve everything he said, but a troubled doubt of his falsity assailed her. ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... well-thumbed copies of his book passed from hand to hand in many a rural tavern or store, where the village atheist wrestled in debate with the deacon or the schoolmaster. Paine rested his argument against Christianity upon the familiar grounds of the incredibility of miracles, the falsity of prophecy, the cruelty or immorality of Moses and David and other Old Testament worthies, the disagreement of the evangelists in their gospels, etc. The spirit of his book and his competence as a critic are illustrated by his saying of the New Testament: ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... wrong," said Glenfernie, "barbed and feathered also for a Scots minister's own inmost nerve! And is not my wrong general likewise? Who hates and punishes falsity, though it were found in his own self, acts ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... her hand covering the page. From the hard, satiric brightness of her look on these occasions it seemed probable that she was speculating on the discrepancies between fiction and real life, and on the falsity ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... falsity prepense, we say; but the known facts, which stand abundantly on record if you care to search them out, are merely as follows: Friedrich, with such sincerity as there might be, did welcome Wilhelmina on the morrow of her arrival; spoke of Reinsberg, and of air and rest, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... Cabell's stories, read his Beyond Life, which explains his theory of romance. He maintains that art should be based on the dream of life as it should be, not as it is; that enduring literature is not "reportorial work"; that there is vital falsity in being true to life because "facts out of relation to the rest of life become lies," and that art therefore "must become more or ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert

... for the spread of information and misinformation. Because of the natural settings they give to the most absurd and unnatural stories, their essential falsity and unreality is often made the more pernicious. Their possibilities for good are enormous, their actual performance is conspicuously to lower the public taste, to create a habit which discourages earnest reading or intelligent entertainment. For children they act as a ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... evidence in support of an alleged fact when the establishment of that fact was of great importance to millions of men and women, than we should demand when the truth or falsity of the alleged fact ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford

... register shows that in Wadham both of the great parties in Church and State were represented. There were represented also all classes of society, from Dymokes, Herberts, Russells, Portmans, Strangways, to the humblest plebeiorum filii, a fact which proves the falsity of the assertion made forty years ago, that Oxford was once ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson

... second Relation from a Gentleman of Martinico, and one of my Friends, not capable of a Falsity. He assured me, that in his Neighbourhood, an Infant of four Months old unfortunately lost his Nurse, and its Parents not being able to put it to another, resolved through Necessity to feed it with Chocolate; the Success was very ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus

... not an Epicurean, and to call him so is a deceitful flattery. We hold that it is morally impossible for a man to dine daily upon the fat of the land in courses, and yet deny a future state of existence, beatific with beef, and ecstatic with all edibles. Another falsity of history is that of Heliogabalus-was it not?-dining off nightingales' tongues. No true gourmet would ever send this warbler to the shambles so long as scarcer ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile

... sacred than the rights of humanity." To this he recurred in each of his notes. Germany avoided the issue. At first she insisted that the Lusitania was armed, carrying explosives of war, transporting troops from Canada, and thus virtually acting as a naval auxiliary. After the falsity of this assertion was shown, she adduced the restrictions placed by Great Britain on neutral trade as excuse for submarine operations, and contended that the circumstances of naval warfare in the twentieth century had ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... good night he felt the strange falsity of his position. He did not expect to be able to keep up the deception for long. That roused him, and half the night he lay awake, thinking. Next day he was the life of the work and study and play in that village. Kindness and good-will did not need inspiration, but it was keen, deep passion that ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey

... our time on nothing; or 'our eternity,' for with that sect time is altogether a delusion. It may be true, but the believer, even in the act of declaring his faith, must practically prove himself persuaded of the falsity of his doctrine. ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... had become so popular, that he thought it should be investigated; and in this research he was assisted by the Reverend Dr. Douglas, now Bishop of Salisbury, the great detector of impostures; who informs me, that after the gentlemen who went and examined into the evidence were satisfied of its falsity, Johnson wrote in their presence an account of it, which was published in the newspapers and Gentleman's Magazine, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... use of intelligence in foresight, and contriving, is then discounted; we are just to get out of the way and allow nature to do the work. Since no one has stated in the doctrine both its truth and falsity better than Rousseau, we shall turn ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... advanced spiritual understanding. The highest prayer 16:3 is not one of faith merely; it is demonstra- tion. Such prayer heals sickness, and must destroy sin and death. It distinguishes between Truth 16:6 that is sinless and the falsity of sinful sense. ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... engines of British iron-clads as the city of Omaha on the Missouri River. It was only natural that the Massachusetts man should have been in a fever of excitement at finding himself once more within sight of home; and for once human nature exhibited the unusual spectacle of rejoicing over the falsity of its own predictions. As every revolution of the screw brought out some new feature into prominence, he skipped gleefully about; and, recognizing in my person the stranger element in the assembly, he took particular pains to point out the lions of the landscape. "There, serais ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... young man in good health, and you will, in all probability, live long enough to assure yourself of the truth or falsity of what I have told you about my indefinite longevity. I should be glad to relate my story to scientific men, to physicians, to students; but, as I have said, we shall wait for that. In the meantime, you may, if ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton

... saw dissensions within the Church. The Spanish Conquest and the possession of the Philippines had been made easy by the doctrine of the indivisibility of Church and State, by the teaching that the two were one and inseparable, but events were continually demonstrating the falsity of this early teaching. Hence the foundation of the sovereignty of Spain was slowly weakening, and nowhere more surely than in the region near Manila which numbered Jose Rizal's keen-witted and observing great grandfather ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig

... said. I cannot take the responsibility. I'd rather that you thought even worse of me than you do. Oh!" she cried, bending her head down on her hands, which clasped the rack of the piano. "I am, false—false! I cannot be true even in my falsity. All that I have been telling you is not ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... is the one man able to discriminate between truth and falsity, yet he must not reveal the cruel stab of fact or the harmless buffet of fiction by so much as a flicker of an eyelid. He surveys the honest blunderer and the perjured ruffian—I mean the counsel for the defense and the prosecution respectively—with impartial scrutiny. If ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... the speaker wishes to represent himself, he cannot use his name, but must use some other word, as, I; [and] when he wishes to represent the hearer, he must use thou or you."—Greene's Elements of E. Gram., 1853, p. xxxiv. The examples given above sufficiently show the falsity of all this. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... him the deepest pity. What was the meaning of this? Was Katie the bride? Was she about to marry Lopez? Was this the revenge which Lopez had planned? It was manifestly so; and yet why had Katie consented? He could not understand it. It seemed like a fresh proof of her frivolity and falsity; and at such an exhibition he felt bewildered. She had been false to him for the sake of Rivers; was she also false to Rivers for the sake ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... sensitive," said Briscoe compassionately. He had heard from his wife the interpretation that she had placed on Bayne's sudden visit to this secluded spot, and though he well knew its falsity, he could but sympathize with her hope. ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... untruth generally (objectively false) and untruth in communication (lie, deception) —> 544. Falsehood. — N. falsehood, falseness; falsity, falsification; deception &c. 545; untruth &c 546; guile; lying &c. 454; untruth &c 546; guile; lying &c. v. misrepresentation; mendacity, perjury, false swearing; forgery, invention, fabrication; subreption[obs3]; covin[obs3]. perversion of truth, suppression of truth; suppressio ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... McClellan and the Union army had surrendered. The baleful report was received with no little exultation by all who were engaged in the cotton trade. I sat up until midnight with the editor of the Mercury, helping him to squelch the rumor and the next morning expose the falsity of the ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... they have no word to express the idea of the Deity; they swear by their kings of former days as great chiefs, but no more. Now if they had any religion whatever, you might, by pointing out to them the falsity and absurdity of that religion, and putting it in juxtaposition with revealed Truth, have some hold upon their minds; but we have ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat

... them. It means susceptibility, sympathetic intelligence, capacity, in short. It was the spirit of God that moved, moves still, in every form of real power, everywhere. Yet to Plato motion becomes the token of unreality in things, of falsity in our thoughts about them. It is just this principle of mobility, in itself so welcome to all of us, that, with all his contriving care for the future, he desires to withstand. Everywhere he displays himself as an advocate of the immutable. ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... And Sarraguce is in the Emperour's keep. A thousand Franks he bids seek through the streets, The synagogues and the mahumeries; With iron malls and axes which they wield They break the idols and all the imageries; So there remain no fraud nor falsity. That King fears God, and would do His service, On water then Bishops their blessing speak, And pagans bring into the baptistry. If any Charles with contradiction meet Then hanged or burned or slaughtered ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous

... strength! To live day after day knowing that he, up in London, was either seeing that girl or painfully abstaining from seeing her! And then, when he returned, to be to him just what she had been, to show nothing—would it ever be possible? Hardest to bear was what seemed to her the falsity of his words, maintaining that he still really loved her. If he did, how could he hesitate one second? Would not the very thought of the girl be abhorrent to him? He would have shown that, not merely said it among other wild things. Words were no use when they contradicted action. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... by the cardinals; and that the Venetians, in remembrance of the grace which his humiliation had won for them, made it a title of honor to him and to his race. It has, however, been proved[18] that the surname was borne by the ancestors of Francesco Dandolo long before; and the falsity of this seal of the legend renders also its circumstances doubtful. But the main fact of grievous humiliation having been undergone, admits of no dispute; the existence of such a tradition at all is in itself a proof of ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... set out to Valence, and shall be glad to see him there. I suppose you are now convinced I have never been mistaken in his character; which remains unchanged, and what is yet worse, I think is unchangeable. I never saw such a complication of folly and falsity as in his letter to Mr. Gibson. Nothing is cheaper than living in an inn in a country town in France; they being obliged to ask no more than twenty-five sous for dinner, and thirty for supper and lodging, of those that eat at the public table; which all the ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... situation, I framed what I considered a good theory regarding Petrak's presence outside my door. It occurred to me that Meeker was the author of the false message, and that he was really on his way to visit me to learn if I had discovered the falsity of it when he met me rushing down the stairs. But he had sent Petrak ahead of him to listen at the door in case I telephoned the company to verify the first message; Petrak had heard me ask the company for the sailing time and was about to report to Meeker when ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore

... have supposed that this remarkable display of ignorance would have sufficed to convince all reasonable men of the falsity of the story, but it was far otherwise. The relatives of de Caille were called upon either to yield to his demands or disprove his identity; and M. Rolland, whose wife, it will be remembered, had obtained a large portion of the property, appeared against him. ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... aghast with the result. The things that had happened to him were believable because they had happened to him, but in cold writing they had an air of falsity. She would never believe this yarn. He tore the sheets across. Then he burned all he had written in the grate, took his seat in the armchair and began to think ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... eccentric in his old age, we will say. Among his eccentricities none seems to have impressed the newspapers more than his devotion to a medium and her manager, Mrs. May Popper and Mr. Howard Farrington. Now, of course, the case does not go into the truth or falsity of spiritualism, you understand. You have your opinion, and I have mine. What this aspect of the case involves is merely the character of the medium and her manager. You know, of course, that Henry Vandam is ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... hundreds of Japanese to be physicians who practised rational medicine and surgery. They filled with needed courage the hearts of men, who, secretly practising dissection of the bodies of criminals, demonstrated the falsity of Chinese ideas of anatomy. It was Dutch science which exploded and drove out of Japan that Chinese system of medicine, by means of which so many millions have, during the long ages, ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... an old friend between whom and one's self roll years of absence, or stretch lands and seas of distance! It is like a boon from the very heaven of memory. But a pretended letter of friendship—how easily detected! how transparent its falsity! The loadstone of love touches it, and finds it mere brass. Its influence is icy and bleak, like the rays of the moon, from which all the lenses on earth cannot extract one particle ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... they fly far ahead of us. If she would but put her hand in mine I would so serve and worship her, she would have no need for these strange things she does—the doublings and ruses of the persecuted." Thus the touches of falsity that repelled Wilfrid Bury were to Delafield's passion merely the stains of rough travel on a ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... a compelling influence stronger than himself seemed to urge him on to the instant fulfillment of his purpose. The more he thought about it the more restless he became, and the more eagerly desirous to prove, with the least possible delay, the truth or the falsity of his mystic vision at Danel. By the light of the small lamp left on the table he consulted his map,—the map Heliobas had traced,—and also the written directions that accompanied it—though these he had read so often over and over again that he knew them by heart. They were simply and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... go to show is, that a falsity in verse will travel faster and endure longer than a falsity in prose. The man who would sneer or stare at a silly proposition nakedly put, will admit that "there is a good deal in that" when "that" is the point of an epigram shot into the ear. The rhetorician's rules—if they are rules—teach ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... men and women who have even a moderate acquaintance with history. Bishop Vaughan applies more than one touchstone, which, one would imagine, ought to be sufficient to prove to any unprejudiced mind the falsity of that theory. Among these, what I may call the "pallium touchstone,"—which still bears its irrefragable testimony in the arms of the Archbishops of Canterbury,[1]—has always appeared to me ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan

... brooding over the emptiness of his great triumph. His son the Black Prince had died, cursing the falsity of Frenchmen. England also had gone through the great tragedy of the Black Death and her people, like those of France, had been driven to the point of rebellion—though with them this meant no more than that they ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... precognizer-talent doesn't prophesy! All he can do is recognize that an idea he has now matches an event that will happen presently. He can't extract ideas from the future! He can only judge the truth or falsity of ideas that occur to him. He has to think something before he can know it is true. He does not get information from the future! He can only know that the idea he has now matches something that will happen later. He can ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... honour of the Stag. And you, my lords, what do you think about it? Can you make any objection? If any one wishes to protest, let him straightway speak his mind. I am King, and must keep my word and must not permit any baseness, falsity, or arrogance. I must maintain truth and righteousness. It is the business of a loyal king to support the law, truth, faith, and justice. I would not in any wise commit a disloyal deed or wrong to either weak or strong. It is not meet that any one should complain of me; nor ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... this was false. When the minstrel troupe arrived, hundreds were at the depot. Alfred was one of the first to leave the train. The officers and many others were aware of the falsity of the published statement, but hundreds were deceived by ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... the courage to go through with it, to know the worst. And he was conscious even, at times, of a faint reviving sense of freedom he had not known since the days at Bremerton. If the old dogmas were false, why should he regret them? He began to see that, once he had suspected their falsity, not to have investigated were to invite decay; and he pictured himself growing more unctuous, apologetic, plausible. He had, at any rate, escaped the more despicable fate, and if he went to pieces now it would be as a man, looking ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... and have been opposed by the most religious sections of society. What religion has done for the world we know; what freethought will do we can only guess. But we are confident that as honesty is possible without the falsity of religion, as duty may be done with no other incentive than its visible consequences on the people around us, so life may be lived in honour and closed in peace with no other inspiration than comes from the contemplation of the human ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... in ideas, which causes them to be called false (II. xxxiii.); but falsity cannot consist in simple privation (for minds, not bodies, are said to err and to be mistaken), neither can it consist in absolute ignorance, for ignorance and error are not identical; wherefore it consists in the privation of knowledge, which inadequate, ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza

... moral sense.—Thus the conception of moral education, like that of intellectual education, must include a basis of feeling, and be built up thereupon, if we are not to lead the child towards illusion, falsity and darkness. The education of the senses, and liberty to raise the intelligence according to its own laws on the one hand; the education of feeling, and spiritual liberty to raise oneself, on the other—these are two analogous conceptions and two ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... pets had happened to kill their kittens. Brother said, yes; Mr. Floud took the whole thing in a true sporting way, and he hoped the pack would soon be well enough to hunt again. Right then I detected falsity in his manner; I couldn't make out what it was, but I knew he was putting ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... strong intellect detected at once the absurdity of the whole pretence,—the falsity of mesmerism, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... this newly found relative, and had entreated her to cling by the faith in which she had been reared; but it was no fear of any such conflict that oppressed her;—creeds all vanished under the blaze of that natural affection which craved a motherly embrace and which foresaw only falsity. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... think he has no standing of consequence; I think his teaching is the most active ferment in the economic thought of to-day. We may be both mistaken, but whether we are or not cuts no figure in the truth or falsity of the Single Tax. But it is worth while to point out that the reason you have given for his lack of "standing" lends neither weight nor force to your argument. "Because," you say, "his teachings are violative of the public ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... pictured to itself the termination of human life and history upon earth at some not very remote date in the future. Science has already shown the error of the former, as history is likely to demonstrate the falsity of the latter theory. ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... letter he had written to my wife I replied, resenting indignantly the falsity and injustice of his charges and offering the vouchers to prove my statements. His answer was conciliatory, and admitted that "the facts were really much ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell

... liar yourself," replied the nurse, with an insulting air, "to dare maintain so great a falsity before my face, who am just come from seeing Abou Hassan dead, laid out, and have left his wife alive." "I am not an impostor," replied Mesrour; "it is you who endeavour to lead us ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.

... Charles could offer was an alibi. It was of vital importance to him that the accusation should be fixed to dates, places, days, hours, even minutes, with the utmost possible precision. Then he might, even after the lapse of years, establish the falsity of a charge by proof that he was elsewhere at the time specified. But in this case, owing to the form that the proceedings took, the opportunity which of right belongs to the defence was given to the accuser. The ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... tolerant desire for human improvement and happiness, and almost unique in its entire freedom at once from doctrinairism, visionary enthusiasm, egotism, and an undue spirit of system. The genius of the author for generalization is so great, his instinct in political science so sure, that even the falsity of his premises frequently fails to vitiate his conclusions." (Saintsbury, George, in Encyclopedia Britannica, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... place from which it set out, the end of the beam from which the man was swinging was then lowered and he was untied. Again I looked very carefully at the hooks in the back. The people say that no blood is shed by their introduction, and consider this to be a miracle. The falsity of this assertion was shown by the blood which I saw on the side of one of ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder

... book named Pragmatism is its account of the relation called 'truth' which may obtain between an idea (opinion, belief, statement, or what not) and its object. 'Truth,' I there say, 'is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality. Pragmatists and intellectualists both accept this definition as ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James

... this?" she muses. Her heart answers, and her bosom fills with dark and stormy emotions. One small boon is now all she asks. She could bow down and worship before the throne of virgin innocence, for now its worth towers, majestic, before her. It discovers to her the falsity of her day-dream; it tells her what an empty vessel is this life of ours without it. She knows George Mullholland loves her passionately; she knows how deep will be his grief, how revengeful his feelings. It is poverty that fastens the poison in the heart of the rejected lover. The thought ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... that the question, whether the Conclusion is or is not consequent from the Premisses, is not affected by the actual truth or falsity of any of the Trio, but depends entirely on their relationship ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll

... negotiations with a view to his return. In this he experienced little difficulty, for Seymour was glad to avail himself of the opportunity of giving to the public the most convincing proof which could have been adduced of the falsity of the libels which had been published by the retiring and discomfited editor. The fourth volume commenced 3rd of January, and from that time until his death (in 1836) he continued to illustrate the paper. Mayhew announces his return after the following curious fashion: ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... humorous, there will always be about him and his a widening maze and wilderness of cues and catchwords, which the uninitiated will, if they are bold enough to try interpretation, construe, ever and anon, egregiously amiss—not seldom into arrant falsity. For this one reason, to say nothing of many others, I consider no man justified in journalizing what he sees and hears in a domestic circle where he is not thoroughly at home; and I think there are still higher and better reasons why he should not ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... were right, though tremblingly given; then came a quivering and a faltering and a falsity that made the doctor's boys cover their laughing mouths with their hands, while their ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker

... that happens to be moving you at the instant. There would be as good ground for saying that your brother was the only brother, or your book the only book. Even if you abate the rigor of the proposition, you cannot escape its essential falsity. If you affirm that there are no interests but the interests of each, or that each man's interests are the only interests, you flatly contradict yourself. If you affirm that your interests are of superior importance, that they are exceptional, peculiar, entitled to pre-eminence—this ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... steadily into his face, as if trying to read the truth or falsity of his answer. She could not see his eyes, veiled as they were by the glasses, but that sensitive mouth she knew so well, that determined chin, that high forehead crowned by the bushy brown hair with its solitary ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow

... thrown in the way of bringing it to trial by the defendant, and probably the cause not sufficiently pressed by the complainant. In 1805 or 1806, some persons who were really desirous of ascertaining not only the truth or falsity of the charge, but whether there was any foundation for it, determined on having a wager-suit placed at issue on the records of the court, and then take out a commission to examine witnesses. Accordingly, the names of James Gillespie, ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... agonized, which impressed me so much that I never shall forget it. I confess I could not read it in the least, but it left upon my mind the belief that she was a false woman, and yet ashamed of her own falsity. There was the greatest triumph of her art, that in those terrible circumstances she should still have succeeded in conveying to me, and to the hundreds of others who watched, this conviction of her ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... his creed that old lie of Eastern theogonies, that base element of all false religions,—that man can propitiate the Deity by works of supererogation; that man can purchase by ascetic labors and sacrifices his future salvation. This falsity enters largely into Mohammedanism. I need not add how discrepant it is with the cheerful teachings of the apostles, especially to the poor, as seen in the deeds of penance, prayers in the corners of the streets, the ablutions, the fasts, and the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... is truth. Whatever is false is at variance with external reality, nor is there any beauty in falsity except in so far as it pretends to truth. From this you may gather that truth is the source of beauty, falsity of ugliness. The latter, in fact, is out of keeping not only with reality but also with human nature. For we possess an innate love of truth and an aversion to falsehood, ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole

... tragic farce, and am sensible of an unreality in them; but they are fortunately unreal only in the sense that they stand for nothing rational or in line with the proper and natural processes of human life. They are false, and the mind spontaneously reacts against falsity and denies it. But here are half a million (or some say, a million) men every year who suffer actual and real misery from this falsity, and many of whom die of it; that is the tragedy of the farce. And the fact that this falsity, prison, exists among us and has legal standing ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... Mrs. Beecher. "Why, it is so accurate in its absolute falsity that neither I nor the boys can find one fact or date given correctly, although we have studied it for two days. Even the year of Mr. Beecher's birth is wrong, and that ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok

... them life, and in this last aim I had pleasure. With me it was a difficult and anxious time till my facts were found, selected, and properly jointed; nor could I rest from research and effort till I was satisfied of correct anatomy; the strength of my inward repugnance to the idea of flaw or falsity sometimes enabled me to shun egregious blunders; but the knowledge was not there in my head, ready and mellow; it had not been sown in Spring, grown in Summer, harvested in Autumn, and garnered through Winter; whatever I wanted I must go out and gather fresh; glean of wild ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... since you first knew her, and she's found it out But I come to her as the companion of the darkest hour of her life, as the one who saved her from death. You—good Lord!—do you pretend to put yourself in comparison with me? You, with your other affairs, and your conscious falsity to her, with me! Why, but for me, she would be drifting down the river, and lying stark and dead on the beach of Anticosti. That is what I have done for her. And what have you done? I might laughed over the joke of it before I knew her; but ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... I thank you for your silence—I would not have heard your tongue avow such falsity; be't your punishment to remember that I have ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan

... of this that we call Atheism, come so many other isms and falsities, each falsity with its misery at its heels!—A SOUL is not, like wind, (spiritus or breath,) contained within a capsule; the ALMIGHTY MAKER is not like a clockmaker that once, in old immemorial ages, having made ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... so greatly, was prompted by one or another of the above reasons, or all combined, or something else, still, I never ascertained. Had charges been preferred against me openly and squarely, I could have met them face to face, known what was what, and shown their falsity. But as things were, I was left in the dark as to how to proceed, and to what conclusions I should come as to the motives prompting to the struggle to ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby

... were always at variance in all their words and actions, serious as well as playful. One was ready, venturesome, and subtle, engaging readily and eagerly in everything; the other of a staid and settled temper, intent on the exercise of justice, not admitting any degree of falsity, indecorum, or trickery, even at his play. Ariston of Ceos says that the first origin of enmity which rose to so great a height, was a love affair; they were rivals for the affection of the beautiful Stesilaus of Ceos, and were passionate beyond moderation, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... to plague yourself any farther with those Philadelphia or other Booksellers. If you could hinder them to promulgate any copy of that frightful picture by Lawrence, or indeed any picture at all, I had rather stand as a shadow than as a falsity in the minds of my American friends: but this too we are prepared to encounter. And as for the money of these men,— if they will pay it, good and welcome; if they will not pay it, let them keep it with what blessing there may be ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... being, forbear to produce fruit in effects? Are the laws of psychologic sequence less rigid and certain than those laws of physical sequence which determine in material nature every phenomenon, from planet-paths in space to the gathering of dew-drops on a leaf? If it were so, falsity or confusion in intellectual method might be pronounced a thing of trifling import, or wholly indifferent. But such suppositions are the seemings only of postulates floating through the brains of Ignorance or Un-heed, who really postulate nothing at all. If, on the contrary, we admit this inflexible ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various



Words linked to "Falsity" :   fiction, contradiction in terms, unreality, fable, scheme, lie, statement, falsify, dodging, dodge, contradiction, prevarication, misrepresentation, deceit, false, spuriousness, untruth, fabrication, truth, irreality, deception



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