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More "Fib" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nor (assuredly) in Padua, where there is no zest, but much decorum, in the practice of religion. To see her in church was, as it were, to see a child in her mother's lap—able to laugh, to play, to sulk and pout, ah, and to tell a fib, being so sure of forgiveness! No secret too childish to be kept back, no trouble too light; the mustiness of the season's oil, the shocking price of potherbs, the delinquency of the milliner's apprentice who had spoiled a breadth of silk. She could grumble at her husband, or ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... Dove of Peace (her nickname on board) preening herself in clothes which would have made the Queen of Sheba "look like thirty cents," I was weak enough to breathe the desired words of admiration. "Gorgeous" was, I think, my adjective; and it was no fib. ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... gwine whop him fo' tellin' a fib 'bout dey ain' no ghosts whin yiver'body know' dey is ghosts; but de school-teacher, whut board at Unc' Silas Diggs's house, she tek' note de hair ob li'l' black Mose's head am plumb white, an' she tek' note li'l' ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... choose to stand up and fib each other about (saying nothing of the practice), why let them do it; or if two dogs worry each other to death for a bone, or two cocks meet and contend for the sovereignty of a dunghill. In these last two cases the appearance of cruelty is out of the question, and how much soever ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... me, "I didn't mean that way. I meant that when you try to fib you always do it so badly that one sees right through you. Now, acknowledge that you wouldn't stop work ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... does not come?" observed Marfa Timofyevna, moving her knitting needles quickly. (She was knitting a large woolen scarf.) "He would have sighed with you—or at least he'd have had some fib to ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... little gal, I told ye a fib the day ye fust come. I did have a dinner, though it war a terrible ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... not have told what he said. Her mind was entirely full of what she had to say. Somehow she stammered out the story: how she had been afraid to go to Nancy Gookin's, and how she had lost the sixpence her uncle had given her, and how Martha had said she told a fib. Patience trembled and gasped out the words, and curtesied, once in a while, when the Squire ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... statue or villainous daub fell never yet from heaven to smuggle the bread out of capable workmen's mouths. All this is Pagan, and arose thus. The Trojans had Oriental imaginations, and feigned that their Palladium, a wooden statue three cubits long, fell down from heaven. The Greeks took this fib home among the spoils of Troy, and soon it rained statues on all the Grecian cities, and their Latin apes. And one of these Palladia gave St. Paul trouble at Ephesus; 'twas a statue of Diana that fell down from ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... real, earnest, Single blessedness a fib, Taken from man, to man returnest, Has been ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... truth. He would much rather not have said that he was going to Bolton Street that evening, but he could find no alternative. "I believe I shall see her this evening," he said, simply venturing to mitigate the evil of making the communication by rendering it falsely doubtful. There are men who fib with so bad a grace and with so little tact that they might as well not fib at all. They not only never arrive at success, but never even venture to ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... succeeding examination for me not only to assist "Red," but absolutely to do his work. It is strange how in some things honest people can be dishonest without the slightest compunction. I knew boys at school who were too honorable to tell a fib even when one would have been just the right thing, but could not resist the temptation to assist or receive assistance in an examination. I have long considered it the highest proof of honesty in a man to hand ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... doubt of that, Miss MacPherson," said Mrs. Allan amiably. It was a fib for her, minister's wife though she was. She HAD doubt. She thought I would be a dismal failure as ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... so far it was not likely that her absence from the festivity would be reported. Besides, if it were she would not greatly care. She was determined to assert her independence, and if she stooped to fib about the Hepburn picnic it was chiefly from the secretive instinct that made her dread the profanation of her happiness. Whenever she was with Lucius Harney she would have liked some impenetrable mountain ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... the indignant dominie, "I told a fib about you this morning, but quite innocently. I said you would ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... "and those were beautiful rifles too. But look here: I could see a way out of the difficulty, only you are so scrupulous. One mustn't tell a diplomatic fib." ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... certain little Nellie Taylor from a family near by, named her "Rose Featherstone" and taken her to and from the kindergarten daily, a distance of at least half a mile of crowded streets. The affair was purely one of innocent romance. Emma Abby Googins never told a fib or committed the slightest fault or folly save that of burying her name, assuming a more distinguished one, and introducing a sister to me who had no claim to the Googins blood. Her mother was thoroughly mystified by the occurrence and I no less so, but ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Mr. Townsend; that's all I ask. It is highly probable you have been corresponding with him for the last three weeks—perhaps even seeing him. I don't ask you—you needn't tell me." He had a moral conviction that she would contrive to tell a fib about the matter, which it would disgust him to listen to. "Whatever you have done, stop doing it. That's all ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... once remarked: "It's no use to fib about your age in your native village. Some old woman always had a calf born the same night ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... of them called to interview you at San Pasqual, for, like T. Morgan Carey, they had traced you that far. He came into the eating-house and asked me if I knew anybody in town by the name of Robert McGraw. I told him I did not—which wasn't a fib because you weren't in town at the time. You were in bed at the Hat Ranch. An engineer was with him and while they were at luncheon I overheard them discussing your water-right. The engineer declared that the known feature alone made the location worth a million ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... the thro at and yell ed, swear to me thou nev er wilt re veal my se cret, or thy hot heart's blood shall stain this mar bel fib or; she gave one ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... corporal's stripe, given as a reward and an incentive, would be to me a talisman. I decided that I'd keep it in a place where I could rush to look at it whenever I needed encouragement to go on being a soldier. If I wanted to sneak myself out of trouble with a fib, or be snappish to Father or cattish to Di, or say "damn," or bang a door in a rage, it seemed to me that I should only have to think of that little triangle of black cloth and gilt braid to be suddenly as good as gold, all the way ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... I wanted, sir," said Winter. "There may be nothing in it, but I was curious to know why Hilton Fenley took the trouble to fib about such a trivial matter. His brother, too, is behaving in a way that invites criticism. I don't imagine that either of the sons shot his father—most certainly, Hilton Fenley could not have done it, and Robert, I think, was ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... shouldn't any of us have to fib. I always said Cristobal is the luckiest saint to have for a patron. See how he's offering his help to you. And oh, did you know he's the patron saint of automobilists? To-morrow I'll give you a Cristobal medal to nail on your car. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... fib about ee. Uncle Dan saw you run past all wet this morning, and he asked. I had to tell him something. I said you fell in trying to reach them watter-lilies. I didn't want your own ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... question, and for some time he had considered what answer he should make to it. To deny was impossible. It would be easy to convict him of a fib, for the fact of the question being asked was sufficient to say there was proof that the button was his. He must, then, confess the truth, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the farmer. "No doubt I had business at the mill,—lots to do at the mill." Nor did he think that the fib he was telling was at all incompatible with the Holy Sacrament in which he had just taken ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... facts,—did not quite know how much of the tale, as it was now told to her, might be true and how much false. After a certain fashion she and Lizzie Eustace called themselves friends. But she did not believe her friend to be honest, and was aware that in some matters her friend would condescend—to fib. Lizzie's poetry, and romance, and high feelings, had never had the ring of true soundness in Lucy's ears. But her imagination was not strong enough to soar to the altitude of the lies which Lizzie was now telling. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... even guessed Lady Cecilia had done. Helen showed her that she guessed wrong here and there, and smiled at her prejudices; and Miss Clarendon smiled again, and admitted that she was prejudiced, "but every body is; only some show and tell, and others smile and fib. I wish that word fib was banished from English language, and white lie drummed out after it. Things by their right names and we should all do much better. Truth must be told, whether agreeable ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... Ferney. What a nuisance, on our last day! But I forgot, I asked her to come. If she stays very long, just tell a little fib, won't you, and say you need me ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... herself a duck, instead of a hen, (what a goose!) then over he went splash into the water himself. The question was not now whether the hen could swim, but whether he could; he floundered round and round, and screeched like a little bedlamite, and was just thinking of the last fib he told, when his brother Zedekiah came ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... Avendano tell this fib that the landlord was quite taken in by it. "Very well, friend," said he, "you may stop here till ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... out here, on the heath, surely I may have my turn. You do not believe in Rumtunshid? Then why should farmer Buttercup be called on to believe in the communion of the saints? What does he believe about it? Or why should you make little Flora Buttercup tell such a huge fib as to say, that she believes in the resurrection ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... scowled now. "Then you told him a tremendous fib. I meant a deal of it. Well, he'll get his deserts yet, if he gets you, you deceiving minx. I told him one thing that was true enough, anyway"—he smiled broadly again—"I told him Mary was worth ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... trouble you for two dollars for smokin' agin law, in the streets." Sassy was as quick as wink on him. "Smokin'!" says he; "I warn't a smokin'." "O, my!" says constable, "how you talk, man! I won't say you lie, 'cause it aint polite, but it's very like the way I talk when I fib. Didn't I see you with my own eyes?" "No," says Sassy, "you didn't. It don't do always to believe your own eyes, they can't be depended on more than other people's. I never trust mine, I can assure you. I own I had a cigar ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... "Don't fib, Judith, dear," she answered. And, for Marcia, she was very grave. "I know you have a glass in your room. You ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... a fib on the part of the professor because he was thinking of it. But it did not include the whole truth, because he had already tried it, tried it very successfully only a few moments before. First he had made sure that he was alone in the room ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... said that such a treaty was so manifestly for the interest of Austria, that she was fearful that France would not accede to it. Since she knew that the matter was already arranged and settled with the French court, this was a downright lie, though the queen probably regarded it as a venial fib, or ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... Devereaux, and one afternoon Carrie told the principal she had a headache, and I asked if I could go home with her and read her the assignments for next day (they called the lessons 'assignments' there), and they thought I was such a meek little country mouse that I wouldn't ever fib, and so they let us go, and what do you think we did? She had tickets for 'The Two Orphans' at the stock company. (You've never seen 'The Two Orphans,' have you? It's perfectly splendid. I used to weep my eyes out over it.) And afterward ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... it over. Possibly you have not stopped to think as yet. When you know the truth yourself, you will be the better qualified to fib about it. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... years, mind, though she could have added somewhat to the figure without risking a fib. She said something else, a something that didn't sound exactly like a blessing; and, in a sudden fit of rage, started from her seat, sprang across the room, tore the offending Saint from the nail from which he had dangled for such long ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... perhaps, when the elders are yawning And rafters grow pale overhead With the day, there shall come with its dawning Some thought of that sentence unsaid. Be it this, be it that—'I forget,' or 'Was joking'—whatever the fem- -inine fib, you'll have made me your debtor And come,—you ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... me, a package dropped from under his coat and broke at my feet. It was food—dry bread and a bologna skin with a little meat in the end. He stopped and told me how hard it was to find food for a dog in which he was interested. But that was a fib. With all his faults Gibb never ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... him to tell a lie in order to avoid a scolding. Nothing is more unfortunate, nothing is more easy for an ordinarily good, but misunderstood man, than the tendency to fib about little things, if he feels in his heart that his wife will scold,—that she will fail to see the point. It wounds his self-respect to have to do so, yet he selects the minor evil as he sees it, he sacrifices his manhood in ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... was a little fib on Lina's part. She had thought that the letter or, rather, the fact that it had been written to Miss Madeline, funny. The Rev. Cecil Thorne was Miss Madeline's pastor. He was a handsome, scholarly man of ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... it shall not be. You must see Lord Cullamore; you must corroborate my assertions to him; you must save me from shame and dishonor or dread the consequences. A paltry sacrifice, indeed, to tell a fib to a doting old peer, who thinks no one in the world honest or honorable ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... her mother that she had seen a lion in the park. No amount of persuasion or reasoning could make her vary her statement one hairbreadth. That night, when she slipped down on her knees to say her prayers, her mother said, "Polly, ask God to forgive you for that fib." ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... send him, if he attempts to add his pistol to our luncheon menu. Do, do save us from the Casino pet, dear Miss Grant. I've been holding an awful aunt of George's over the young man's head, saying she may arrive at any minute. But you know how things you fib about do have a way of happening, as a punishment, and I feel she may drop down on us if the room ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... is the only favor I ask." I told him I would only be too glad to do so if it would aid him in the moment when life shrinks from the shadow of death, but told him I thought he would not die—another little fib on my part. However, that did no harm, for I failed to convince him he would live. About 1 o'clock A. M. a couple of nights after this, one of the watchers came to my cot and said Bob wanted to see me immediately. I felt his time had come. Hastily ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... more fib among so many couldn't matter, so I said you were. Heaven forgive me. By-the-by, are you really Dutch, or is that ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... their Heads as well as their feet. Some of the lady visitors are Beautiful Swimmers, and their Divers Charms excite universal admiration. Many of these fair Amphitrites are so constantly in or on the water that it would hardly be a Fib to call them Amphibious. Their husbands and brothers are, I regret to say, not so much On the Water, preferring something a trifle stronger semi-occasionally, if ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... answered. "Then he is more fortunate than I am, for I have never heard of him or what he is." This, I am sorry to say, was a fib, for it will be remembered that Mameena had mentioned him in the hut as one of her suitors, but among natives one must keep up one's dignity somehow. "Friend Umbezi," I went on, "I have come to bid you farewell, as I am about to ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... been a good girl, and wrote me a letter; if Burney said she would write, she told you a fib. She writes nothing to me. She can write home fast enough. I have a good mind not to let her know that Dr. Bernard, to whom I had recommended her novel, speaks of it with great commendation, and that the copy which she lent me, has been read by Dr. Lawrence three times over. ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... that he could forgive the big fellow the fib. He knew well enough that Dade Morgan was getting his money from Richard Starbright, who, in order to earn anything, was working like a dog on a newspaper. The fact that he was helping Morgan ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... The Bard with many an artless fib Had in imagination fenced him, Disproved the arguments of Squib,[4] And all that ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... little Nellie Taylor from a family near by, named her "Rose Featherstone" and taken her to and from the kindergarten daily, a distance of at least half a mile of crowded streets. The affair was purely one of innocent romance. Emma Abby Googins never told a fib or committed the slightest fault or folly save that of burying her name, assuming a more distinguished one, and introducing a sister to me who had no claim to the Googins blood. Her mother was thoroughly mystified ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... unemployed gentleman with the requisite qualifications come forward. It will not be necessary that he should have done all that is stated in the prospectus; but, at any rate, let him SAY he has: there can't be much harm in an innocent fib of that sort; for the gastronomic agent must be a sort of dinner-pope, whose opinions cannot be supposed ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... making me stay at home all the blessed day, and sending Captain Ussher all the way back to Mohill, and he having come over here by engagement to walk with me,"—this was a fib of Feemy's,—"and all to ask me where I got ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... flimflam, cajolery, flattery; Judas kiss; perfidy &c (bad faith) 940; il volto sciolto i pensieri stretti [It]. unfairness &c (dishonesty) 940; artfulness &c (cunning) 702; misstatement &c (error) 495. V. be false &c adj., be a liar &c 548; speak falsely &c adv.; tell a lie &c 546; lie, fib; lie like a trooper; swear false, forswear, perjure oneself, bear false witness. misstate, misquote, miscite^, misreport, misrepresent; belie, falsify, pervert, distort; put a false construction upon &c (misinterpret); prevaricate, equivocate, quibble; palter, palter to the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Jones took up his hat from the counter, saying, that as Sir William was close at hand, he would step and tell him what he thought would ease his mind about this affair. This movement laid open to Lady Hunter's mind the enormity of her fib: and remembering that, as far as she knew, her husband had never heard of the charred stick, she vigorously interfered to keep Mr Jones where he was, averring that Sir William had rather hear the explanation from her than from any person actually resident ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... highly probable you have been corresponding with him for the last three weeks—perhaps even seeing him. I don't ask you—you needn't tell me." He had a moral conviction that she would contrive to tell a fib about the matter, which it would disgust him to listen to. "Whatever you have done, stop doing it. ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... kidneys," said he, slapping his thigh, "but I'll sarve him out! I'll baste him as Randall did ugly Borrock. I'll knock him about as Belcher did the Big Ilkey Pigg. I'll damage his mug as Turner did Scroggins's. I'll fib him till he's as black as Agamemnon—for I do feel as though ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... quite red: what would her mother say if she brought Wolfgang with her? No, that would really not do, this was just the day when their room had not been tidied. And she had told a fib too: there were no herrings, only onion sauce with the ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... I saw her punish her child for denying that she had committed some piece of mischief of which she was guilty. The mother's excuse to herself probably was that the child told a lie, she, a "society fib." Perhaps the smaller sinner had no reputation for breeding ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... Doctor, to whom we owe so much, will be most welcome to the half of any movables of mine that he can recover from the Abbot Maldon," and she paused, for the fib stuck in her throat. Moreover, she knew herself to be the colour ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... Aunt Hannah," she wailed, half laughing, half crying; "that wretched little fib-teller of a clock ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... the lie—or fib, rather: he had been GOING to die for her. But why not have told the truth? Was it possible, she wondered, that her wretched vanity had survived her renunciation of the world? Why had she so resented just now the doubt cast on that ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... earnestly. And he has no mother to whom we can send him, if he attempts to add his pistol to our luncheon menu. Do, do save us from the Casino pet, dear Miss Grant. I've been holding an awful aunt of George's over the young man's head, saying she may arrive at any minute. But you know how things you fib about do have a way of happening, as a punishment, and I feel she may drop down on us if the room ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... these nuptials to me as magnificent; I remember asking her what splendour there was in the union of the daughter of a woman of genius with an irredeemable mediocrity. "Oh! he's awfully clever," she said; but she blushed for the maternal fib. What she meant was that though Sir Baldwin's estates were not vast (he had a dreary house in South Kensington and a still drearier "Hall" somewhere in Essex, which was let), the connection was a "smarter" ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... "It was no fib at all." And as her eyes widened, "You merely said that we hadn't been married yet. We haven't you know," ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... little fib on Lina's part. She had thought that the letter or, rather, the fact that it had been written to Miss Madeline, funny. The Rev. Cecil Thorne was Miss Madeline's pastor. He was a handsome, scholarly man of middle age, and Lina had seen a good deal of him during her summer in ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... fine clothes; let not their heads run upon their playthings when they should mind their books; said grace before they eat, their prayers before they went to bed, and as soon as they rose; were always clean and neat; would not tell a fib for the world, and were above doing any thing that required one; that God blessed them more and more, and blessed their papa and mamma, and their uncles and aunts, and cousins, for their sakes. "And there was a happy family, my dear loves!-No one idle; ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Mop and Drop so clear, Pip and Trip and Skip that were To Mab, their sovereign, ever dear, Her special maids of honour; Fib and Tib and Pink and Pin, Tick and Quick and Jill and Jin, Tit and Nit and Wap and Win, The train that ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... so pale then?' said she, smiling with delight at my emotion. 'Is it anger at poor me for telling such a fib? Well, I only "tell the tale as 'twas told to me:" I don't vouch for the truth of it; but at the same time, I don't see what reason Sarah should have for deceiving me, or her informant for deceiving her; and ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... her. "Five." It was a fib. He had paid half a guinea for the few flowers, but he could not ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... going to Bolton Street that evening, but he could find no alternative. "I believe I shall see her this evening," he said, simply venturing to mitigate the evil of making the communication by rendering it falsely doubtful. There are men who fib with so bad a grace and with so little tact that they might as well not fib at all. They not only never arrive at success, but never even venture ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... as he loathed Mrs. Jennett; and this is not a wholesome frame of mind for the young. Since she chose to regard him as a hopeless liar, but an economical and self-contained one, never throwing away the least unnecessary fib, and never hesitating at the blackest, were it only plausible, that might make his life a little easier. The treatment taught him at least the power of living alone,—a power that was of service to him when he went to a public school and the boys laughed at ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... him sin jig it lid rim tin rig is sip fix dig bib bit tip six fig jib hit nip din big rib sit lip pin pig fib ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... and now with the bed-clothes. Once was I caught by a sudden cough on my part, which brought Aunt Polly to her feet before I had time to slip back to bed; and the only plea that my guiltiness could make her kind remonstrance on my being up in the cold, was the very natural and very wicked fib, that I heard her move and thought she might want something. Unsuspecting old lady! May her ashes at least rest in peace! How she caught me in her arms, kissed and carried me to bed, tucking in the blankets ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... pistol to our luncheon menu. Do, do save us from the Casino pet, dear Miss Grant. I've been holding an awful aunt of George's over the young man's head, saying she may arrive at any minute. But you know how things you fib about do have a way of happening, as a punishment, and I feel she may drop down on us if the ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... discovered the circulation of the blood, men die as of yore; oxen graze, sheep bleat, babies bawl, asses bray—loud and lusty as the day before the flood. Men fight and make up; repent and go at it; feast and starve; laugh and weep; pray and curse; cheat, chaffer, trick, truckle, cozen, defraud, fib, lie, beg, borrow, steal, hang, drown—as in the laughing and weeping, tricking and truckling, hanging and drowning times that have been. Nothing changes, though much be new-fashioned: new fashions but revivals of things ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... 'Oh, what a fib, Winifred! These sunburnt fingers may have picked wild fruits, but they never made ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... with her," said Pen, telling almost the first fib which he has told in the course of ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... interposed, and said that you were suffering, whether you knew it or not, you would have played the martyr all the evening to a sort of a—a—what shall I call it?—it must out—a sort of fashionable fib. You may answer, perhaps, that you did not like to make a fuss, or seem squeamish, or discompose the company; and so, from timidity, you said 'the thing that was not.' Very true; but this is the very thing I want you to guard against; I want you to have such presence ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... saint, whose name was Nicholas, restored these three children to life. It is said that once he lost his temper, and struck with his fist a gentleman named Arius; but the story-teller does not believe this, for he thinks it is a fib, made up long afterward. How could a ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... rustics gape and stare at the many ghost, fairy, and robber stories which he had either heard of or invented, and poured out with unceasing volubility, and so often that he believed them all true. But the Ballantyne family had no great faith in his veracity, when it suited his convenience to fib, exaggerate, or prevaricate, particularly when excited by his own lucubrations, or the waggery of his more intellectual neighbors and companions. He had a seat in the centre, which he always occupied, and a stool for his deformed ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... their wits' end; they did not understand, and knew not what to prescribe for the case, so desperate it seemed. But Jessie said, "Take him in for a partner, Silas. Let him stand for Company. You and I are one; so the sign, as it goes, is a fib, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... it. Sister Grethel coaxed and scolded, Sir Kasimir reproved, the housemother offered comfits, and Christina's soft voice was worst of all, for the child, probably taking her for Our Lady herself, began to gasp forth a general confession. "I will never do so again! Yes, it was a fib, but Mother Hildegard gave me a bit of marchpane not to tell—" Here the lay sister took strong measures for closing the little mouth, and Christina drew back, recommending that the child should be left ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "The Doctor, to whom we owe so much, will be most welcome to the half of any movables of mine that he can recover from the Abbot Maldon," and she paused, for the fib stuck in her throat. Moreover, she knew herself to be the ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... over. Possibly you have not stopped to think as yet. When you know the truth yourself, you will be the better qualified to fib about it. Also, ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... Some of the lady visitors are Beautiful Swimmers, and their Divers Charms excite universal admiration. Many of these fair Amphitrites are so constantly in or on the water that it would hardly be a Fib to call them Amphibious. Their husbands and brothers are, I regret to say, not so much On the Water, preferring something a trifle stronger semi-occasionally, if ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... ease, my friend. The Squire has sent me a large supply. I am to divide with you," which was as near to a fib as the young clergyman ever got in his ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... interrupting me, "I didn't mean that way. I meant that when you try to fib you always do it so badly that one sees right through you. Now, acknowledge that you wouldn't stop work ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... your honour. . . . I see from your face you are telling a fib. Once you've let a thing slip out it's no good wriggling about it. Tell me, do you see him? Come, as ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... dirty money to a dying man? I'd give it all to have my wife and the boy I lost back for a year or two; yes, I would go into a shop again and sell sugar like my grandfather, and live on the profits from the till and the counter. There's Mary calling. We must tell a fib, we must say that we thought she was to come to fetch us; don't you forget. Well, there it is, perhaps you'll think it over at ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... bestowed on the prisoner.] This is not a place for parlor talk. I had chosen the English words that conveyed my meaning most distinctly. It was all very well for the prisoner's counsel to smooth things over; but was I, instead of calling him a liar, to say, he told a fib? When I call him a thief and a felon, do I go beyond the charge of the grand jury in the indictment? If this is stepping over the limits of propriety, in all similar cases I shall do the same. I do not intend to blackguard the prisoner,—I ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... than she does; since what I know of the world beyond this happy corner of it I learned when I was a mere child. But though we laugh, I can remember a good deal. I have heard polished gentlemen lie, at a pinch, like the proverbial pick-pocket, and pretty ladies fib as well as servant-girls. Of course, I do not mean to say that as many ladies as servant-girls tell untruths. But Eleanor would fain believe that the lie which Solomon discovered to be "continually on the lips of the untaught" is not on the lips of those ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... that your honour was a very kind gentleman, and your word was worth any other ten men's in most things; but where it might be to get a friend out of trouble, and, for aught he knew, foe either, why then, he thought your honour might fib a bit." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... This fib had the effect of making Antonio think that his son should go to Milan and enjoy the favors in which Valentine basked. "You must go to-morrow," he decreed. Proteus was dismayed. "Give me time to get my outfit ready." He was met with the promise, ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... was a conscientious little girl. Miss Jenny said so. Miss Jenny was conscientious, too. Right at the beginning she told them how she hated a story, fib-story ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... in the park. No amount of persuasion or reasoning could make her vary her statement one hairbreadth. That night, when she slipped down on her knees to say her prayers, her mother said, "Polly, ask God to forgive you for that fib." ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... her: "Is it to watch the roses that you have put on the gown which matches your eyes, you sly one?"... "And the lilies in your hair, sweet? Is it to shelter them from the rain that you wear them?"... "Fie, Tata! Can you not fib yet without changing color?" ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... dwarfs tell a monstrous fib, when they pretend that Kvasir, the inventor of poetry, has been suffocated by his own wisdom. Nevertheless, the little fellows showed thereby that they were not short of intelligence; for it is almost always in their own overflow that young poets are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... but out here, on the heath, surely I may have my turn. You do not believe in Rumtunshid? Then why should farmer Buttercup be called on to believe in the communion of the saints? What does he believe about it? Or why should you make little Flora Buttercup tell such a huge fib as to say, that she believes in ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... foot and then scurried away chattering in dismay at its own rashness; finally, a preposterous little Cock Chickadee sang "Spring soon—spring soon," as though any one were interested in the gratuitous and unconvincing fib, when a brown, furry form hopped noiselessly from the green leaves by the pond, skipped over a narrow bay without wetting its feet, paused once or twice, then in the middle of the open glade it sat up in plain view—a Rabbit. It sat so long and so still that Yan first made ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... than the Aborigines, by reason of their priests keeping them in ignorance. This misconception had acquired all the solidity of fact before it reached me; consequently, my explanation was received as a well-meant fib. Anyway, these details will give you some idea of Rory, in his natural state as ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... and would do any thing they desired; that they were not proud of fine clothes; let not their heads run upon their playthings when they should mind their books; said grace before they eat, their prayers before they went to bed, and as soon as they rose; were always clean and neat; would not tell a fib for the world, and were above doing any thing that required one; that God blessed them more and more, and blessed their papa and mamma, and their uncles and aunts, and cousins, for their sakes. "And there ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Titus Livy, and that he had read some parts of these volumes. This he asserts with an air of truth that commands belief; he told the same tale to Cardinal Orsini, and to many more, and to all in the very same words, so that I think this is no fib of his. What more do you want? This statement of his, and his serious countenance, cause me to give some credence to him. For it is a very good thing to be misled in a matter of this kind, out of which coin ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... friends who were more at leisure than himself, I persuaded him that he might write at his ease in one of these rooms, as he could not then hear the door knock, or hear himself denied to be at home, which was sure to make him call out and convict the poor maid in a fib. Here, I said, he might be almost really not at home. So I put in an old grate, and made him a fire in the largest of these garrets, and carried in one table, and one chair, and bid him write away, and consider himself as much alone as if he were in a new lodging in the midst of Salisbury ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... would her mother say if she brought Wolfgang with her? No, that would really not do, this was just the day when their room had not been tidied. And she had told a fib too: there were no herrings, only onion sauce with the potatoes ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... tell this fib that the landlord was quite taken in by it. "Very well, friend," said he, "you may stop here till your ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... father knoweth not to the full, even whilst he is asleep. This will be a very summary abbreviation of our labour, if we but hearken unto him a little upon the serious debate and canvassing of this my perplexity. That is, answered Epistemon, a gullery too evident, a plain abuse and fib too fabulous. I will not go, not I; ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... that "in June I'm going abroad with my godmother, Mrs. Cornelius Drinkwater—you know her mother was a second cousin to the Marquis of Balencourt and the family has a beautiful chateau near Nice. Of course we'll stay there part of the time——" A very little fib like that, Isobel had decided, could hurt no one! She had lain awake at night, staring into the half-darkness of her room, picturing herself sauntering beside Aunt Maria through long hotel corridors, to the Opera, to the little French shops, driving beside Aunt Maria through the Bois ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... not read what follows, because it's a fib"; and she ran her eyes over several lines. "In spite of my prayers, I must go. 'You are no longer a boy,' my father said, 'you must think of the future. You have to learn things your own country cannot teach you, if you would be useful to her some day. What, almost a man and I see ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... one of the mistakes of unwise femininity. All dyes containing either mercury or lead are very dangerous. But why should women dye their hair? Goodness only knows. One might as well ask why women fib about their age, or why women shop three hours just to buy a pair of dress shields. There are some questions of life which we are destined never to solve. There is nothing lovelier than white hair. Combine with it ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... "What a fib!" he remarked, at the close of the story which ended the lecture. "I know things never happened as pat as that. They don't, out of books, I bet. What are you going to ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... said the farmer. "No doubt I had business at the mill,—lots to do at the mill." Nor did he think that the fib he was telling was at all incompatible with the Holy Sacrament in which he had just taken ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... "You have? I say, what a fib! Well, I suppose I must take your word for it. Now, little one, what is it you want ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... was obliged to submit to be called the "marquis." The harmless fib was due to the rank of the little countess; she could not have driven through the streets of Paris in the same fiacre with ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... piller. On one occasion, wishing to indooce her lover to foller her example, she stepped into the flame to encourage him—something went wrong with the works, and she was instantly redooced to a cinder. I fortunately 'appened to be near at the time (you will escuse a little wild fib from a showman, I'm sure!) I 'appened to be porsin by, and was thus enabled to secure the ashes of the Wonderful She, which—(draws hangings and reveals a shallow metal Urn suspended in the centre of scene), are ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... had not time to make up my mind to tell the truth. I was taken by surprise; and you know one's first impulse is to fib—about THAT." ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... her hands to heaven, but could not speak. "In fact," said Alfred, hesitating (for he was a wretched hand at a fib), "he saw him not a fortnight ago on board ship. But that is not all, mamma, the sailor says he ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... that he had borrowed the money from a client, then Cicero, instigated by the unexpected charge, denied the loan, and denied also that he was going to buy the house. But when he had bought it and the fib was thrown in his teeth, he laughed heartily, and asked whether men had so lost their senses as not to be aware that a prudent father of a family would deny an intended purchase rather than raise the ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... matter as a party issue, and the Republicans being in control in the Senate the outcome could hardly be in doubt. He had learned also of the other misfortunes which had befallen Judge Rossmore and he understood now the reason for Shirley's grave face on the dock and her little fib about summering on Long Island. The news had been a shock to him, for, apart from the fact that the judge was Shirley's father, he admired him immensely as a man. Of his perfect innocence there could, of course, be no question: these charges of bribery had simply been trumped up by his enemies ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... two hours ago, when he asked me from his room, that Lorna had returned and was asleep. He believed me. I had to fib to save him from breaking his dear old daddy heart. Is she injured ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... stand up and fib each other about (saying nothing of the practice), why let them do it; or if two dogs worry each other to death for a bone, or two cocks meet and contend for the sovereignty of a dunghill. In these last two cases the appearance of cruelty is out of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... of capable workmen's mouths. All this is Pagan, and arose thus. The Trojans had Oriental imaginations, and feigned that their Palladium, a wooden statue three cubits long, fell down from heaven. The Greeks took this fib home among the spoils of Troy, and soon it rained statues on all the Grecian cities, and their Latin apes. And one of these Palladia gave St. Paul trouble at Ephesus; 'twas a statue of Diana that fell down from Jupiter: ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... at the house-mouse to confirm the truth of her fib. But the house-mouse could not take her eyes off the black rat, who had lain down in the snow ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... good Eastern quibble infinitely more dangerous than an honest downright lie. The consciousness that the falsehood is part fact applies a salve to conscience and supplies a force lacking in the mere fib. When an Egyptian lies to you look straight in his eyes and he will most often betray himself either by boggling or by ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... when you stoop—and pick it up and hurl it promiscuously in the direction of the footsteps, and quaver, in a voice that belied its message, "Go away, Tom Hamon! I can see you,"—which was a little white fib born of the black urgency of the situation;—"and I'm not the least bit afraid,"—which was ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... such a white fib that the host Agathon salutes Aristodemus, Socrates's companion ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... has not," said Mary. "He has never quarrelled with me and he never shall." Then why did he stay away? Business was nonsense. Why was he going to stay away during Christmas. Then it was necessary to tell the old lady a little fib. She was informed that Brotherton had specially desired him to leave the house. This certainly was a fib, as Brotherton's late order had been of a very different nature. "I hope he hasn't done anything to offend his brother again," said ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... a rich man" (it was a great fib, for Woolsey's income, as a junior partner of the firm, was but a small one); "I can very well afford to make him an allowance while he is in the Fleet, and have written to him to say so. But if you ever give him a penny, or sell a trinket belonging to you, upon my word and honour I ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... any of us have to fib. I always said Cristobal is the luckiest saint to have for a patron. See how he's offering his help to you. And oh, did you know he's the patron saint of automobilists? To-morrow I'll give you a Cristobal ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... is he?" and when she said, "If you mean Harry Goward—I don't know," I was prepared to believe her without evidence. She looked too pretty to doubt. Besides, I cannot say that I have ever caught Aunt Elizabeth in a real fib. She may be a "charmian," but I don't think she is a liar. Yet I pushed ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... Now I wonder what that little chap would like—here's a drum, a box of tools, a knife, a menagerie. If he hadn't played truant from school that day, and then told a fib about it, ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... like mother to tell me fibs about her age," said Helen, generously (it is always interesting to observe the transformation of a lie into a fib). "And I shall write and tell her she's a horrid mean thing. I shall write to her ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... "I thought one more fib among so many couldn't matter, so I said you were. Heaven forgive me. By-the-by, are you really Dutch, or is that ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... your crew and THEIR captain. I know I hire a worthy, clean, agreeable, and conscientious male or female hypocrite, at so many guineas a year, to do so and so for me. Were he other than hypocrite I would send him about his business. Don't let my displeasure be too fierce with him for a fib or two on ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of Pao-ch'in. "Don't be humbugging us!" she remarked. "I know well enough that you are not likely, on a visit like this, to have left any such things of yours at home. You must have brought them along. Yet here you are now again palming off a fib on us by saying that you haven't got them with you. You people may believe what she says, but ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... version of the Harlowe family. Felipe does not know why I left, and he will never know. If he asks, I shall contrive to find some colorable pretext, probably that you were jealous of me! Forgive me this little conventional fib. ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... I asked him whether he knew where it was hidden, he told a weak lie, but told the truth openly by the look of his eyes. He was like a little girl who pauses and blushes and confesses all the truth before she half murmurs her naughty fib. Who can be really angry with the child who lies after that unwilling fashion? I had to be severe upon him till all was made clear; but I pitied him from the bottom ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... knows. From bravado perhaps ... at having wasted so much money.... To try and forget that money I had sewn up, perhaps ... yes, that was why ... damn it ... how often will you ask me that question? Well, I told a fib, and that was the end of it, once I'd said it, I didn't care to correct it. What does a man tell lies ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Hope picnic at Hepburn, and as no one else from North Dormer intended to venture so far it was not likely that her absence from the festivity would be reported. Besides, if it were she would not greatly care. She was determined to assert her independence, and if she stooped to fib about the Hepburn picnic it was chiefly from the secretive instinct that made her dread the profanation of her happiness. Whenever she was with Lucius Harney she would have liked some impenetrable mountain mist ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... mind your promise. We shall have to fib. You had better say nothing. Let me speak for you; ladies fib so ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... slipped into the prayer-book, etc. She told her mother everything before she went to bed, sat on her father's knee when she was too old and much too tall for it, dreamed of lovers, hid trembling when they came, had palpitations, never told a fib or refused a sweetmeat; she was, in fact, just the honest, red-cheeked, pretty, shy simpleton of a lass you will meet by the round dozen in our country, who grows into the plump wife of Master Church-warden-in-broadcloth, bears a half-score children, gets ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... he could forgive the big fellow the fib. He knew well enough that Dade Morgan was getting his money from Richard Starbright, who, in order to earn anything, was working like a dog on a newspaper. The fact that he was helping Morgan along ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... up the receiver before I could question him further. I think it cured Kennedy, temporarily of asking me to fib for him over the telephone. He was as anxious as I to see Carton, now, and plunged into the remaining work on ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... a moment, thinking what reply she should make;—and then she told a fib. "No; he never asked me." But Violet did not believe the fib. Violet was quite sure that Phineas had asked Lady Laura Standish to be his wife. "As far as I can see," said Violet, "Madame Max Goesler is ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... he left the island, with a replenished purse, and from that time became a portrait-painter. If the poor fellow had been the veriest dauber, you, Eusebius, would have sat to him twenty times over, and have told all the country round quite as great a fib as he did the governor, that he was a very Raffaelle in outline, and Titian in coloring. And what shall the "recording angel" do? Poor fellow! he had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... at sight, and am sure Frank has; but so far as I saw, she gave him no encouragement. She is poor, pretty, and proud; and that tells the whole story. I imagined she believed she would not be welcomed by you, and while I begged her to come and visit me, I doubt if she does." (A fib.) ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... same fib, which delighted father Roland. He had hitched his line round a row-lock, and folding his arms ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... knew it all along. She saw that she must still make engagements which did not include her betrothed; she must meet the archnesses of her little world with blank looks above the music in her heart, with many evasions, and even, perhaps, a harmless fib or two. Nevertheless, the lovers secured many hours all to themselves. Shut from public view in Mr. Heth's study, and more especially in long motor rides down unfrequented by-lanes they were deep in the absorptions of exploring each other, of revealing ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... easy. I'll bring you a latch-key when I come down with the parcel. Let yourself in when you get home, and go straight to your room. I don't want you to fib, but try to make it seem to Sister as if we'd just come back. She'll think it strange if she knows I've sent you out on an ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... were not there?" said Morris, making a suggestion with his hand preparatory to saying "good-bye—can't stop," and then telling something very much like a fib; for it was in his mind to say, "So ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... pardon for that little implied fib, Mr. Masters; and, auntie, don't look too much shocked. I could not allow Mr. Masters to lose his time, which is no doubt of value, or to go away perhaps before he had heard my experience.' And then, before the elder lady could ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... at her husband and hesitated. Then she replied in terms that I am proud to record in honor of American womanhood: "You mustn't fib about—it, Basil" (heroically); "I couldn't respect you if you did," (tenderly); "but" (with decision) "you must slip out ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... meeting, digladiation[obs3]; deeds of arms, feats of arms; appeal to arms &c. (warfare) 722. pugnacity; combativeness &c. adj.; bone of contention &c. 713. V. contend; contest, strive, struggle, scramble, wrestle; spar, square; exchange blows, exchange fisticuffs; fib|!, justle[obs3], tussle, tilt, box, stave, fence; skirmish; pickeer[obs3]; fight &c. (war) 722; wrangle &c. (quarrel) 713. contend &c. with, grapple with, engage with, close with, buckle with, bandy with, try conclusions with, have a brush &c. n. with, tilt with; encounter, fall foul ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... mighty fine, fair lady, but you have told me a fib. You said it was to be all for yourself, and got a ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... to keep it secret—I wouldn't have minded telling him a fib about a little thing. But he made it so ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... with Greville Fane when she announced these nuptials to me as magnificent; I remember asking her what splendour there was in the union of the daughter of a woman of genius with an irredeemable mediocrity. "Oh! he's awfully clever," she said; but she blushed for the maternal fib. What she meant was that though Sir Baldwin's estates were not vast (he had a dreary house in South Kensington and a still drearier "Hall" somewhere in Essex, which was let), the connection was a "smarter" one than a child of hers could have aspired to form. ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... he began to lose his temper: it was too stupid, it made him look ridiculous. What did they mean by calling him "a Republican musician"; it did not mean anything.... Well, let the fib pass.... But when they set his "Republican" art against the "sacristy art" of the masters who had preceded him,—(he whose soul was nourished by the souls of those great men),—it was ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... school bounds at the time, or I should never have allowed you! And on the way you asked me if I had hurt myself in falling. I told you "No"; but that was a fib, for my hip was growing weak even then. It's by reason of my hip that I have to lie here. But in those days there was no one else to take the dancing classes, and it would never have done to confess. And—and that was all. I only met you once after that—it ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... cried, with a deprecating look at Joyce as he emerged. "I was just—just botanizing, you know." Delighted that she broke into merry laughter over the palpable fib he joined in, adding presently, "Pardon me, but you all looked so jolly! And you know I don't often see you ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... burning, how she might return and snatch her property from the flames. The sleepy guards at the barrier allowed the carriage to pass without much difficulty, the worthy lady allaying their scruples with a fib, telling them she was bringing back her niece with her to Paris to assist in nursing her husband, who had been wounded by the Versaillese. It was not until they commenced to make their way along the paved streets that they encountered serious obstacles; ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... break, Thou unconcerned canst hear the mighty crack: Pit, box, and gallery in convulsions hurled, Thou stand'st unshook amidst a bursting world. Who shames a scribbler? break one cobweb through, He spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew: Destroy his fib or sophistry, in vain, The creature's at his dirty work again, Throned in the centre of his thin designs, Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines! Whom have I hurt? has poet yet, or peer, Lost the arched eyebrow, or Parnassian sneer? ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... of twelve hundred years, and has, as they pretend, the names of the said knights in Saxon characters, and yet such as no man can read), all this story I see so little ground to give the least credit to that I look upon it, and it shall please you, to be no better than a fib. ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... savagely ironic with her, and trampled hobnailed on her timid opinions. But then Agnes didn't know how to treat him, Polly soon saw that: she was nervous and fluttery—evasive, too; and once during lunch even told a deliberate fib. Slight as was her acquaintance with him, Polly felt sure this want of courage must displease him; for there was something very simple and direct about his own ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... think she'd fib about it," Woods went on, "and I finally axed her what she'd take, an' she said nothin' less than fifty dollars cash down would interest her, as she had a winter cloak to lay in, an' shoes for ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... laid a trap for me into which I had fallen full length. He recited to them our conversation, at which the joy and applause were marvellous. It is the only time he ever diverted himself at my expense (not to say at his own) in a matter in which the fib he told me, and which I was foolish enough to swallow, surprised by a sudden joy that took from me reflection, did honour to me, though but little to him. I would not gratify him by telling him I knew of his joke, or call to his mind what he had said to me; accordingly ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the fact that all men and women are liars, for Punch records the following as the dialogue between her and her mother when she had been caught in a fib: ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... slapping his thigh, "but I'll sarve him out! I'll baste him as Randall did ugly Borrock. I'll knock him about as Belcher did the Big Ilkey Pigg. I'll damage his mug as Turner did Scroggins's. I'll fib him till he's as black as Agamemnon—for I do feel as though I could fight ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... patiently as I could, 'I suppose a fib more or less will make but little difference in your lifetime. While you are at it, however, you may as well ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... are yet too close Heaven to fib like that, Ruth. What have I done to indicate that I don't love you more ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... and drank every drop to punish herself for her fib, for she was not in the least thirsty, and to drink a fairly large cupful of water when you are not thirsty is somewhat of an ordeal. Yet the memory of that draught was to be very pleasant to Rosemary. In after years it seemed to her that there was ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Carmichael across the indignant dominie, "I told a fib about you this morning, but quite innocently. I said you would not be ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... you want me to say 'yes'," she laughed. "I'd like to tell a white fib, to please you. But no, I am not quite surprised, for my sister wrote that you might come, and why. What a pity you had this long journey for nothing. My Kabyle maid, Mouni, has just gone to her home, far away in a little village near Michelet, in la Grande Kabylia. She is to be ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... clung there, fanning himself. Suleiman-bin-Daoud bent his head and whispered very softly, 'Little man, you know that all your stamping wouldn't bend one blade of grass. What made you tell that awful fib to your wife?—for doubtless she ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... not come?" observed Marfa Timofyevna, moving her knitting needles quickly. (She was knitting a large woolen scarf.) "He would have sighed with you—or at least he'd have had some fib to tell you." ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... through one of the big gates and not through the underground passage. That was a fib," said Candace, looking from one to the other with a perfectly delicious twinkle in her eye. The conspirators gulped and smiled guiltily. "Baldos says there is a very mean old man here who is tormenting the fairy princess—not ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... he persists in saying that the defence is a fib from beginning to end, and that the Trotters were agreed to deceive Lady Raikes. But who hasn't had his best actions misinterpreted by calumny? And what innocence or ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... can't deceive me. I'm ashamed that I wrote the note, and your telling a fib about getting it won't make it any better. But it was wicked of you not to answer. I only wanted you to come to me and—and talk it all over, and say good-by for ever. It wasn't ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... to stand still, and so make sure of your safety. The risk of injuring you through your moving was too great not to force me to tell you a fib to escape it." ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... had, sir," said the mate, fingering the presentation cigars, and then to himself: "What a whopping fib! I wouldn't sail in the same craft with such ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... told you a fib; Mr. Talboys is at home. And observe! until I came to Font Abbey, he was here three times a week. You admit that. I come; your uncle knows I am not so unobservant as you, and Mr. Talboys is kept ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... tell a lie in order to avoid a scolding. Nothing is more unfortunate, nothing is more easy for an ordinarily good, but misunderstood man, than the tendency to fib about little things, if he feels in his heart that his wife will scold,—that she will fail to see the point. It wounds his self-respect to have to do so, yet he selects the minor evil as he sees it, he sacrifices his manhood in the ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... talking. Patience could not have told what he said. Her mind was entirely full of what she had to say. Somehow she stammered out the story: how she had been afraid to go to Nancy Gookin's, and how she had lost the sixpence her uncle had given her, and how Martha had said she told a fib. Patience trembled and gasped out the words, and curtesied, once in a while, when the Squire ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... volto sciolto i pensieri stretti [It]. unfairness &c (dishonesty) 940; artfulness &c (cunning) 702; misstatement &c (error) 495. V. be false &c adj., be a liar &c 548; speak falsely &c adv.; tell a lie &c 546; lie, fib; lie like a trooper; swear false, forswear, perjure oneself, bear false witness. misstate, misquote, miscite^, misreport, misrepresent; belie, falsify, pervert, distort; put a false construction upon &c (misinterpret); ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... didn't shop much—I didn't stay out long." She raised a kindling face to him. "And what do you think I've been doing? While you were sitting in your stuffy old theatre, worrying about the money I was spending (oh, you needn't fib—I know you were!) I was saving you hundreds and thousands. I've saved you ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... on, in the absolute silence, unconscious—unaware of any thing round me; living only in my thoughts, and with a resolution growing ever stronger and stronger within me. I will not tell her! I will never tell any one. I, that have hitherto bungled and blundered over the whitest fib, will wade knee-deep in falsehoods, before I will ever let any one guess the disgrace that has happened to me. Oh that, by long silence, I could wipe it out of my own heart—out of the book ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... afternoon Carrie told the principal she had a headache, and I asked if I could go home with her and read her the assignments for next day (they called the lessons 'assignments' there), and they thought I was such a meek little country mouse that I wouldn't ever fib, and so they let us go, and what do you think we did? She had tickets for 'The Two Orphans' at the stock company. (You've never seen 'The Two Orphans,' have you? It's perfectly splendid. I used to weep my eyes out over it.) And afterward we went and waited outside, right near the stage ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... anything left for me to say," replied Cordelia, in a slightly worried voice. "You've got all the pretty things used up. I should just have to say I think she's fat and homely—and I don't think I ought to say that, for it would be a downright fib. I don't think she's ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... weather—oh, it is so hot and glaring here! Chrissy and I cannot imagine how you can ride and play tennis in such heat; but perhaps it is cooler in the country. Now, remember, I mean what I say, and that I don't want you one bit. At least that is a fib in one way, because I always want my Betty; but I am quite happy to think you are enjoying yourself, and cheering up that poor girl—she must be very miserable. Write to me soon again. I do love your letters. I always keep them under my pillow and read them in the morning. Good-bye, ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Hannah," she wailed, half laughing, half crying; "that wretched little fib-teller of a clock ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... Helen showed her that she guessed wrong here and there, and smiled at her prejudices; and Miss Clarendon smiled again, and admitted that she was prejudiced, "but every body is; only some show and tell, and others smile and fib. I wish that word fib was banished from English language, and white lie drummed out after it. Things by their right names and we should all do much better. Truth must be told, whether ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... a word of fib and not a grain of truth. Well, you would beat Jones if you went at his game, but I do think it a good idea to wire Nat Phillips. I'll go and do so at once," he added, feeling in his pocket to make sure he had with him change enough to pay ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... to Lana Helmer. Women are human; and pretty women perhaps a little less than human. Leave them to me. For if this romantic damsel be truly what you picture her, I'll have to tell a pretty fib or two concerning her and you, I warrant you. Leave that saucy baggage, Lanette, to me, Euan. And you keep clear of her, too. She's murderous to men's peace of mind—more fatal than ever since Clarissa played ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... that David maintained tenaciously that he had never swerved from the slow monowheel lane didn't bother his parents a bit. They were acquainted with another small-boy frailty. Small boys, on occasion, are inclined to fib. ...
— Infinite Intruder • Alan Edward Nourse
... are but dark news from the Havannah; the Gazette, who would not fib for the world, says, we have lost but four officers; the World, who is not quite so scrupulous, says, our loss is heavy. But whit shocking notice to those who have Harry Conways there! The Gazette breaks off with saying, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... so good. Never a fib since last I gave him the ox-reim end to taste. Never a lump of sugar or a cookie or a plum pilfered—he would take them as bold as brass before your face if you didn't give. He said the night-prayer regularly. For the morning, Lord, Thou knowest boys want ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... form of law, rejoined in affirmance of the words. Upon which Master Blifil said, "It is no wonder. Those who will tell one fib, will hardly stick at another. If I had told my master such a wicked fib as you have done, I should be ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... been discussing was, whether the hero of the story was worthy the name of lover, seeing he deferred offering his hand to the girl because she told her mother a FIB to account for her being with him in the garden after dark. "It was cowardly and unfair," said Christina: "was it not for HIS sake she did it?" Mercy did not think to say "WAS IT?" as she well might. "Don't you see, Chrissy," ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... to a man who can lie like that. Talk about Chatterton's Rowley deception, Macpherson's Ossian fraud, or Locke's moon hoax! Compared with this tremendous fib they are as but the stilly whisper of a hearth-stone cricket to the shrill trumpeting of a wounded elephant-the piping of a sick cocksparrow to the brazen clang ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... "He knows it isn't true," muttered the lad. "Serve me right for telling lies. It was only my fun, Fred," he cried hastily, to make honest confession of his fib. "But don't go on like that. Come out now, and let's get back. It makes ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... an hour or so of solitary shopping, and had the things I bought carried straight into my own room, for I had given out that I had a sick headache, and wanted to sleep—a fib so delicate, that it seemed almost conscientious, besides being worth forgiving on account ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... criticism, as well as to spare Miss Day's feelings. But to have done it so clumsily as this! To have had to wince under Miss Day's scepticism! It was only a wonder the governess had not there and then taxed her with the fib. For who believed in old nurses nowadays? They were a stock property, borrowed on the spur of the moment from readings in THE FAMILY HERALD, from Tennyson's LADY CLARE. Why on earth had such a far-fetched excuse ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... of this note, which I have consequently pinned down. I find, to my surprise, whenever I act thus my platysma contracts. Does yours? (N.B.—See what a man will do for science; I began this note with a horrid fib, namely, that I want you to attend to a new point. (The point was doubtless described as a new one, to avoid the possibility of Dr. Ogle's attention being directed to the platysma, a muscle which had been the subject of discussion in other ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... to give up, declaring it to be the most fun they had had "in a coon's age," which was really a boys' bravery fib, and finally the machine drew up within a hundred and ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... to Bolton Street that evening, but he could find no alternative. "I believe I shall see her this evening," he said, simply venturing to mitigate the evil of making the communication by rendering it falsely doubtful. There are men who fib with so bad a grace and with so little tact that they might as well not fib at all. They not only never arrive at success, but never even venture ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... "it's been very successful. I'm all braced up. I'm glad we have had such a good excuse for coming." A fib is sometimes necessary ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Palliser said with considerable dignity; but when the words were spoken he bethought himself whether he had not told a fib. ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... salted down to keep till sold. The kind gentleman and saint, whose name was Nicholas, restored these three children to life. It is said that once he lost his temper, and struck with his fist a gentleman named Arius; but the story-teller does not believe this, for he thinks it is a fib, made up long afterward. How could a saint lose his ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... being compelled to accept this fib, departed. After which the bell rang again. The usher then assumed his most gracious expression of face. By natural affinity, the lucky ones had gathered in a group at one end of the room. Though they had never seen one another before, most of them ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... the said knights in Saxon characters, and yet such as no man can read), all this story I see so little ground to give the least credit to that I look upon it, and it shall please you, to be no better than a fib. ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... on a desert island in mid-ocean on a rock raised ten thousand feet above the earth; and there he is, and will be, till the Red Man gives him back his power for the happiness of France. These others say he's dead. Ha, dead! 'Tis easy to see they don't know Him. They tell that fib to catch the people, and feel safe in their hovel of a government. Listen! the truth at the bottom of it all is that his friends have left him alone on the desert island to fulfil a prophecy, for I forgot to say that his name, Napoleon, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... did not seem at all put out by the threatening language of his questioner. "I should be telling a fib," answered he calmly, "if I were to tell you that, being in my own room and hearing you quarrelling, I did not hear every word of what you have ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... yet from heaven to smuggle the bread out of capable workmen's mouths. All this is Pagan, and arose thus. The Trojans had Oriental imaginations, and feigned that their Palladium, a wooden statue three cubits long, fell down from heaven. The Greeks took this fib home among the spoils of Troy, and soon it rained statues on all the Grecian cities, and their Latin apes. And one of these Palladia gave St. Paul trouble at Ephesus; 'twas a statue of Diana that fell down from Jupiter: credat qui ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... desiring a sister, she had plucked a certain little Nellie Taylor from a family near by, named her "Rose Featherstone" and taken her to and from the kindergarten daily, a distance of at least half a mile of crowded streets. The affair was purely one of innocent romance. Emma Abby Googins never told a fib or committed the slightest fault or folly save that of burying her name, assuming a more distinguished one, and introducing a sister to me who had no claim to the Googins blood. Her mother was thoroughly mystified ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... children—five of them; the prettiest little dears one ever saw. The eldest is just about thirteen." This was a fib, because Mrs. Carroll knew that the eldest boy was sixteen; but what did it signify? "Amelia is so ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... it and drank every drop to punish herself for her fib, for she was not in the least thirsty, and to drink a fairly large cupful of water when you are not thirsty is somewhat of an ordeal. Yet the memory of that draught was to be very pleasant to Rosemary. In after years ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... her punish her child for denying that she had committed some piece of mischief of which she was guilty. The mother's excuse to herself probably was that the child told a lie, she, a "society fib." Perhaps the smaller sinner had no ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... Swift, and the two men were at their wits' end; they did not understand, and knew not what to prescribe for the case, so desperate it seemed. But Jessie said, "Take him in for a partner, Silas. Let him stand for Company. You and I are one; so the sign, as it goes, is a fib, you know." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... unavoidable inference placed the Irish Catholics on a lower moral plane than the Aborigines, by reason of their priests keeping them in ignorance. This misconception had acquired all the solidity of fact before it reached me; consequently, my explanation was received as a well-meant fib. Anyway, these details will give you some idea of Rory, in his ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... What a nuisance, on our last day! But I forgot, I asked her to come. If she stays very long, just tell a little fib, won't you, and say ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... I had not time to make up my mind to tell the truth. I was taken by surprise; and you know one's first impulse is to fib—about THAT." ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... your cat!" I cried, To think she'd fib quite horrified; "Why, how can you say that?" Her tears afresh began to run, She sobbed the words out, ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... I wonder what that little chap would like—here's a drum, a box of tools, a knife, a menagerie. If he hadn't played truant from school that day, and then told a fib about it, I'd give him ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... and I couldn't quite fib to him, and yet I couldn't see why he should expect me to tell him all about you. And so"—she paused and the little half-smile was ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... what follows, because it's a fib"; and she ran her eyes over several lines. "In spite of my prayers, I must go. 'You are no longer a boy,' my father said, 'you must think of the future. You have to learn things your own country cannot teach you, ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... were beautiful rifles too. But look here: I could see a way out of the difficulty, only you are so scrupulous. One mustn't tell a diplomatic fib." ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... Let peals of laughter, Codrus! round thee break, Thou unconcern'd canst hear the mighty crack: Pit, box, and gallery in convulsions hurl'd, Thou stand'st unshook amidst a bursting world. Who shames a scribbler? break one cobweb through, He spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew: 90 Destroy his fib or sophistry, in vain, The creature's at his dirty work again, Throned in the centre of his thin designs, Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines! Whom have I hurt? has poet yet, or peer, Lost the arch'd eyebrow, or ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... Sadie was a conscientious little girl. Miss Jenny said so. Miss Jenny was conscientious, too. Right at the beginning she told them how she hated a story, fib-story she meant. ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... believed me?.. Why, that was a galejade a fib... Among us Taras-conese you ought surely ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... essential thing just now. Walk straight with regard to Mr. Townsend; that's all I ask. It is highly probable you have been corresponding with him for the last three weeks—perhaps even seeing him. I don't ask you—you needn't tell me." He had a moral conviction that she would contrive to tell a fib about the matter, which it would disgust him to listen to. "Whatever you have done, stop doing it. That's all ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... volume a note that the codex contained the ten decades of Titus Livy, and that he had read some parts of these volumes. This he asserts with an air of truth that commands belief; he told the same tale to Cardinal Orsini, and to many more, and to all in the very same words, so that I think this is no fib of his. What more do you want? This statement of his, and his serious countenance, cause me to give some credence to him. For it is a very good thing to be misled in a matter of this kind, out of which coin can be made to such an amount as to be absolutely incredible. Therefore ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... you look so pale then?' said she, smiling with delight at my emotion. 'Is it anger at poor me for telling such a fib? Well, I only "tell the tale as 'twas told to me:" I don't vouch for the truth of it; but at the same time, I don't see what reason Sarah should have for deceiving me, or her informant for deceiving her; and that was what she told ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... always liked Colly very much, but now more than ever; for it was he, poor fellow, that came and told mammy that daddy had fallen down." "Stop, Tom," cried Helen, "take care what you say. How could a dog tell any body what had happened to your father? Do you know what a naughty thing it is to fib?" "Yes, I do know very well, Miss, that it is wicked to tell fibs;" answered Tom, stoutly, "but mammy can assure you, that what I am saying is true." "Yes, indeed," said his mother, "Tom speaks the truth; though perhaps he should ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... me gnash my teeth and bark like a dog, just like they do you.—But I came to see you about—(to the slave girl) get out of here, get out of my sight, you trouble maker, you're all ears and tongue and nothing else, all you do is to sit around Koritto—dear, now please don't tell me a fib, who stitched that red ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... still make engagements which did not include her betrothed; she must meet the archnesses of her little world with blank looks above the music in her heart, with many evasions, and even, perhaps, a harmless fib or two. Nevertheless, the lovers secured many hours all to themselves. Shut from public view in Mr. Heth's study, and more especially in long motor rides down unfrequented by-lanes they were deep in the absorptions of exploring each other, of revealing themselves each to each. And to Carlisle these ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... something about Somebody. He'll keep company with Anybody to find out Everybody's business; and is only at a loss when this head stops his pursuit, and Nobody will give him an answer. It is from these four heads the fib of each day is fabricated. Suspicion begets the morning whisper, the gossip Report circulates it as a secret, wide-mouthed Wonder gives Credulity credit for it, and Self-interest authenticates that, as Anybody may be set to work by Somebody, Everybody's ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... fair lady, but you have told me a fib. You said it was to be all for yourself, and got a hundred ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... about my being seen in a Staten Island beer garden with Bern Cameron, don't believe one word of it—we didn't go in at all, the place was too smelly. And that fib about his giving me a diamond ring,—deny it please, as I have never shown it to a soul—So you can see ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... such a treaty was so manifestly for the interest of Austria, that she was fearful that France would not accede to it. Since she knew that the matter was already arranged and settled with the French court, this was a downright lie, though the queen probably regarded it as a venial fib, or as diplomacy. ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... by the thro at and yell ed, swear to me thou nev er wilt re veal my se cret, or thy hot heart's blood shall stain this mar bel fib or; she gave one gry ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... window curtains to avoid scandal—is discovered, and his sovereign's reputation is only saved by the declaration of Felicia, that the Captain is there on her account. Ollivarez asserts that they are married, to clench the fib—the Queen sees her folly—the Duchess is disgraced—all the characters stand in the well-defined semicircle which is the stage method of writing the word "finis"—Mrs. Yates speaks a very neat and pointed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... I am to harsh language, I am quite prepared to hear my 'poetic rendering' branded as a 'falsehood' and a 'fib.' The vituperation is unmerited, for poetry or ideality, and untruth are assuredly very different things. The one may vivify, while the other, kills. When St. John extends the notion of a soul to 'souls ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... at the admiral's request would not convey the slightest idea of Tom's mental condition when he found himself in such a dilemma. He could have bitten off his tongue for its having got him into such a scrape, by telling the fib about the monkey in the first instance; but it was too late now, for the admiral had turned to leave the cabin, and the marine was at the door, besides others, who would hear any explanation he ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... at a fib as little as some historians, I might easily tell you who won the prizes at this shooting on Palmerstown Green. But the truth is, I don't know; my granduncle could have told me, for he had a marvellous memory, but he died, a pleasant old gentleman of four-score and upwards, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... is a fib, Christmas is a fraud, Christmas is a crime wanted and continued by the powerful to delude their servants and to make them believe that there is really happiness, justice and love on this earth.... There is no everlasting joy. How long, O poor and exhausted workingmen of the world, will ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... somehow. Caroline "was glad to see them" (an unmitigated fib), hoped they were well, hoped Mrs. Sykes's cough was better (Mrs. Sykes had had a cough for the last twenty years), hoped the Misses Sykes had left their sisters at home well; to which inquiry the Misses Sykes, sitting ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... said that he was going to Bolton Street that evening, but he could find no alternative. "I believe I shall see her this evening," he said, simply venturing to mitigate the evil of making the communication by rendering it falsely doubtful. There are men who fib with so bad a grace and with so little tact that they might as well not fib at all. They not only never arrive at success, but never even venture to ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... feet. Some of the lady visitors are Beautiful Swimmers, and their Divers Charms excite universal admiration. Many of these fair Amphitrites are so constantly in or on the water that it would hardly be a Fib to call them Amphibious. Their husbands and brothers are, I regret to say, not so much On the Water, preferring something a trifle ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... false grounds. You forget that it is almost as important for you to self your manufactures to America as to get cotton from it. And articles in the Times, and speeches from your first statesmen, show that you really believe the enormous fib so generally current, that the South consumes the very great majority of all our imports. 'The South is where the North makes all its ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... I had not interposed, and said that you were suffering, whether you knew it or not, you would have played the martyr all the evening to a sort of a—a—what shall I call it?—it must out—a sort of fashionable fib. You may answer, perhaps, that you did not like to make a fuss, or seem squeamish, or discompose the company; and so, from timidity, you said 'the thing that was not.' Very true; but this is the very thing I want you to guard against; I want you to have such presence ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... print, good company, a text By no vain annotations vexed Which call from students sore perplexed The patience of a Job; And, page by page, a first-rate crib, Neither too faithful nor too glib— That, without fulsomeness or fib, Is what we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... You do not believe in Rumtunshid? Then why should farmer Buttercup be called on to believe in the communion of the saints? What does he believe about it? Or why should you make little Flora Buttercup tell such a huge fib as to say, that she believes in the ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... chorus mocked her: "Is it to watch the roses that you have put on the gown which matches your eyes, you sly one?"... "And the lilies in your hair, sweet? Is it to shelter them from the rain that you wear them?"... "Fie, Tata! Can you not fib yet ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... that her determination gained strength; she was surprised at her own mendacity when she explained the utter impossibility of leaving the office, and told a circumstantial fib about a title that had to be closed with people from out of town. The more she talked the more panicky she became at thought of being for hours alone with this forceful, this magnetic, this overwhelming person. Strange, in view of the fact that she had been looking forward ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... home to-morrow. The last few days have been awfully dull. I saw R. once or twice but I always looked the other way. Father asked what was wrong between me and the Warths and R., so that our great friendship had been broken off. Of course I had to fib, for it was absolutely impossible to tell the truth. I said that R. found fault with everything I did, my writing, my reading aloud. (That's quite true, he did that once) and Father said: Well, well, you'll ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... very sorry, Nat, but evidences are against you, and your old fault makes us more ready to doubt you than we should be if we could trust you as we do some of the boys, who never fib. But mind, my child, I do not charge you with this theft; I shall not punish you for it till I am perfectly sure, nor ask any thing more about it. I shall leave it for you to settle with your own conscience. If you are guilty, come to me at any hour of the day or night and confess it, and I will ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... kisses, notes slipped into the prayer-book, etc. She told her mother everything before she went to bed, sat on her father's knee when she was too old and much too tall for it, dreamed of lovers, hid trembling when they came, had palpitations, never told a fib or refused a sweetmeat; she was, in fact, just the honest, red-cheeked, pretty, shy simpleton of a lass you will meet by the round dozen in our country, who grows into the plump wife of Master Church-warden-in-broadcloth, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... being in control in the Senate the outcome could hardly be in doubt. He had learned also of the other misfortunes which had befallen Judge Rossmore and he understood now the reason for Shirley's grave face on the dock and her little fib about summering on Long Island. The news had been a shock to him, for, apart from the fact that the judge was Shirley's father, he admired him immensely as a man. Of his perfect innocence there could, ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... guessed. You weren't a real lightkeeper, that was plain. And you weren't used to washing dishes or doing housework—that," with the irrepressible curl of the corners of her lips, "was just as plain. When you told me that fib about meeting my brother here last summer I was sure you had met him somewhere, probably at college. So in my next letter to him I described you as well as I could, mentioned that you were as good or a better swimmer than he, and asked for particulars. He answered that the only fellow he ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... prisoner.] This is not a place for parlor talk. I had chosen the English words that conveyed my meaning most distinctly. It was all very well for the prisoner's counsel to smooth things over; but was I, instead of calling him a liar, to say, he told a fib? When I call him a thief and a felon, do I go beyond the charge of the grand jury in the indictment? If this is stepping over the limits of propriety, in all similar cases I shall do the same. I do not intend to blackguard the prisoner,—I do not delight in using these epithets. My heart ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... hear the mighty crack: Pit, box, and gallery in convulsions hurled, Thou stand'st unshook amidst a bursting world. Who shames a scribbler? break one cobweb through, He spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew: Destroy his fib or sophistry, in vain, The creature's at his dirty work again, Throned in the centre of his thin designs, Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines! Whom have I hurt? has poet yet, or peer, Lost the arched eyebrow, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... red: what would her mother say if she brought Wolfgang with her? No, that would really not do, this was just the day when their room had not been tidied. And she had told a fib too: there were no herrings, only onion sauce with the potatoes in ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... existed. "The devil take my luck!" I muttered, grinding my teeth with impotent anger; for it seemed such hard lines, just when I had succeeded in getting into favor, to go and spoil it all in that unhappy way. Now that I had become acquainted with their style of singing, the supposed fib, about which there had been such a pother, seemed a very venial offense compared with my attempt to lead the singing. Nevertheless, when the concert was over, not a word was said on the subject by any one, though I had quite expected to be taken at once to the magisterial ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... splash into the water himself. The question was not now whether the hen could swim, but whether he could; he floundered round and round, and screeched like a little bedlamite, and was just thinking of the last fib he told, when his brother Zedekiah came ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... for you ever since. One of them called to interview you at San Pasqual, for, like T. Morgan Carey, they had traced you that far. He came into the eating-house and asked me if I knew anybody in town by the name of Robert McGraw. I told him I did not—which wasn't a fib because you weren't in town at the time. You were in bed at the Hat Ranch. An engineer was with him and while they were at luncheon I overheard them discussing your water-right. The engineer declared that the known feature ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... against this proposed arrangement, saying that we could walk, which was a fib, for I do not think that I could have done a mile; but Stella would not listen, she would not even let me carry my elephant gun, but took it herself. So we mounted with some difficulty, and Hendrika took up the sleeping Tota in ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... axcuse she was afther makin,' an' she was lookin' that he'd be sayin' somethin' about the young Kings an' was afther dodgin' as long as she cud. So whin he shpoke so crass, she riz up aff the sate, for it was a fib she was tellin', an' she didn't shwape the kitchen at all, an' that was done be wan av the maids, an' gev a sigh, an' wint in the ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... me? It is the only favor I ask." I told him I would only be too glad to do so if it would aid him in the moment when life shrinks from the shadow of death, but told him I thought he would not die—another little fib on my part. However, that did no harm, for I failed to convince him he would live. About 1 o'clock A. M. a couple of nights after this, one of the watchers came to my cot and said Bob wanted to see me immediately. I felt his time had come. Hastily dressing, I went to his bedside. I found ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... whop him fo' tellin' a fib 'bout dey ain't no ghosts whin yever'body know dey is ghosts; but de school-teacher, whut board at Unc' Silas Diggs's house, she tek note de hair ob li'l black Mose's head am plumb white, an' she tek note li'l black ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... examination for me not only to assist "Red," but absolutely to do his work. It is strange how in some things honest people can be dishonest without the slightest compunction. I knew boys at school who were too honorable to tell a fib even when one would have been just the right thing, but could not resist the temptation to assist or receive assistance in an examination. I have long considered it the highest proof of honesty in a man to hand his street-car fare to the ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... Cornelia—no, no! I've had some acquaintance with Margaret, and, with all her nonsense, I believe she's honest. Besides, what interest could she have to be otherwise? To be sure, she didn't give me the true reason for the incognito; but that's nothing; she's just the woman to tell a useless fib, and reserve the truth for important occasions only—or ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... with which it is usual to soften such blows. She didn't want him, and had taken the shortest way to tell him so. Even in his first moment of exasperation it struck him as characteristic that she should not have padded her postponement with a fib. Certainly her moral angles ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... said John, who understood at once and who was willing to fib in a good cause. "I saw her watching through a window a fine big fellow, exactly your size, age and appearance, and with the same name. I said something about his being a hulking hostler and she turned upon ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Poor fellow, 'twill be dreadful hard for him, too. He was here this mornin' and I said Frances had been called away sudden and wouldn't be back to-day. And I said you would be away all day, too, Hosy. It was a fib, I guess, but I can't help it if it was. You mustn't see him now and you mustn't talk with me either. You must clear off that tray the first thing. We'll have our talk to-morrow, maybe. We'll—we'll see the course plainer then, perhaps. Now be a good boy and mind me. You ARE my ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a scribbler? break one cobweb through, He spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew; Destroy his fib or sophistry in vain, The creature's at his foolish work again, Throned in the centre of his thin designs, Proud of a ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... afther making me stay at home all the blessed day, and sending Captain Ussher all the way back to Mohill, and he having come over here by engagement to walk with me,"—this was a fib of Feemy's,—"and all to ask me where I got a ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... North Dormer intended to venture so far it was not likely that her absence from the festivity would be reported. Besides, if it were she would not greatly care. She was determined to assert her independence, and if she stooped to fib about the Hepburn picnic it was chiefly from the secretive instinct that made her dread the profanation of her happiness. Whenever she was with Lucius Harney she would have liked some impenetrable mountain mist to ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... are you! I can see that. And yet, you ought to be. You must have married that girl your mother picked for you. You doubtless have children.... Don't try to fib to me, just to seem more... what shall I say ... more interesting! I can see it from the looks of you. You are the pater familias all over. I am never mistaken in such things!... Well, why aren't you happy? You have all the requisites for a personage of note, ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... failure. "He knows it isn't true," muttered the lad. "Serve me right for telling lies. It was only my fun, Fred," he cried hastily, to make honest confession of his fib. "But don't go on like that. Come out now, and let's get back. It makes me ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... The cashier was livid, haggard, distracted, and as soon as Reine had joined Mathieu's children, and could not hear what he said, he implored the young man to come with him. In a gasp he told the dreadful truth—Valerie was dying. Her daughter believed her to be in the country, but that was a mere fib devised to quiet the girl. Valerie was elsewhere, in Paris, and he, Morange, had a cab waiting below, but lacked the strength to go back to her alone, so poignant was his grief, so ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... a sudden cough on my part, which brought Aunt Polly to her feet before I had time to slip back to bed; and the only plea that my guiltiness could make her kind remonstrance on my being up in the cold, was the very natural and very wicked fib, that I heard her move and thought she might want something. Unsuspecting old lady! May her ashes at least rest in peace! How she caught me in her arms, kissed and carried me to bed, tucking in the blankets so effectually that all attempts to get up again ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... interrupted her. "Five." It was a fib. He had paid half a guinea for the few flowers, but he could not ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... a different description. "Now blister my kidneys," said he, slapping his thigh, "but I'll sarve him out! I'll baste him as Randall did ugly Borrock. I'll knock him about as Belcher did the Big Ilkey Pigg. I'll damage his mug as Turner did Scroggins's. I'll fib him till he's as black as Agamemnon—for I do feel as though I could ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... You ought to have said that I sang better than I danced, and the fib would have pleased me immensely; we women like to hear ourselves praised for accomplishments we don't possess. No, my dear, rule art out of the cast and substitute advertisement. Did you notice a dowdy creature who was lunching with two men on your ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... world than she does; since what I know of the world beyond this happy corner of it I learned when I was a mere child. But though we laugh, I can remember a good deal. I have heard polished gentlemen lie, at a pinch, like the proverbial pick-pocket, and pretty ladies fib as well as servant-girls. Of course, I do not mean to say that as many ladies as servant-girls tell untruths. But Eleanor would fain believe that the lie which Solomon discovered to be "continually on the lips of the untaught" is not on the lips of those who "know ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... that time became a portrait-painter. If the poor fellow had been the veriest dauber, you, Eusebius, would have sat to him twenty times over, and have told all the country round quite as great a fib as he did the governor, that he was a very Raffaelle in outline, and Titian in coloring. And what shall the "recording angel" do? Poor fellow! he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... interesting). Another (truly pathetic). Felix ill (the dear pet, how sorry his grandchildren will be to hear it). Gatty in mischief (when is she ever out of it?) Schillie worked the most of all (and what has she got to do besides?) Very merry tea (what a fib, when we have had no tea this month). Sybil so amiable (yes, quite mawkishly so). Our dear captain (good me! what a monody). The good Smart (perfect epitaphs over them all, pity they are not in rhyme). Well, June, of all the nonsense I ever read your journal seems ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... analyses the position, and decides on the fib in the twinkling of an eye. She is going to make a son break a promise to his mother, and she knows it. So she gives him this as a set-off. "But people will talk to her, of course! Shall I get her to ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... might be true and how much false. After a certain fashion she and Lizzie Eustace called themselves friends. But she did not believe her friend to be honest, and was aware that in some matters her friend would condescend—to fib. Lizzie's poetry, and romance, and high feelings, had never had the ring of true soundness in Lucy's ears. But her imagination was not strong enough to soar to the altitude of the lies which Lizzie was now telling. She did believe that ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... "That's a fib!" cried Jo, taking her by the shoulders, and looking fierce enough to frighten a much braver ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... could forgive the big fellow the fib. He knew well enough that Dade Morgan was getting his money from Richard Starbright, who, in order to earn anything, was working like a dog on a newspaper. The fact that he was helping Morgan along ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... thinking—it isn't my house. It doesn't even belong to my people. I live with an old lady, Mrs. Ellsworth. I hope she'll be in bed when I get back, and the servants, too. I have a key because—because I told a fib about the place where I was going, and consequently Mrs. Ellsworth approved. If she hadn't approved, I shouldn't have been allowed out. I could let you stand inside the door. But if any one followed ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... took an hour or so of solitary shopping, and had the things I bought carried straight into my own room, for I had given out that I had a sick headache, and wanted to sleep—a fib so delicate, that it seemed almost conscientious, besides being worth forgiving ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... sufficiently to the other side to remark that to cross the haw-haw would save at least a mile by the road if one were in a hurry. And then her loyalty caused her to repeat, with extra care, to John Derringham in a whisper the fib which Mrs. Cricklander wished—namely, that she, the fair Cecilia, was there ready to come to him and sit up with him, and do anything in the world for him, and was only prevented by the doctor's strict orders, fearing the slightest excitement for the patient—and that these orders ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... clothes; let not their heads run upon their playthings when they should mind their books; said grace before they eat, their prayers before they went to bed, and as soon as they rose; were always clean and neat; would not tell a fib for the world, and were above doing any thing that required one; that God blessed them more and more, and blessed their papa and mamma, and their uncles and aunts, and cousins, for their sakes. "And ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... us!" she remarked. "I know well enough that you are not likely, on a visit like this, to have left any such things of yours at home. You must have brought them along. Yet here you are now again palming off a fib on us by saying that you haven't got them with you. You people may believe what she says, but I, for ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... over it some quite trivial remark; and presently Mrs. Carkeek regained her composure. But I own I felt disappointed in her. It seemed such a paltry thing to be disingenuous over. She had deliberately acted a fib before me; and why? Merely because she preferred the kitchen to the pantry tap. It was childish. 'But servants are all the same,' I told myself. 'I must take Mrs. Carkeek as she is; and, after all, she is ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Stoner had noticed his employer's thoughtful attitude, the gloom in which Cotherstone sat, the decanter on the table, the glass in Cotherstone's hand, and he knew that Cotherstone was telling a fib when he said he had been asleep. He noticed, too, the six sovereigns and the two or three silver coins lying on the desk, and he wondered what had made his master so abstracted that he had forgotten ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... not suppose that the declaration would be a pure fib, or anything like it. The man had no conscience, and he was almost incomparably selfish, but he was capable of loving, and he did love. That is to say, he was inflamed by this girl's beauty and longed to possess it. It ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... seen, was thus far not a factor to be feared—unless one put one's self in his power. And this was precisely what Miss Bart had done. Her clumsy fib had let him see that she had something to conceal; and she was sure he had a score to settle with her. Something in his smile told her he had not forgotten. She turned from the thought with a little shiver, ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... this transparent fib was an infectious peal of laughter, and a kiss which amply repaid Teague for any discomfort to which he may ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... Yet—such are the sweet incongruities of youth—when I asked him to what tune he had been thinking of Linda since they left us in the lurch he replied: "Oh I haven't been thinking at all! Why should I?" This fib was accompanied by an exorbitant blush. Since he was to obey his young woman's signal I must equally make out where it would take him, and one splendid morning we started over the ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James
... observed Pao-y smilingly. "The tears in your eyes are not dry yet and do you still tell me a fib?" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... 'That's a fib. The duchess and I were well "acquaint" when Duke did not stand quite so high in favour. But I am thankful for my part, you two people have given up mischief and settled down. Sit still among your baskets, ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... Doc.! Expect me to fib to you. Of course I talked him out of it, and told him not to bother about it. First of all that it wasn't up to him yet, and if it was, I ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... I to say? You would not wish me to tell a fib. I don't like Mrs. Harold Smith—at least, what I hear of her; for it has not been my fortune to meet her since her marriage. It may be conceited; but to own the truth, I think that Mr. Robarts would be better off with us at Framley than with the Harold ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... across the indignant dominie, "I told a fib about you this morning, but quite innocently. I said you would not be home ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... good girl, and wrote me a letter. If Burney said she would write, she told you a fib. She writes nothing to me. She can write home fast enough. I have a good mind not to tell her that Dr. Bernard, to whom I had recommended her novel, speaks of it with great commendation, and that the copy which she lent me ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... house-mouse to confirm the truth of her fib. But the house-mouse could not take her eyes off the black rat, who had lain down in the snow and ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... in conversation as to her maiden name, she had not blushed as she answered the question with a falsehood. When, unfortunately, the name of her first husband had in some way made itself known to Clara, she had been ready again with some prepared fib. And when she had recognized William Belton, she had thought that the danger to herself of having any one near her who might know her quite justified her in endeavouring to create ill-will between Clara and her cousin. 'Self-preservation is the first law of nature,' she would have said; and would ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... did not speak. His father was guided by a conception of duty which Philippe knew to be as lofty and as legitimate as his own. What right had he to expect his father to act according to his, Philippe's, conscience? What to one of them would be only a fib would be to the other, to old Morestal, a criminal betrayal of his own side. Morestal, when giving his evidence, was speaking in the name of France. And ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... This little fib (ready enough for Raffles, though I say it) earned me not only forgiveness but that obliging sympathy which is a branch of the business of the man at the door. The good fellow said that he could see I had been sitting up all night, and ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... flattery; Judas kiss; perfidy &c (bad faith) 940; il volto sciolto i pensieri stretti [It]. unfairness &c (dishonesty) 940; artfulness &c (cunning) 702; misstatement &c (error) 495. V. be false &c adj., be a liar &c 548; speak falsely &c adv.; tell a lie &c 546; lie, fib; lie like a trooper; swear false, forswear, perjure oneself, bear false witness. misstate, misquote, miscite^, misreport, misrepresent; belie, falsify, pervert, distort; put a false construction upon &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... your pardon for that little implied fib, Mr. Masters; and, auntie, don't look too much shocked. I could not allow Mr. Masters to lose his time, which is no doubt of value, or to go away perhaps before he had heard my experience.' And then, before the elder lady could utter her gentle reproof or I could reply to her ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... selfishness of words, perhaps, than of thoughts or feelings. "You needn't have anything to do with it. I can tell them you were not very well, and didn't feel exactly like coming. They will understand." She was used to making excuses for Suzette, and a motherly fib like this seemed no harm ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... persists in saying that the defence is a fib from beginning to end, and that the Trotters were agreed to deceive Lady Raikes. But who hasn't had his best actions misinterpreted by calumny? And what innocence or good will can ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... the window. Meg, in fact, could not keep Cecile d'Aubepine back any longer from hindering such shocking impropriety as out tete-a-tete. We overheard her saving her little girl from corruption by a frightful French fib that the gentleman in black was Mademoiselle ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said. Renata was conscious of her own failure to get on with Christopher, but she put it down entirely to her own shyness, which interfered now in preventing her overriding his very transparent fib in Patricia's defence. She went away rather troubled and unhappy. But Christopher, a great deal more troubled and unhappy, looked out of the hall window with a gloomy frown. His own words to Patricia that she had so sharply resented, ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... charmed with her," said Pen, telling almost the first fib which he has told in the course ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the truth is, I don't think Osborne has any thing to do with her feelings. It is merely some imaginary trifle that she has got into her foolish little head, poor girl. Don't distress yourself, father—you know she was always over-scrupulous. Even the most harmless fib that ever was told, is a crime in her eyes. I wish, for my part, she had a little wholesome wickedness about—I don't mean that sir, in a very unfavorable light," he said in reply to a look of severity from his father, "but I wish she had some ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... principal she had a headache, and I asked if I could go home with her and read her the assignments for next day (they called the lessons 'assignments' there), and they thought I was such a meek little country mouse that I wouldn't ever fib, and so they let us go, and what do you think we did? She had tickets for 'The Two Orphans' at the stock company. (You've never seen 'The Two Orphans,' have you? It's perfectly splendid. I used to weep my eyes out over it.) And afterward we went and ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... I told ye a fib the day ye fust come. I did have a dinner, though it war a terrible measly one—Mrs. ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... as opposed to beautiful. Laura's intention had been to shield Mother from criticism, as well as to spare Miss Day's feelings. But to have done it so clumsily as this! To have had to wince under Miss Day's scepticism! It was only a wonder the governess had not there and then taxed her with the fib. For who believed in old nurses nowadays? They were a stock property, borrowed on the spur of the moment from readings in THE FAMILY HERALD, from Tennyson's LADY CLARE. Why on earth had such a far-fetched excuse leapt to her tongue? Why could ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... the truth but so enigmatically that it is more deceptive than an untruth; a good Eastern quibble infinitely more dangerous than an honest downright lie. The consciousness that the falsehood is part fact applies a salve to conscience and supplies a force lacking in the mere fib. When an Egyptian lies to you look straight in his eyes and he will most often betray himself either by boggling or by a look ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... so many things, have at least gained this one—that we should not think it necessary to tell that fib. We should say nothing of what we had been "telling Adela." And some of us, perhaps, would reject the false rhyme as well ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... still with a remnant of artificial pleasantry, though his voice was not entirely under control, 'I want to explain that money-matter to you. It doesn't look well; I am a good deal ashamed of myself; if I was a boy I should deserve a whipping for telling a fib, shouldn't I?' ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... just ought to have seen the scared look that came over her face," Bristles admitted. "She looked all around as if she was afraid that Corny'd be popping up, and then shook her head again and again, saying the pin wasn't hers. But, Fred, I know the poor little girl was telling a fib, because she was afraid if she owned up to the old piece of fake jewelry that she seemed to value so much, it might get somebody in a peck of trouble; and we know ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... the world. That is the final end of it; there he has to stop till the Red Man gives him back his power again, for the happiness of France. A lot of them say that he is dead! Dead? Oh! yes, very likely. They do not know him, that is plain! They go on telling that fib to deceive the people, and to keep things quiet for their tumble-down government. Listen; this is the whole truth of the matter. His friends have left him alone in the desert to fulfil a prophecy that was made about him, for I forgot to tell you that his name Napoleon really means the Lion ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... know you want me to say 'yes'," she laughed. "I'd like to tell a white fib, to please you. But no, I am not quite surprised, for my sister wrote that you might come, and why. What a pity you had this long journey for nothing. My Kabyle maid, Mouni, has just gone to her home, far away in a little village near Michelet, in la Grande Kabylia. She is to be married to her ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... interview you at San Pasqual, for, like T. Morgan Carey, they had traced you that far. He came into the eating-house and asked me if I knew anybody in town by the name of Robert McGraw. I told him I did not—which wasn't a fib because you weren't in town at the time. You were in bed at the Hat Ranch. An engineer was with him and while they were at luncheon I overheard them discussing your water-right. The engineer declared that the known feature alone made the location ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... three faces glued against the panes, but her words were incongruous. "You wretch," said she, "don't come here. Hide about, dearest, till you see me with Father Francis. I'll raise my hand so when you are to cuddle him, and fib. There, make me ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... Madame la Baroness in much the same colour, wrapt up in a tattered black silk capuchin; and I knew not which to admire most, their folly or their impudence; for surely never did an adventurer set out with less capabilities about him; his whole story was so flagrant a fib, that in spite of the very respectable certificates of My Lord Mayor, John Wilkes, and Mr. Alderman Bull, I was obliged to tell him plainly, that I did not believe him to be a gentleman, nor his wife to be a relation of the Prince of Monaco. All this he took in good part, and then assured ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... nuisance, on our last day! But I forgot, I asked her to come. If she stays very long, just tell a little fib, won't you, and say you ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... is charmed with her," said Pen, telling almost the first fib which he has told in the ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hired inmate over to Thankful Barnes'? Humph! So she told you she was goin', hey? Well, most likely she told a fib. I wouldn't trust her not to; sassy, impudent thing! I don't believe she's goin' at all. Is she, ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... follows, because it's a fib"; and she ran her eyes over several lines. "In spite of my prayers, I must go. 'You are no longer a boy,' my father said, 'you must think of the future. You have to learn things your own country cannot teach you, if you would be useful to her some day. What, almost a man and I see you in tears?' ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... with a deprecating look at Joyce as he emerged. "I was just—just botanizing, you know." Delighted that she broke into merry laughter over the palpable fib he joined in, adding presently, "Pardon me, but you all looked so jolly! And you know I don't often see ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... about the ship That he did not chance to own; Told this grievance o'er and o'er, Knowing that she knew before; Told her how he dwelt alone. Lady Minnow, for reply, Cut him off with "So do I!" But she reddened at the fib; Servitors had she, ad lib. Town of Dae by the sea, In her youth who speaks no truth Ne'er shall ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... perfunctory "have written" with which it is usual to soften such blows. She didn't want him, and had taken the shortest way to tell him so. Even in his first moment of exasperation it struck him as characteristic that she should not have padded her postponement with a fib. Certainly her moral angles were ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... (what a goose!) then over he went splash into the water himself. The question was not now whether the hen could swim, but whether he could; he floundered round and round, and screeched like a little bedlamite, and was just thinking of the last fib he told, when his brother Zedekiah came along and fished ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... the Welsh castles with a strong and masterly nasal, that so delighted the worthy vicar, that he actually invited me in to see his museum. I excused myself by saying that my wife was waiting for me—mother, that was my only fib, I assure you—and hastened away, lest in his delight at finding an itinerant archaeologist, he should ask my wife to see his museum as well. The rest of my adventures you had the honour and glory of sharing, so I must beg to say they are at an end. And now I am really and truly and soberly ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... the 9th current, which I am this moment honoured with, is a deep reproach to me for ungrateful neglect. I will tell you the real truth, for I am miserably awkward at a fib—I wished to have written to Dr. Moore before I wrote to you; but, though every day since I received yours of December 30th, the idea, the wish to write to him has constantly pressed on my thoughts, yet I could not for my soul set about it. ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... family near by, named her "Rose Featherstone" and taken her to and from the kindergarten daily, a distance of at least half a mile of crowded streets. The affair was purely one of innocent romance. Emma Abby Googins never told a fib or committed the slightest fault or folly save that of burying her name, assuming a more distinguished one, and introducing a sister to me who had no claim to the Googins blood. Her mother was thoroughly mystified by the occurrence and I no less so, but Emma Abby simply opened her blue ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... any talk about my being seen in a Staten Island beer garden with Bern Cameron, don't believe one word of it—we didn't go in at all, the place was too smelly. And that fib about his giving me a diamond ring,—deny it please, as I have never shown it to a soul—So you can see how ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... pretend, the names of the said knights in Saxon characters, and yet such as no man can read), all this story I see so little ground to give the least credit to that I look upon it, and it shall please you, to be no better than a fib. ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... lion in the park. No amount of persuasion or reasoning could make her vary her statement one hairbreadth. That night, when she slipped down on her knees to say her prayers, her mother said, "Polly, ask God to forgive you for that fib." ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... said, "it's been very successful. I'm all braced up. I'm glad we have had such a good excuse for coming." A fib is sometimes necessary ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... almost as important for you to self your manufactures to America as to get cotton from it. And articles in the Times, and speeches from your first statesmen, show that you really believe the enormous fib so generally current, that the South consumes the very great majority of all our imports. 'The South is where the North makes all its ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... in saying that the defence is a fib from beginning to end, and that the Trotters were agreed to deceive Lady Raikes. But who hasn't had his best actions misinterpreted by calumny? And what innocence or good will ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... more deceptive than an untruth; a good Eastern quibble infinitely more dangerous than an honest downright lie. The consciousness that the falsehood is part fact applies a salve to conscience and supplies a force lacking in the mere fib. When an Egyptian lies to you look straight in his eyes and he will most often betray himself either by boggling or by a look of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... he might write at his ease in one of these rooms, as he could not then hear the door knock, or hear himself denied to be at home, which was sure to make him call out and convict the poor maid in a fib. Here, I said, he might be almost really not at home. So I put in an old grate, and made him a fire in the largest of these garrets, and carried in one table, and one chair, and bid him write away, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... Hepburn, and as no one else from North Dormer intended to venture so far it was not likely that her absence from the festivity would be reported. Besides, if it were she would not greatly care. She was determined to assert her independence, and if she stooped to fib about the Hepburn picnic it was chiefly from the secretive instinct that made her dread the profanation of her happiness. Whenever she was with Lucius Harney she would have liked some impenetrable mountain mist ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... had not interposed, and said that you were suffering, whether you knew it or not, you would have played the martyr all the evening to a sort of a—a—what shall I call it?—it must out—a sort of fashionable fib. You may answer, perhaps, that you did not like to make a fuss, or seem squeamish, or discompose the company; and so, from timidity, you said 'the thing that was not.' Very true; but this is the very thing I want you to guard against; I want you to have such presence ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... the prettiest little dears one ever saw. The eldest is just about thirteen." This was a fib, because Mrs. Carroll knew that the eldest boy was sixteen; but what did it signify? "Amelia is so ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... they desired; that they were not proud of fine clothes; let not their heads run upon their playthings when they should mind their books; said grace before they eat, their prayers before they went to bed, and as soon as they rose; were always clean and neat; would not tell a fib for the world, and were above doing any thing that required one; that God blessed them more and more, and blessed their papa and mamma, and their uncles and aunts, and cousins, for their sakes. "And there was a happy family, my dear ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... to detect Pomona Road along - None faked a cly, nor cracked a crib, Nor prigged a wipe, nor told a fib,— Minds cultivated and select Slip ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... here, on the heath, surely I may have my turn. You do not believe in Rumtunshid? Then why should farmer Buttercup be called on to believe in the communion of the saints? What does he believe about it? Or why should you make little Flora Buttercup tell such a huge fib as to say, that she believes in the ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... "'Twill be acting a fib, and you know it, Alice Parlin! I'm ashamed of you! Take your fingers out of your mouth, ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... beast kept such a roaring and bouncing, that I tho't he would have broke his cage and devoured us all; and the gentleman tittered forsooth; but I'll go to death upon it, I will, that my lady is as good a firchin, as the child unborn; and, therefore, either the gentleman told a fib, or the lion oft to be set in the stocks for bearing false witness agin his neighbour; for the commandment sayeth, Thou shalt not bear ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... to stand up and fib each other about (saying nothing of the practice), why let them do it; or if two dogs worry each other to death for a bone, or two cocks meet and contend for the sovereignty of a dunghill. In these last two cases the appearance of cruelty is out of the question, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... made, and it was objected to him that he had borrowed the money from a client, then Cicero, instigated by the unexpected charge, denied the loan, and denied also that he was going to buy the house. But when he had bought it and the fib was thrown in his teeth, he laughed heartily, and asked whether men had so lost their senses as not to be aware that a prudent father of a family would deny an intended purchase rather than raise the price of the ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... the truth. He would much rather not have said that he was going to Bolton Street that evening, but he could find no alternative. "I believe I shall see her this evening," he said, simply venturing to mitigate the evil of making the communication by rendering it falsely doubtful. There are men who fib with so bad a grace and with so little tact that they might as well not fib at all. They not only never arrive at success, but never even venture to ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... a course of deceit. Aunt Jane would, probably, be shocked, as she was at everything; mamma would not think much of it; and as for Mrs. Rolleston, she need not consider her wishes, after telling Bertie such a bare-faced fib about Jack Vavasour, evidently in the hope of making mischief between them. She was very much astonished at such unscrupulous conduct in her friend, but what other conclusion could she ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... warming up to a man who can lie like that. Talk about Chatterton's Rowley deception, Macpherson's Ossian fraud, or Locke's moon hoax! Compared with this tremendous fib they are as but the stilly whisper of a hearth-stone cricket to the shrill trumpeting of a wounded elephant-the piping of a sick cocksparrow to the brazen clang of a ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... drank every drop to punish herself for her fib, for she was not in the least thirsty, and to drink a fairly large cupful of water when you are not thirsty is somewhat of an ordeal. Yet the memory of that draught was to be very pleasant to Rosemary. In after years it seemed to her that there was something sacramental about it. ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... decades of Titus Livy, and that he had read some parts of these volumes. This he asserts with an air of truth that commands belief; he told the same tale to Cardinal Orsini, and to many more, and to all in the very same words, so that I think this is no fib of his. What more do you want? This statement of his, and his serious countenance, cause me to give some credence to him. For it is a very good thing to be misled in a matter of this kind, out of which coin ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... but, unfortunately, timid swimmers are too apt to lose their Heads as well as their feet. Some of the lady visitors are Beautiful Swimmers, and their Divers Charms excite universal admiration. Many of these fair Amphitrites are so constantly in or on the water that it would hardly be a Fib to call them Amphibious. Their husbands and brothers are, I regret to say, not so much On the Water, preferring something a trifle stronger semi-occasionally, if ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... stories which he had either heard of or invented, and poured out with unceasing volubility, and so often that he believed them all true. But the Ballantyne family had no great faith in his veracity, when it suited his convenience to fib, exaggerate, or prevaricate, particularly when excited by his own lucubrations, or the waggery of his more intellectual neighbors and companions. He had a seat in the centre, which he always occupied, and a stool for his deformed feet and legs; they all rose ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... "I didn't mean that way. I meant that when you try to fib you always do it so badly that one sees right through you. Now, acknowledge that you wouldn't ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... singular appellations which might well baffle impertinent curiosity. The name of one was "the Gimblet," another "Crack Crib," a third, the "Magician," a fourth, "Cherry coloured Jowl." The tallest of the present company was called (as I before said) "Spider-shanks," and the shortest "Fib Fakescrew;" Job himself was honoured by the venerabile nomen of "Guinea Pig." At last Job explained the cause of my appearance; viz. his wish to pacify Dawson's conscience by dressing up one of the pals, whom the sinner could not recognize, as an "autem bawler," and so obtaining him the benefit ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and, with all her nonsense, I believe she's honest. Besides, what interest could she have to be otherwise? To be sure, she didn't give me the true reason for the incognito; but that's nothing; she's just the woman to tell a useless fib, and reserve the truth for important occasions only—or ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... has the means," said Mr. Masters, who was aware that if he told his wife a fib on the matter, she would learn the truth from his senior clerk, Mr. Samuel Nickem. Among the professional gifts which Mr. Masters possessed, had not been that great gift of being able to keep his office and his family distinct from ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... stripe, given as a reward and an incentive, would be to me a talisman. I decided that I'd keep it in a place where I could rush to look at it whenever I needed encouragement to go on being a soldier. If I wanted to sneak myself out of trouble with a fib, or be snappish to Father or cattish to Di, or say "damn," or bang a door in a rage, it seemed to me that I should only have to think of that little triangle of black cloth and gilt braid to be suddenly as good as gold, all the way through to ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... world that it costs me from Thirty to Forty Thousand!" [1717: Forster, i. 213.] So that here is the Majesty of Prussia, who beyond all men abhors lies, giving orders to tell one? Alas, yes; a kind of lie, or fib (white fib, or even GRAY), the pinch of Thrift compelling! But what a window into the artless inner-man of his Majesty, even that GRAY fib;—not done by oneself, but ordered to be done by the servant, as if that ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... At the cows. At the prick and spare not. At the lottery. At the hundred. At the chance or mumchance. At the peeny. At three dice or maniest bleaks. At the unfortunate woman. At the tables. At the fib. At nivinivinack. At the pass ten. At the lurch. At one-and-thirty. At doublets or queen's game. At post and pair, or even and At the faily. sequence. At the French trictrac. At three hundred. At ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... bravado perhaps ... at having wasted so much money.... To try and forget that money I had sewn up, perhaps ... yes, that was why ... damn it ... how often will you ask me that question? Well, I told a fib, and that was the end of it, once I'd said it, I didn't care to correct it. What does a man ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... see the telegram, she was prepared to say that she had torn it up, as an excuse not to show it to Basil, on second thoughts the affair appearing to be Somerled's business. Somerled did not, however, make the request, and Aline was spared an extra fib, at which ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... manlike, demanded her confidence before she had made up her mind to own she had any to bestow; therefore nothing came of it but vexation of spirit; for it is a well-known fact that, on some subjects, if boys will tease, girls will fib, and both maintain that it is right. So Dolly whetted her feminine weapon, and ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... thirty years, mind, though she could have added somewhat to the figure without risking a fib. She said something else, a something that didn't sound exactly like a blessing; and, in a sudden fit of rage, started from her seat, sprang across the room, tore the offending Saint from the nail from ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... Tom, adding humbug to cruelty. "You would be nothing but a sham!—A live dishonesty! A jackdaw in peacock's feathers!—I am sorry, Letty, your own sense of truth and uprightness should not prevent even the passing desire to act such a lie. Your fine dress would be just a fine fib—yourself would be but a walking fib. I have been taking too much for granted with you: I must bring you no more novels. A volume or two of Carlyle is ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... "Where is he?" and when she said, "If you mean Harry Goward—I don't know," I was prepared to believe her without evidence. She looked too pretty to doubt. Besides, I cannot say that I have ever caught Aunt Elizabeth in a real fib. She may be a "charmian," but I don't think she is a liar. Yet ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... Expect me to fib to you. Of course I talked him out of it, and told him not to bother about it. First of all that it wasn't up to him yet, and if it was, I was still ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... joined Mathieu's children, and could not hear what he said, he implored the young man to come with him. In a gasp he told the dreadful truth—Valerie was dying. Her daughter believed her to be in the country, but that was a mere fib devised to quiet the girl. Valerie was elsewhere, in Paris, and he, Morange, had a cab waiting below, but lacked the strength to go back to her alone, so poignant was his grief, so great ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... France, nor (assuredly) in Padua, where there is no zest, but much decorum, in the practice of religion. To see her in church was, as it were, to see a child in her mother's lap—able to laugh, to play, to sulk and pout, ah, and to tell a fib, being so sure of forgiveness! No secret too childish to be kept back, no trouble too light; the mustiness of the season's oil, the shocking price of potherbs, the delinquency of the milliner's apprentice who had spoiled a breadth of silk. She could grumble at her husband, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... keep it secret—I wouldn't have minded telling him a fib about a little thing. But he made it so ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... incorrigible. You ought to have said that I sang better than I danced, and the fib would have pleased me immensely; we women like to hear ourselves praised for accomplishments we don't possess. No, my dear, rule art out of the cast and substitute advertisement. Did you notice a dowdy ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... Pao-ch'in. "Don't be humbugging us!" she remarked. "I know well enough that you are not likely, on a visit like this, to have left any such things of yours at home. You must have brought them along. Yet here you are now again palming off a fib on us by saying that you haven't got them with you. You people may believe what she says, but I, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... of laughter, Codrus! round thee break, Thou unconcern'd canst hear the mighty crack: Pit, box, and gallery in convulsions hurl'd, Thou stand'st unshook amidst a bursting world. Who shames a scribbler? break one cobweb through, He spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew: 90 Destroy his fib or sophistry, in vain, The creature's at his dirty work again, Throned in the centre of his thin designs, Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines! Whom have I hurt? has poet yet, or peer, Lost the arch'd eyebrow, or Parnassian sneer? ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... discovery, sliding over it some quite trivial remark; and presently Mrs. Carkeek regained her composure. But I own I felt disappointed in her. It seemed such a paltry thing to be disingenuous over. She had deliberately acted a fib before me; and why? Merely because she preferred the kitchen to the pantry tap. It was childish. 'But servants are all the same,' I told myself. 'I must take Mrs. Carkeek as she is; and, after ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... mamma says she'll punish, She must do it, or she tells A fib, as Sister Annie Told "a story" 'bout the bells; And if mamma tells a fib, Then surely children will, And what a fearful thing, Our home ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... man did not seem at all put out by the threatening language of his questioner. "I should be telling a fib," answered he calmly, "if I were to tell you that, being in my own room and hearing you quarrelling, I did not hear every word of what you ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... that I know more of the world than she does; since what I know of the world beyond this happy corner of it I learned when I was a mere child. But though we laugh, I can remember a good deal. I have heard polished gentlemen lie, at a pinch, like the proverbial pick-pocket, and pretty ladies fib as well as servant-girls. Of course, I do not mean to say that as many ladies as servant-girls tell untruths. But Eleanor would fain believe that the lie which Solomon discovered to be "continually on the lips of the untaught" is not on the lips of those who "know ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... don't mean to say so! You're tellin' me a little fib, ain't you? [Hugging and kissing the child.] Lord, child, I could just eat you up, eat you right up. Mr. Fleischer, I'm goin' to keep this boy. This is my boy. You're my boy, ain't you? An' how's ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... sold. The kind gentleman and saint, whose name was Nicholas, restored these three children to life. It is said that once he lost his temper, and struck with his fist a gentleman named Arius; but the story-teller does not believe this, for he thinks it is a fib, made up long afterward. How could a ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... of a reasonable misapprehension to attain a justifiable end. Consider the position analogous to that of one of Her Majesty's Ministers catechized by an impertinent demagogue. No fibs, you know—only what a truthful person tells instead of a fib! ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... niece, uncle told you a fib; Mr. Talboys is at home. And observe! until I came to Font Abbey, he was here three times a week. You admit that. I come; your uncle knows I am not so unobservant as you, and Mr. Talboys ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... crime. This stealing is a very serious offence; but, as you are a pretty girl! we'll suspend judgment, in hopes you will do better for the future." We have often heard that justice was blind. What a fib to say so! ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... be seen that Bud's little fiction in the hearing of Ben was not the proper thing, and, as it turned out, Bud was mighty sorry for his apparently innocent fib before the end of the day, or ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... Another (truly pathetic). Felix ill (the dear pet, how sorry his grandchildren will be to hear it). Gatty in mischief (when is she ever out of it?) Schillie worked the most of all (and what has she got to do besides?) Very merry tea (what a fib, when we have had no tea this month). Sybil so amiable (yes, quite mawkishly so). Our dear captain (good me! what a monody). The good Smart (perfect epitaphs over them all, pity they are not in rhyme). Well, June, ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... done. Helen showed her that she guessed wrong here and there, and smiled at her prejudices; and Miss Clarendon smiled again, and admitted that she was prejudiced, "but every body is; only some show and tell, and others smile and fib. I wish that word fib was banished from English language, and white lie drummed out after it. Things by their right names and we should all do much better. Truth must be ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... "please don't trample on me. But really, it wasn't all fib. Jack does do things with a pencil—other things besides maps and working profiles, I mean. Won't you come over and let me do the honors of the studio?"—with a grandiloquent arm-sweep meant to include the construction camp in general and the "dinkey" ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... only to assist "Red," but absolutely to do his work. It is strange how in some things honest people can be dishonest without the slightest compunction. I knew boys at school who were too honorable to tell a fib even when one would have been just the right thing, but could not resist the temptation to assist or receive assistance in an examination. I have long considered it the highest proof of honesty in a man to hand his street-car fare to the ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... Drop so clear, Pip and Trip and Skip that were To Mab, their sovereign, ever dear, Her special maids of honour; Fib and Tib and Pink and Pin, Tick and Quick and Jill and Jin, Tit and Nit and Wap and Win, The train that wait ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... hour or so of solitary shopping, and had the things I bought carried straight into my own room, for I had given out that I had a sick headache, and wanted to sleep—a fib so delicate, that it seemed almost conscientious, besides being worth forgiving on account ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... to lie, but he might then have made his first assay had he had a fib at his tongue's end; as he had not, he gloomed ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... one more fib among so many couldn't matter, so I said you were. Heaven forgive me. By-the-by, are you really Dutch, or is that ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... a replenished purse, and from that time became a portrait-painter. If the poor fellow had been the veriest dauber, you, Eusebius, would have sat to him twenty times over, and have told all the country round quite as great a fib as he did the governor, that he was a very Raffaelle in outline, and Titian in coloring. And what shall the "recording angel" do? Poor fellow! he had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... Suleiman-bin-Daoud, and clung there, fanning himself. Suleiman-bin-Daoud bent his head and whispered very softly, 'Little man, you know that all your stamping wouldn't bend one blade of grass. What made you tell that awful fib to your wife?—for doubtless she ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... take me down to Miss Ashton,—and there is no such thing as keeping anything away from her, for you know how she hates what she calls a 'prevarication,'—that I just had my choice, to drink that nasty stuff, or to betray the Demosthenic Club, or to tell a fib, and have my walking-ticket given me, so I opened my mouth wide, and swallowed one swallow, then was going to turn away my head, but Miss Palmer held the tumbler tight to my lips, as I have seen people do to children when they were giving castor oil. ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... girl, and wrote me a letter; if Burney said she would write, she told you a fib. She writes nothing to me. She can write home fast enough. I have a good mind not to let her know that Dr. Bernard, to whom I had recommended her novel, speaks of it with great commendation, and that the copy which she ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... capable workmen's mouths. All this is Pagan, and arose thus. The Trojans had Oriental imaginations, and feigned that their Palladium, a wooden statue three cubits long, fell down from heaven. The Greeks took this fib home among the spoils of Troy, and soon it rained statues on all the Grecian cities, and their Latin apes. And one of these Palladia gave St. Paul trouble at Ephesus; 'twas a statue of Diana that fell down from Jupiter: ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... not lost!" exclaimed David, in what he tried to make a fearless tone; but Polly, as well as he himself, knew it to be a fib, spoken only to ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... always anxious after something about Somebody. He'll keep company with Anybody to find out Everybody's business; and is only at a loss when this head stops his pursuit, and Nobody will give him an answer. It is from these four heads the fib of each day is fabricated. Suspicion begets the morning whisper, the gossip Report circulates it as a secret, wide-mouthed Wonder gives Credulity credit for it, and Self-interest authenticates that, as Anybody may ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... very hungry. Mrs. Jewkes came in immediately, and was so rejoyced to find me alive, that she asked with great Good-Humour, where I had been? and how my Petticoat came into the Pond. I answered, I believed the Devil had put it into my Head to drown my self; but it was a Fib; for I never saw the Devil in my Life, nor I don't believe he hath any ...
— An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews • Conny Keyber
... was so manifestly for the interest of Austria, that she was fearful that France would not accede to it. Since she knew that the matter was already arranged and settled with the French court, this was a downright lie, though the queen probably regarded it as a venial fib, or as diplomacy. ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... ghosts and with Toms when you stoop—and pick it up and hurl it promiscuously in the direction of the footsteps, and quaver, in a voice that belied its message, "Go away, Tom Hamon! I can see you,"—which was a little white fib born of the black urgency of the situation;—"and I'm not the least bit afraid,"—which was most ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... her new friend. When asked casually in conversation as to her maiden name, she had not blushed as she answered the question with a falsehood. When, unfortunately, the name of her first husband had in some way made itself known to Clara, she had been ready again with some prepared fib. And when she had recognized William Belton, she had thought that the danger to herself of having any one near her who might know her quite justified her in endeavouring to create ill-will between Clara and her cousin. 'Self-preservation is the first law of nature,' she would have said; ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... I heard"—here the little widow remembered the fate of Ananias and Sapphira, and stopped short before she told such a tremendous fib. ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... earth; and there he is, and will be, till the Red Man gives him back his power for the happiness of France. These others say he's dead. Ha, dead! 'Tis easy to see they don't know Him. They tell that fib to catch the people, and feel safe in their hovel of a government. Listen! the truth at the bottom of it all is that his friends have left him alone on the desert island to fulfil a prophecy, for I forgot to say that his name, Napoleon, means ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... time Nino had recognised the propriety of temporising; that is to say, of letting the baroness's fib pass for what it was worth, lest the discussion of the subject should further offend Hedwig, whose eyes wandered irresolutely toward him, as though she would say ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... what 'twas about. Poor fellow, 'twill be dreadful hard for him, too. He was here this mornin' and I said Frances had been called away sudden and wouldn't be back to-day. And I said you would be away all day, too, Hosy. It was a fib, I guess, but I can't help it if it was. You mustn't see him now and you mustn't talk with me either. You must clear off that tray the first thing. We'll have our talk to-morrow, maybe. We'll—we'll see the course plainer ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... ed her by the thro at and yell ed, swear to me thou nev er wilt re veal my se cret, or thy hot heart's blood shall stain this mar bel fib or; she gave one ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... part in the ceremony in order to perform pirouettes and pigeon-wings (so to speak) before the backgammon-player of the tropics. "If Aunt Lyddy forgets, after all," said Jane, anxiously, "and does mention Florida, why, I've told a fib for nothing." Jane had informed Mrs. Rhodes that the Bateses had lost their youngest child at Jacksonville, and so could not bear the slightest mention of the South; though she knew perfectly well that the youngest child of the Bateses was a lusty youth of eighteen, ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... a pretty word," said Rhoda, pursing her lips. "Say a fib, next time.—Nonsense! Not a bit of it, Phoebe. We had been ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... so obviously disappointed that her determination gained strength; she was surprised at her own mendacity when she explained the utter impossibility of leaving the office, and told a circumstantial fib about a title that had to be closed with people from out of town. The more she talked the more panicky she became at thought of being for hours alone with this forceful, this magnetic, this overwhelming person. Strange, in view of the ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... or from hearsay. The mountain is the boast of the villagers as if it were a work of theirs and one is not so sure, however high one may esteem the plain-spokenness and reputation for truth-telling of the natives, whether they do not fib, now and then, to the honor and glory of their mountain. Besides being the wonder of the valley, the mountain affords actual profit; for whenever a company of tourists arrives to ascend the mountain the natives serve as guides; and to have been a guide, to have ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... gain, for instance, by the fib he had just told me? On second thoughts this night he coolly apprised me that he had some idea of sounding the electors. So, my meal ended, we went into the tapestry room where, the night being sharp, a pleasant ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Mrs. Cornelius Drinkwater—you know her mother was a second cousin to the Marquis of Balencourt and the family has a beautiful chateau near Nice. Of course we'll stay there part of the time——" A very little fib like that, Isobel had decided, could hurt no one! She had lain awake at night, staring into the half-darkness of her room, picturing herself sauntering beside Aunt Maria through long hotel corridors, to the Opera, to the ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... to tell a lie in order to avoid a scolding. Nothing is more unfortunate, nothing is more easy for an ordinarily good, but misunderstood man, than the tendency to fib about little things, if he feels in his heart that his wife will scold,—that she will fail to see the point. It wounds his self-respect to have to do so, yet he selects the minor evil as he sees it, he sacrifices his manhood in the interests ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... she'd fib about it," Woods went on, "and I finally axed her what she'd take, an' she said nothin' less than fifty dollars cash down would interest her, as she had a winter cloak to lay in, an' shoes for three women, an' ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... had caused the whole affair by her magic arts, but who had forgotten, in the excitement of the moment, that an eclipse of the moon, especially if entirely unexpected, is likely to attract very general attention. Jaqueline could not bear to tell a fib, especially to a king who had been so kind to her; besides, fibbing would not ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... "You fib in a good cause, but you cannot deceive me; I read your thoughts, but I am very forgiving, and I am resolved that we shall have a pleasant ride to the hotel together. Now, entertain me, tell me about that war, of which ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... hurt me awfully ever since," replied Jennie, with a toss of her head; "and then I believe you told me an awful fib." ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... answered. "Let us be frank. I used never to tell the truth under any circumstances, when I was a girl, but Giovanni—my Giovanni—did not like that. Do you know what he did? He used to cut off a hundred francs of my allowance for every fib I told—laughing at me all the time. At the end of the first quarter I positively had not a pair of shoes, and all my gloves had been cleaned twice. He used to keep all the fines in a special pocket-book—if ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... unconcerned canst hear the mighty crack: Pit, box, and gallery in convulsions hurled, Thou stand'st unshook amidst a bursting world. Who shames a scribbler? break one cobweb through, He spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew: Destroy his fib or sophistry, in vain, The creature's at his dirty work again, Throned in the centre of his thin designs, Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines! Whom have I hurt? has poet yet, or peer, Lost the arched eyebrow, or Parnassian sneer? And has not Colley still his ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... came the others from the window. Meg, in fact, could not keep Cecile d'Aubepine back any longer from hindering such shocking impropriety as out tete-a-tete. We overheard her saving her little girl from corruption by a frightful French fib that the gentleman in black was Mademoiselle de Ribaumont's ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... give up, declaring it to be the most fun they had had "in a coon's age," which was really a boys' bravery fib, and finally the machine drew up within a hundred and fifty ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... respect." It was as manful as possible, but it was still the false note—as it had to be to convey so sorry a statement. He knew everything, Strether more and more felt, that he thus disclaimed, and his little punishment was just in this doom to a second fib. What falser position—given the man—could the most vindictive mind impose? He ended by squeezing through a passage in which three months before he would certainly have stuck fast. "Mrs Pocock will probably be ready herself to answer any enquiry you may put ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
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