"Perjure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in bribing everybody to perjure themselves. Maybe we all had it in for Catherine, ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... trifling sum they would swear to any thing. Nevertheless, although they do not hesitate to call upon God and the Prophet to witness the most flagrant untruths, they will not support a falsehood if put to a certain test. When required to swear by a favourite wife, they refuse to perjure themselves by a pledge which they esteem sacred, and will either shrink altogether from the ordeal or state the ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... answer": then explaining, "Many things you may ask me, but I will tell you nothing truly that concerns my revelations; for you might compel me to say things which I have sworn not to say; and so I should perjure myself, which you ought not to wish." This explains several statements which she made later in respect to her introduction to the King. She repeated emphatically: "I warn you well, you who call yourselves my judges, that you take a great responsibility ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... the person who accompanied her into that empty house; but I do not acknowledge that I killed her. She was alive and well when I left her, difficult as it is for me to prove it. It was the realization of this difficulty which made me perjure ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... unscrupulous for acquittal, and both, having industriously coached their witnesses, contend against each other in deceiving the court by every artifice of which they are masters. Witnesses on both sides perjure themselves freely and with almost perfect immunity if detected. At the close of it all the poor weary jurors, hopelessly bewildered and dumbly resentful of their duping, render a random or compromise verdict, or one which best expresses their secret animosity ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... the lack of uniformity not only in popular belief, but in the teaching provided for the public. First from the same work of [A]pastamba, in 2. 11. 29. 9-10 it is said that if a witness in court perjure himself he shall be punished by the king, "and further, in passing to the next world, hell" (is his portion); whereas "(the reward) for truth is heaven, and praise on the part of all creatures." Now, let one compare first ib. 2. 5. 11. 10-11: "Men of low castes are reborn in higher castes ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... perjure yourself, as you will if I but remove my mask. I tell you, sir, that in spite of all the fine qualities you imagine me to possess, I am a vision that would horrify you to ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... great barrister, Mr. Allewinde, is endeavouring to make that unfortunate and thoroughly disconcerted young man in the witness box, swear to a point diametrically opposite to another point to which he has already sworn at the instigation of counsel on the other side,—and thereby perjure himself. Never mind the bustling of eager, curious countrymen; never mind those noisy numerous policemen with their Sunday brass-chained caps; push on through them all, make your way into the centre ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... not object to an educational and property test, but let the law be so clear that no one clothed with State authority will be tempted to perjure and degrade himself by putting one interpretation upon it for the white man and another for the black man. Study the history of the South, and you will find that, where there has been the most dishonesty in the matter of voting, ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... BECAUSE YOU HAVE PROMISED TO DO SO.—If a seam opens between you now it will widen into a gulf. It is less offensive to retract a mistaken promise than to perjure your soul before the altar. Your intended spouse has a right to ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... Newcastle-on-Tyne corporation of weavers decreed that any member of the corporation who should call his brother "mansworn" should incur a forfeit of 6s. 8d. "without forgiveness." To manswear comes from the Anglo-Saxon manswerian meaning to swear falsely or to perjure oneself. Among the men of note of this period mention must be made of Ralph Dodmer son of Henry Dodmer of Pickering who was a mercer and Lord Mayor ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... his little sharp voice, "please to explain to Abbe Gabriel, that he may perjure himself as much as he thinks fit, but that the Civil Code is much less easy to violate than a ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... us to admit the patent fact that their marriage no longer exists as a reality. Let us have done with a system which makes a mockery of our divorce courts. I have the utmost sympathy with those who denounce the light way in which men and women perjure themselves to obtain release, but I affirm that the whole system is, in the main, so based on legalisms, so divorced from morality, that the resultant adulteries and perjuries are what every student of human nature must inevitably expect, however much he may regret ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... with the offences for which Vivie was on trial; prepared to swear to anything; to swear he arranged the conflagrations; that Miss Warren had really been in London when witness had seen her purchasing explosives at Newmarket (both stories were equally untrue). Bertie Adams only asked to be allowed to perjure himself to the tune of Five Years' penal servitude if that would set Vivie free. Yet at a word or a look from ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... Domain," etc. 1124. Also see next Footnote.] In fact, the many official reports describe with what cleverness the claimants to these great areas forged their papers, and the facility with which they bought up witnesses to perjure for them. Finding it impossible to go back of the aggregate and corroborative "evidence" thus offered, the courts were frequently forced to decide in favor of the claimants. To use a modern colloquial phrase, the cases were "framed up." In the case of Luis Jamarillo's claim to eighteen thousand ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... any body, elected or not, I admit they have the same right to do it that twelve jurymen would have, against the sworn and uncontradicted testimony of a hundred witnesses, to bring in a verdict directly against the evidence and perjure themselves. I suppose we have the physical power to commit perjury here, when we have sworn to support the Constitution. We might admit a man here from Pennsylvania Avenue, elected by nobody, as a member of this Senate; but we would commit ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... be, while unenlightened; but not in our times. A state of mind which will intend one fraud, will, upon occasions, intend a thousand. He that upon one emergency will lie, will be supplied with emergencies. He that will perjure himself to save a friend, will do it, in a desperate juncture, to save himself. The highest Wisdom has informed us that He that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much. Circumstances may withdraw a politician from temptation to any but political dishonesty; ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher
... enough to give their votes as became 'em, and to stand the browbeating of the lawyers, who came tight enough upon us; and many of our freeholders were knocked off; having never a freehold that they could safely swear to, and Sir Condy was not willing to have any man perjure himself for his sake, as was done on the other side, God knows; but no matter for that. Some of our friends were dumbfounded by the lawyers asking them: Had they ever been upon the ground where their freeholds lay? Now, Sir Condy being ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... the druggist, "a juror who takes his oath in a murder case, must know little or nothing of it. Men would not be accepted if for a week or month they had listened to combative sermons against the prisoner. And you certainly wouldn't have a juror perjure himself, would ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... and Catherine both perjure themselves by marrying? What about their religious vow, which had been given to God? Also on this matter we might cite Luther's numerous statements and expository writings, but we prefer to quote again ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... is not an easy matter to detect such a thief or to convict on evidence when he is arrested and brought to trial. A cattle thief seldom works alone, but associates himself with others of his kind who will perjure themselves to swear each ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... of it, thou false knave, and double traitor! thou art worthy of thy lord. There is no lie, however absurd and improbable, which he can invent, that thou wilt not support. Thou art ready now to perjure thyself for him; but let him place little reliance on thee, for thou wilt do the same thing for ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... he was a prolific and generous liar. He lied not to deceive, but to entertain. There was a kind of noble charity in his lying. He would gladly perjure his soul to speed an hour for any good friend. His was the fictional imagination largely exercised in the cause of human happiness. Now and then he became the hero of his own lies, but he was generally willing to divide the honors. His friends ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... power of God to bring it about, that the angles of a triangle taken together shall amount to anything else than two right angles, so it is not within the compass of Divine omnipotence to create a man for whom it shall be a good and proper thing, and befitting his nature, to blaspheme, to perjure himself, to abandon himself recklessly to lust, or anger, or any other passion. God need not have created man at all, but He could not have created him with other than human exigencies. The reason is, because God can only create ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... "False girl, perjure not thy soul," and he strove to release himself from her grasp. "Unclasp thine arms, Francis Stafford, and hearken to a father's ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... will stay with you, if you wish me to; but marry Duffel, I never will! Force me to? No, father, you cannot! You may drive me from your house; you may turn me off and disown me, but you cannot make me perjure myself before God at the altar. No, father, I will obey you in all else; in this I cannot, and will not. If I were to go and forswear my soul in the solemn rites of marriage, my adored mother would ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... be up to?" muttered Greg. "He threatened a libel prosecution one day last month. Can it be that he has found people who can be bribed to perjure themselves, and that he is going to make his ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... 1910—everybody now swears he saw it. He has to perjure himself: otherwise he'd be accused of having no interest in great, inspiring things that he's ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... "Perjure not thyself," interrupted the Norman, "and let not thy obstinacy seal thy doom, until thou hast seen and well considered the fate that awaits thee. This prison is no place for trifling. Prisoners ten thousand times more distinguished than thou have ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... was his unlucky day. His sincere desire and honest endeavour to perjure himself were baffled by a circumstance he had never foreseen nor indeed ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... that hollowness is so often found at the core of their life. Lying and stealing are all but universal. It is said in our District in South India that the regular price of a court witness is two annas (four cents); and he stands ready to perjure himself to any extent for this paltry sum. The ordinary Hindu seems too often to have a predilection for falsehood and uses truth with rare economy! There, dishonesty and petty larceny are foibles too frequently condoned because too generally ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... more excruciating. Neoclides shrieked, howled, sprang towards the foot of his bed and wanted to bolt, but the god laughed and said to him, "Keep where you are with your salve; by doing this you will not go and perjure yourself before ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... length of four or five miles. Every tourist knows the story of the Iron Mask; few are perhaps aware that in the horrible prison in which Louis XIV kept him for seventeen years, Protestants were also incarcerated, their only crime being that they would not perjure themselves, in other words, feign certain beliefs ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... anybody of the direct and shameless methods of Madame Beattie, willing to ask the most intimate questions, make the most unscrupulous demands. He remembered the young clerk who had wanted to perjure himself for his sake. ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... perjure herself with the assertion that she had done nothing of the kind. She then persuaded him to the half-belief that his child was not only no nuisance to the house, but its positive delight; and she earnestly talked him out of ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... have been made,—in Mississippi, for example,—with the "understanding" clause, hold out a temptation for the election officer to perjure and degrade himself by too often deciding that the ignorant white man does understand the Constitution when it is read to him, and that the ignorant black man does not. By such a law, the state not only commits a wrong against its black citizens; it injures the morals of its ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... thy eloquence, now 'tis time. Despatch; From Antony win Cleopatra. Promise, And in our name, what she requires; add more, From thine invention, offers: women are not In their best fortunes strong; but want will perjure The ne'er-touch'd vestal: try thy cunning, Thyreus; Make thine own edict for thy pains, which we Will ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... girl's flight,—or her attempt. One of the governing sisterhood was here to arraign him for it, or at least prevent an open scandal. Yet he was resolved; and seizing this last straw, he hurriedly mounted the stairs, determined to do battle at any risk for the girl's safety, and to perjure ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... "Letitia, my dear, don't perjure yourself," says John. "You know I speak the truth. A last word, Luttrell." He is standing behind his sister as he speaks, and taking her arms he puts her in a chair, and placing her elbows on the table, so that her pretty face sinks into her hands, goes ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... this trial, when my brother pressed me and threated me thus to perjure myself, I abhorred it and spat in his face. There was none more firm—nor one half so firm as I—against him. But oh, the Duke and the terror—and to be in a ring of so many ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... guilty; as usual, Malcolm's penetration had not deceived him. She had been most favourably impressed with the good-humoured giant, with his honest face and kindly blue eyes; but Verity, a brown slip of a girl with big solemn eyes, how was she to perjure herself by pretending that she was attracted by such a ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... ignorance, fear, and superstitions of their fellow-countrymen. They know that so long as they confine their criminal operations to Italians of the lower class they need have little terror of the law, since, if need be, their victims will harbor them from the police and perjure themselves in their defence. For the ignorant Italian brings to this country with him the same attitude toward government and the same distrust of the law that characterized him and his fellow-townsmen at home, the same Omerta that makes it so ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... money! why, if I were a man I would not sell one jot of liberty for mountains of gold. What! tie myself in the heyday of my youth to a person I could never love, for a price! perjure myself, destroy myself—and not only myself, but her also, in order that I might live idly! Oh, heavens! Mr Gresham! can it be that the words of such a woman as your aunt have sunk so deeply in your heart; have blackened you so foully as to make you think ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... my friend. I drop the veil over my heart. You will understand me better hereafter. I shall not marry. That legal divorce is invalid. I could not perjure my soul by vows of fidelity toward another. Patiently and earnestly will I do my allotted work here. My better hopes lie all in the ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... Treasury, and Chief Commissioner of Police. NANK. But where are they? KO. There they are. They'll all swear to it—won't you? (To Pooh-Bah.) POOH. Am I to understand that all of us high Officers of State are required to perjure ourselves to ensure your safety? KO. Why not! You'll be grossly insulted, as usual. POOH. Will the insult be cash down, or at a date? KO. It will be a ready-money transaction. POOH. (Aside.) Well, it will be a useful discipline. (Aloud.) Very good. Choose your fiction, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... promise you this, Don Vegal? I speak only the truth, and I should perjure myself were I to take an oath to ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne
... has friends worth the name, they'll perjure themselves, too!" cried Amy boldly. "They'll establish an alibi, they'll invent a murderer for Plant, they'll do anything for a man as persecuted and ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... if I say in tersest shape possible, that some of the men in this country have to forge, and to perjure, and to swindle to pay for their wives' dresses? I will say it whether you forgive me ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... in a voice eloquent of the struggle through which he had passed, "I would not perjure myself to prolong my own miserable existence another day, but God will forgive a sin committed to save another's life. Upon your head be it, Carteret, and ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... is? The true way to enter polities is none other at any time than to deliberately choose a higher stand and methods. Trickeries are easier and sometimes lead to a kind of success: if our objects were sordid, we might descend to demeaning hypocrisies, we might cheat, we might thieve, perjure, and be puppets, and perhaps so win our way to power; we might think we could use these to better ends, though that doctrine succeeds but rarely;—and perhaps what we might achieve may appear to you of some value, even of ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... antiquity into notice. There is little to be added here to what is in the sketch, concerning its influence over the people, and the use of it as a blessed relic sought for by those who wished to apply a certain test of guilt or innocence to such well known thieves as scrupled not to perjure themselves on the Bible. For this purpose it was a perfect conscience-trap, the most hardened miscreant never having been known to risk a false oath upon it. Many singular ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... throw their darts And sore the good malign Perjure their conscience, stain their hearts, To gain their foul design. Yet shall right triumph at the end; And virtue fortune ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... scholasticism, the enemy which he considered himself born to slay, and there was war to the knife between him and all upholders of Scotus and Aquinas. The monks of the Charterhouse, who died the death of martyrs rather than perjure themselves, win no meed of praise from Erasmus—they were, forsooth, schoolmen; and the noble Friars-Observants who, when threatened with a living tomb in the river Thames, for the same cause, calmly replied that the road to heaven was as near ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... answered a well-dressed woman, "I can answer for myself and the other ladies; though I never saw the lady in my life, she need not be shy of us, d—n my eyes! I scorn to rap [Footnote: A cant word, meaning to swear, or rather to perjure yourself] against any lady." ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... told before. And tak good hiede also therfore 7610 Upon what forme, of Avarice Mor than of eny other vice, I have divided in parties The branches, whiche of compainies Thurghout the world in general Ben nou the leders overal, Of Covoitise and of Perjure, Of fals brocage and of Usure, Of Skarsnesse and Unkindeschipe, Which nevere drouh to felaschipe, 7620 Of Robberie and privi Stelthe, Which don is for the worldes welthe, Of Ravine and of Sacrilegge, ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... perjure themselves with the same ease, that they are just as merciless, just as brutal and cunning as their European colleagues, has been proven on more than one occasion. We need only recall the tragedy of the eleventh of November, 1887, known as ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... the key of the safe, unsuspected by the manager or even his wife, and a man for whom Mrs. Ireland was willing to tell a downright lie. Are there many men for whom a woman of the better middle class, and an Englishwoman, would be ready to perjure herself? Surely not! She might do it for her husband. The public thought she had. It never struck them that she might have ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... to come within my doors. Rash, disobedient boy! You know my disposition, and you have seen the emotion with which this dilemma has shaken my soul! I But be it on your own head that you have incurred obligations which I cannot repay. I will not perjure myself to defray a debt contracted against my positive and declared principles. I never will see this Polander you speak of; and it is my express command, on pain of my eternal malediction, that you break with ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... more than I can bear; but I will not perjure my soul to save myself from any fate it pleases God ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... Each man of us to run before Another, still in Reformation, Give dogs and bears a dispensation? How will Dissenting Brethren relish it? 630 What will malignants say? videlicet, That each man Swore to do his best, To damn and perjure all the rest! And bid the Devil take the hin'most, Which at this race is like to win most. 635 They'll say our bus'ness, to reform The Church and State, is but a worm; For to subscribe, unsight, unseen, To an unknown Church-discipline, What is it ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... steps through Tenth Street to Broadway, stopped and gazed for a moment on the graceful spire of the church before whose altar Nan would soon stand and perjure herself for money. How could she! He had long felt that in every true man's religion was a supreme belief in himself—in a woman's, faith in some one else. He knew that she believed in him, not in the man to whom she was surrendering herself. And yet she wished ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... If you question her you'll simply drive her to perjure herself. Wherein after all does it concern you to know the truth? It's the girl's ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... he will say that the Reverend and respectable Mr. Hawkfield is better than the picturesque Monsieur le Maire, and that a wedding cake from Gunter's is preferable to the curdled cheese of Valdeauvau. He would perjure his little soul to atoms for ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... They knew me; they knew I would not lie in such a case, they could not help but sense the sincerity of my loathing. They knew Cockney, also. They knew he was the sort to spy and perjure—a good many of them were that sort themselves!—and as soon as I paused for breath, this man and that began to recall certain suspicious acts of Cockney he had noticed. Aye, they believed me, and the curses heaped on Cockney's head were awful ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... perceiving what tyranny had invaded in the Church, that he who would take orders, must subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which, unless he took with a conscience that would retch, he must either straight perjure or split his faith, I thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the sacred office of speaking, bought and ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... deliberately laid her arm across Nan's bowed shoulders. There was nothing to do or say, she would only make things worse by any protest now, and yet Betty was bitterly grieved and offended. If Nan had done wrong this public method of making her either confess or perjure herself she ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... thine office quickly, Sir Shaveling! or by the Piper that played before Moses—" The oath was a fearful one; and whenever the Baron swore to do mischief, he was never known to perjure himself. He was playing with the hilt of his sword. "Do me thine office, I say. Give him his passport ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... The sam day was sett on the pelere in Chepe iij. [men; two] was for the preuerment of wyllfull perjure, the iij. was for wyllfull perjure, with paper sett ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various
... on a Pharisaical air, and thank God that we are not like those wicked Italians and Germans who have no scruple about swallowing slave grown sugar. Surely this sophistry is worthy only of the worst class of false witnesses. "I perjure myself! Not for the world. I only kissed my thumb; I did not put my lips to the calf-skin." I remember something very like the right honourable Baronet's morality in a Spanish novel which I read long ago. I beg pardon of the House for detaining them with such a trifle; ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... honest and discreet men under an oath to assess fairly and equitably, and that any advantage each of them might expect in lessening his own tax by augmenting that of the proprietaries was too trifling to induce them to perjure themselves. This is the purport of what I remember as urged by both sides, except that we insisted strongly on the mischievous consequences that must attend a repeal, for that the money, L100,000, being printed and given to the ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... exclaiming in violent agitation: "An oath binds me to return to Tanis to inform Pharaoh how the leaders of the people received the message with which I was sent forth. Though my heart should break, I cannot perjure myself." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... King, Lords and Commons, in Parliament assembled, swept Poyning's despotic Law from her Statute Books, and relinquished FOREVER all right and title to interfere in the local affairs of Ireland, only to perjure herself subsequently, by creating rotten boroughs and dispensing titles and millions of gold, for the purpose of controlling those very same affairs, not only more effectually than ever, but with the further view of diverting all the resources ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... be able to judge not only of their conflicting nature, but of the different spirit which animates them. Lady Burton writes from her heart, reverently, as a good woman would write of the most solemn moments of her life, and of things which were to her eternal verities. Would she be likely to perjure herself on such a subject? Miss Stisted writes with an unconcealed animus, and is not so much concerned in defending the purity of her uncle's Protestantism as in vilifying her aunt and the faith to which she belonged. ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... Lucullus. It is abhorrent to my soul. What, can I thus be doubly a hypocrite? Would you ask me to perjure my immortal soul to the world and to my God? Better to die at once by the severest tortures that ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... well as words, and even a deeper relation to reality than any other tongue or dialect of province or people, and that acquiescence in her wishes would be for him an unrighteous abuse of his function. We know a conscientious artist on the organ who would no more perjure his instrument than his lips, but go to the stake sooner than turn his keys into tongues to captivate a meretricious taste or transform one breath of the air under his fingers into sympathetic lying, though thousands should be ready to resound their delight. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... reward seeker—a man who will ingratiate himself into the company of gentlemen. If he gets into a private game of cards he reports a gambling game and has gentlemen arrested. He is a general spy and sneak—a man who will go into court and perjure himself for a bribe, and he has made trouble for many a good fellow. He has hired witnesses, perjurers, at his beck and call. He is always up to some game. He is, in short, a lying, miserable rascal; that is what he is, and I ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... all his bitterness, dared not cross-examine—Mr. James told you that he had himself advised her to take these walks at night. Do you believe him? Do you think a respectable tradesman—I may almost call him a professional man—would come into the box and perjure himself on such a subject? Hardly. It would be too much to expect. I do not think that even my learned friend will ask you to say that Mr. James has committed perjury, though I have no doubt at all that Lewis would like to have ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... to Charles (March 26, from Kirkwall) implored that Prince "to be just to himself,"—not to perjure himself by signing the Covenant. The voice of honour is not always that of worldly wisdom, but events proved that Charles and Scotland could have lost nothing and must have gained much had the king listened to Montrose. He submitted, we saw, to commissioners sent to him from Scotland. Says ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... the nation, Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher, and the monks of the Charterhouse, mistaken, as we believe, in judgment, but true to their consciences, and disdaining evasion or subterfuge, chose, with deliberate nobleness, rather to die than to perjure themselves. This is no place to enter on the great question of the justice or necessity of those executions; but the story of the so-called martyrdoms convulsed the Catholic world. The Pope shook upon his throne; the shuttle of diplomatic intrigue stood still; ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... pointing, with a gesture of dismissal, to the door. "Go back to him who sent you! If he will insult me, let him do it to my face! If he will perjure himself, let him forswear himself in person. Or, if you come on your own account," she continued, flinging prudence to the winds, "as your brethren came to Philippa de Luns, to offer me the choice you offered her, I give you her answer! If I had thought ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... apprehension for the result. They were abhorrent to every principle instilled into me from my youth and every practice of my life, and I did not believe it possible that the man existed who would so basely perjure himself as to swear to the truth of any such accusations. In this conviction I am informed I have ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... 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 understanding; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget |
