"Defamation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... client was in a position to prosecute the two forgers who had been employed to compass the ruin of an honest family, whose only crime was poverty. He ended his speech by an appeal for costs in all the suits, and for compensation for loss of time and defamation of character. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Presidency of the United States? During his canvass (and he is expected to "run," not merely to "stand") he will have from his own party a support that should make him blush, and from all the others an opposition that will stick at nothing to accomplish his satisfactory defamation. After his election his partition and allotment of the loaves and fishes will estrange an important and thenceforth implacable faction of his following without appeasing the animosity of any one else; and during his entire service his sky will be dark ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... mollified by his defamation of his people, "I dare say they are not so much to be blamed after all. And," with a little, quick laugh at her sister, "as Joyce says, my beauties are still unknown to them; they will be delighted ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... of its various masters. Haste and ignorance, united to wealth and vanity, are a rich mine for the sensali. To such collectors America—not to speak of Europe—owes many of its galleries of great names, to the very natural astonishment and skepticism of the spectators and the defamation of great reputations. Many of these purchases are the speculations of couriers, who, having artfully inoculated their employers with a taste for originals, take care to supply the demand, greatly to the benefit of their own pockets and the gratitude of those with whom they bring their masters ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... was unwilling to go in criticizing her one-time friend. In fact her sense of fairness recoiled at the ridicule and defamation heaped upon Horace Greeley in the campaign. "I shall not join with the Republicans," she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "in hounding Greeley and the Liberals with all the old war anathemas of the Democracy.... My sense ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... this foolhardiness will one day bring as pretty a brigantine as ever sailed in the narrow seas, to condemnation; and then will there be rumors abroad, and characters cracked, till every lover of gossip in the Americas shall be tired of defamation." ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the Twelve Tables, on the contrary—so careful to attach capital punishment to a very few crimes only—have included in this class of capital offences the offence of composing or publicly reciting verses of libel, slander, and defamation, in order to cast dishonor and infamy on a fellow-citizen. And they have decided wisely; for our life and character should, if suspected, be submitted to the sentence of judicial tribunals and the legal investigations of our magistrates, and not ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... come here and freely urge it. And yet, with a free platform, where is the human being who cares to argue the question? Where is the man who presents himself decently, and proffers a word of reasonable argument against our cause? I have yet to see that man. Instead, we have blackguardism, defamation, rowdyism, profanity; we have all the indications that hell from beneath is stirred up against this divine Convention, for it is divine—it takes hold of heaven and the throne of God! (Hisses). Hiss, ye serpents! ye ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... estimate of the man, we must carefully distinguish between the Espronceda of legend and the Espronceda of fact; for a legend sprang up during his own lifetime, largely the result of his own self-defamation. Like many other Romanticists, Espronceda affected a reputation for diabolism. He loved to startle the bourgeois, to pose as atheist, rake, deposer of tyrants. Escosura sums up this aspect of his character by ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... ridiculous. He is a physiognomist, and is captivated by pleasant looks. In a certain cause, in which a boy brought an action for defamation against his schoolmaster, Campbell, his counsel, asked the solicitor if the boy was good-looking. 'Very.' 'Oh, then, have him in court; we shall get a verdict.' And so he did. His eyes are always wandering about, watching ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... "if you imagine me a hireling scribbler for the purposes of defamation or of flattery, you as little know my situation as my character. My subjects shall be my own, and my satire shall be general. I would as much disdain to be personal with an anonymous pen, as to attack an unarmed man in the dark with a ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... with a true man in music. They pretend to be shocked, as though they had come across something improper. The spirit of their shyness, which originally served to conceal their own impotence, now attempts the defamation of other people's potency. Defamatory insinuations and calumny find ready acceptance with the representatives of German Philistinism, and appear to be at home in that mean and paltry state of things which, as we have seen, ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... likely their masters would desire any more prayers to be offered up at the shrine of their prophet, for Christians so illiberal and irreligious. Of all the vices of which these mahommedan priests were guilty, and by all accounts they were not a few, slander and defamation appeared to be by far the most general. Never did they hear a mallam speak of his neighbours in terms of common respect. According to his account they were all the vilest creatures under the sun, not one escaping the lash of his censure. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... live woman at this moment existing in English society, Miss L—— ingenuously replied, "Oh dear! that she'd never thought of that: that she only knew it was a celebrated dramatic name, and so she had put it into her book." Sancta Simplicitas! I should think I might sue her for libel and defamation. ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... seems to me that if what he says is false, the proper name for it is calumny, defamation of character; and such a slanderer ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... respect was, under a regime of tonsorial politics, to invite personal disaster! Nothing apparently was too cringing or servile to show how submissive the people were to the mastery of Rosas. Private vengeance and defamation of the innocent did their sinister work unchecked. Even when his arbitrary treatment of foreigners had compelled France for a while to institute a blockade of Buenos Aires, the wily dictator utilized the incident to turn patriotic resentment ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... regarding my life have been told, and must be refuted. I have written to Mrs Lawrence demanding a letter from her, clearing my personal character, or giving her the alternative of appearing in court to answer the charge of defamation of character. I have also written to the church committee requesting them to meet me here in my apartments to-morrow, and explain their demand ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... into an anecdote: it now received a new integration it must be some fresh publication of personal memorabilia; and these having reference to human creatures, must always be presumed to involve more evil than good—much defamation true or false—much doubtful insinuation—much suggestion of things worse than could be openly affirmed. So arose the word: but the thing arose with Suetonius, that dear, excellent and hard- working 'father ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... man," said the foreman. When the jury retired, it was felt that she had cleared her character; when they reentered the room with their verdict, it was known that she had been awarded three millions damages for its defamation. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... of character, when they were attacked by the accusers, took energetic measures in self-defence. A gentleman of Boston, when "cried out upon," obtained a writ of arrest against his accusers on a charge of defamation, and laid the damages at a thousand pounds. The accusers themselves now took fright, and many who had made confessions retracted them, while the accusations themselves fell into discredit. When governor Phipps was recalled in April, 1693, and left for England, the witchcraft ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... is "the creature," that is, humanity, the mind of man, human reason; it is also "the infamous Venus," or the flesh; finally, "all divinities of Rome, Greece, Persia, India, and every pagan people, are the gods of Masonry." This is merely indiscriminate defamation which is without force or application, and the writer evidently knows nothing of a defined cultus of Lucifer existing in the Lodges of the Fraternity. So also when he elsewhere states that sexual excesses are sometimes accompanied in Masonry by Eucharistic profanations, he ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... was bred an apprentice to gorgio law, and of course ought to stand up for it, whenever I conscientiously can, but I must say the gypsy manner of bringing an action for defamation is much less tedious, and far more satisfactory, than the gorgiko one. I wish you now to clear up a certain point which is rather mysterious to me. You say that for a Romany chi to do what is unseemly with a gorgio is quite out of the question, yet only the other day I heard you singing ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... representatives. Then what a harassing definition of proper Christian Toleration had come even from Cromwell's favourite Independents, Messrs. Owen and the rest, with their twenty fundamentals! Add the difficulties arising from the nature of some of the current heresies themselves, as tending directly to the defamation of his government, the subversion of laws and institutions, and the disturbance of ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... consider that for a satisfactory defamation of character the code won't charge you more than five or six hundred francs, and the tax on a ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... customary of late, in reaction against the defamation of Raleigh in the eighteenth century, to protest that gold was not his chief aim in the Guiana enterprise, but that his main wish, under cover of the search for gold, was to form a South American colony for England, and to open out the west to general commerce. With every wish to hold ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse |
