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Hearsay   /hˈɪrsˌeɪ/   Listen
Hearsay

noun
1.
Gossip (usually a mixture of truth and untruth) passed around by word of mouth.  Synonyms: rumor, rumour.



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"Hearsay" Quotes from Famous Books



... differ from him, neglects to observe the royal decrees, threatens even the clergy and friars, and tyrannizes over the entire community. It may be noted that Messa bases most of these accusations on report and hearsay, without citing any definite authority for his statements. Messa accuses the governor of neglecting his duties, and failing to provide for the defense of the country, while spending the royal revenues lavishly; and even assails Fajardo's personal character. He ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various

... Hargreaves, Ross—refer casually to this early era and are valuable for local identification, but quite worthless for authentic data on the period preceding their own lives. This does not impair the value of their records of the time in which they lived. It simply means that they had no data but hearsay on ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut

... ago this species was regarded as so nearly extinct that a doubting ornithological club of Boston refused to believe on hearsay evidence that the New York Zoological Park contained a pair of living birds, and a committee was appointed, to investigate in person, and report. Even at that time, skins were worth all the way from ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... have joined in the same "hue and cry" with their worthy compeers. The reasons were evident in their case. They knew I was invading their dearest worldly interests. There were others who only knew me from hearsay. Why should they become my enemies? It was because I held in my possession secrets, whose exposition would make many of them tremble. It would be to them like the interpreted handwriting upon the wall. Hence they ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green

... material to the life and history of William, sixth Earl of Douglas, are not written from hearsay, but were chronicled within his lifetime by one who saw them and had part therein, though the part was but a boy's one. His manuscript has come down to us and lies before the transcriber. Sholto MacKim, the son of Malise the Smith, testifies ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... the struggle began. Dick knew well enough, from hearsay, the method of "breaking down" a wild horse. He knew that the Indians choke them with the noose round the neck until they fall down exhausted and covered with foam, when they creep up, fix the hobbles and the line in the lower jaw, and then loosen the lasso to let the horse breathe, and resume ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne

... prosecutor; as it was found that the monk's recollection must have extended back considerably upward of a century. [265] The claim of Balthazar was negatived. His proofs that Christopher Columbus was a native of Cuccaro were rejected, as only hearsay, or traditionary evidence. His ancestor Domenico, it appeared from his own showing, died in 1456; whereas it was established that Domenico, the father of the admiral, was living upwards of thirty years ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... we do? They say the Queen is going to order work so that the men can get wages; but they don't say if she is going to do anything for the women. She's a woman; but then I suppose a Queen couldn't any way know, except by hearsay, that women really starve; and women do for men first anyhow. But I will work any way at anything, if only you'll find it for me to do—if only ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell

... time before this been despatched to Macao for the protection of the China trade. I speak of course from hearsay, as what I am about to relate occurred just before I came into existence; indeed, of many other subsequent events which I shall venture to describe I cannot be said to have any very vivid recollection, although present ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston

... matters into your own hands to some extent; and we shall give you a few hints as to what is best to be done under such circumstances. It is hardly to be supposed that your man is in ignorance of the best ground, either from experience or hearsay, and it is only after you get there that our instructions can possibly come into operation. If you are obliged to take a perfect greenhorn, we know of no other course than to order him to keep in the wake of some other boat, but that at such a distance as not ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior

... more than a celebrated name. Outside of learned or theological circles people no longer read him. Such is true renown: we admire the saints, as we do great men, on trust. Even his Confessions are generally spoken of only from hearsay. By this neglect, is he atoning for the renewal of glory in which he shone during the seventeenth century, when the Jansenists, in their inveterate obstinacy, identified him with the defence of their cause? The reputation ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... same. Do you think it a reasonable thing, dear Laura, that my uncle should keep us so strictly, that we must be beholden to hearsay, to know a young gallant is in the ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... I have said, to the last year or two of my five years of life in the place of my birth. Further back my memory refuses to take me. Some wonderful persons go back to their second or even their first year; I can't, and could only tell from hearsay what I was and did up to the age of three. According to all accounts, the clouds of glory I brought into the world—a habit of smiling at everything I looked at and at every person that approached me—ceased to be visibly trailed at about that age; I only remember myself ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... practiced in my own neighborhood about seven years ago. Those who were about to begin knew nothing about drainage, except from hearsay knowledge that had crept into the community. Not a single book upon the subject was consulted or even inquired for. Even now they are as rare in farmers libraries as the classic poets. Farmer A. wished to drain and consulted ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... going to, sir; but one must make a beginning. Well, then, Master Fred, it's only hearsay, and you know what hearsay is. Some one heard one of the prisoners say that he saw Sir Godfrey go down wounded, and young Master Scarlett jump across him, fighting like a madman; and then people were ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn

... majority of Old-School physicians, only know Hom[oe]opathy by hearsay, and look upon it through the dim glasses of the prejudices of the past. None of those who have abused Hom[oe]opathy have previously examined and studied the matter thoroughly, because all those who have conscientiously done this, have soon been converted to the truth ...
— Allopathy and Homoeopathy Before the Judgement of Common Sense! • Frederick Hiller

... his name to the "Persian Letters," but that he was far from disowning a book of which he did not think he had cause to be ashamed. He then insisted that the Letters should be judged after reading them, and not on hearsay. Thereupon the Cardinal read the book, was pleased with it and with its author, and withdrew his opposition to the latter's election to the Academy.[Footnote: Nouvelle Biographie Universelle. Voltaire (Siecle de Louis XIV. liste des ecrivains). D'Alembert, ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... wishing for any thing in this world, after all I've seen in it—but I'll say nothing; it would be a folly to be getting myself ill-will in my old age. Jason did not marry, nor think of marrying Judy, as I prophesied, and I am not sorry for it; who is? As for all I have here set down from memory and hearsay of the family, there's nothing but truth in it from beginning to end: that you may depend upon; for where's the use of telling lies about the things which every body knows as well as ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... Commedia, a copy of which, as he made it at the request of two English bishops whom he met at the council of Constance, was doubtless sent to England. Later we find Dante now and then mentioned, but evidently from hearsay only,[53] till the time of Spenser, who, like Milton fifty years later, shows that he had read his works closely. Thenceforward for more than a century Dante became a mere name, used without meaning by literary sciolists. ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... result, due to the masterly defence by Erskine and Gibbs, aroused a tumult of joy in the vast crowd outside such as London had rarely seen. Hardy afterwards asserted that, in case of a conviction, Government had decided to arrest about 800 more persons.[333] This is mere hearsay; but it has been fastened upon by those who seek to father upon Pitt the design of reviving the days of Strafford and "Thorough." A fortnight previously Watt, once a government informer, was convicted at Edinburgh of a treasonable plot to set the city on fire, sack the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... people? I feel myself on doubtful ground. What was said at the moment I know only by hearsay, for I was incapable of attending to anything for three months. There was an enormous amount of gossip and of talk; there were, I think, many hints and smiles; there were hundreds of people who knew the truth, but were careful not to submit their versions ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... in him: but my imagination is at a loss in presence of those vague charges, which have commonly been brought against me, charges, which are made up of impressions, and understandings, and inferences, and hearsay, and surmises. Accordingly, I shall not make the attempt, for, in doing so, I should be dealing blows in the air; what I shall attempt is to state what I know of myself and what I recollect, and ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... of traditional folklore came out, but only as hearsay, in court. M. Cheval, Maire of Cideville, deposed that a M. Savoye told him that Thorel had once been shepherd to a M. Tricot. At that time Thorel said to one of two persons in his company: 'Every time I strike my cabin (a shelter on ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... only a random shot, as she did not know Billings or any other town save by hearsay, but it made a bull's-eye. Susie knew it by the startled look which she surprised from him, and Smith could have throttled her as ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart

... upon hearsay only that he prescribed. He had been to all these places, and tested them perhaps, which would account for his serene demeanour and that even health which he seemed to enjoy. He had traveled without perturbment, it would ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... the beginning of 1903, and has not until now appeared in any form. In it my purpose has been to present a character-portrait of Mrs. Eddy, drawn from her own acts and words solely, not from hearsay and rumor; and to explain the nature and scope of her Monarchy, as revealed in the Laws by which she governs it, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... disabled at Southwold by a wound which had prevented his being knighted by the Duke of York for his daring in the excitement of the critical moment, a fact which Mistress Anne never forgot, though she only knew it by hearsay, as it happened a few weeks after she was born, and her father always averred that he was thankful to have missed the barren and expensive honour, and that the worst which had come of his exploit was the royal ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... intended for the south-western Cassiterides. To get round to the river on the banks of which your home stands would oblige me to run far towards the cold regions, into waters which I have not yet visited—though I know them pretty well by hearsay. On another voyage I may accomplish it, but not on ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne

... it was, without some squirt of a lawyer pointing his finger at me and trying to make me change the story; or some other limb of the law interrupting me with objections that it was incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial, not the best evidence, hearsay, a privileged communication, and a lot of other balderdash. This is what took place, just as I have stated it; and this is all the Vandemark Township, Monterey County, or Iowa history there was in the battle so far as I know—except that Iowa had more men in that ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick

... went into the stores on Main Street; never patronized the picture-show, and even had these glimpses been afforded, they'd have been pretty unsatisfactory. There was only one real way of discovering what the creature was like; discovering for yourself, that is—and hearsay evidence is notoriously unreliable; that was to buy a ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... grandmothers we were very fortunate: They spoiled us to our hearts' content. Grandma Deborah's methods I know only from hearsay, for I was very little when she died. Grandma Rachel I remember distinctly, spare and trim and always busy. I recall her coming in midwinter from the frozen village where she lived. I remember, as if it were but last winter, the immense shawls and wraps which we unwound ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... I would give something to be sure on this point, one way or the other. Let us wait till the dance is over, and observe them more carefully. Horensagen ist halb gelogen! Hearsay is half lies.' ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... storms is this of old Hugo! and what is very remarkable, not apparently founded on any great familiarity of his own with this troublesome article. For when Pietro asserts the "ever more frequency" of tempests in Sicily, the old man professes to know nothing more of the fact, but by hearsay. "So it is said."—But why he assumed this storm to be unseasonable, and on what he grounded his prophecy, (for the storm is still in full fury), that it would be profitless, and without the physical powers common to all other violent sea-winds in purifying the atmosphere, we are left in ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... be," she said; "we have nought but hearsay of other lands. If we ever knew them we have ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris

... in the cold January weather, and each day he ferreted further, seeking out the realities behind the censorship that lay heavy now even over the wires. By phone, by gossip, by hearsay and by know-how he got the stories behind the story—the real horrors that ...
— Prologue to an Analogue • Leigh Richmond

... mind. If these were punchers from the Bar T outfit he was indeed in a bad way, for no one knew better than Larkin (by hearsay) the wild stories told of Beef Bissell's methods in ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan

... the forbidding desolation of the land, the vast and dangerous rivers, the certainty of starvation on the way, the risk of arriving after winter had set in on the Cascade Range—all matters of which they themselves spoke by hearsay. All the great West was then unknown. Moreover, Fort Hall was a natural division point, as quite often a third of the wagons of a train might be bound for California even before the discovery of gold. But Wingate and his associates felt that the Oregon immigration for that year, ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... speaking confessedly from hearsay, that in 1530, the Emperor Charles V. being at Bologna, Titian was summoned thither by Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, using Aretino as an intermediary, and that he on that occasion executed a most admirable ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... them to make revelations, true or false. Eye-witnesses to the commission of crime were not needed in the Spanish courts of that day. The confession of an accused person secured his conviction, even though not made in the presence of a judge. Indirect and hearsay evidence were accepted, and such things as writs of habeas corpus and the plea of double jeopardy were unknown ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... in which to be interested. She had spent a glorious half-term holiday with her family in their flat at Naples, and was delighted to describe every detail of her experiences. She chatted about her relations till Lorna knew Mr. and Mrs. Beverley and Vincent absolutely well by hearsay, though she had never met them in the flesh. The accounts of their doings gave her a peep of home life such as she had not ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... means ask Miss Kavanagh to write to me. Why should she trouble herself to do it? What claim have I on her? She does not know me—she cannot care for me except vaguely and on hearsay. I have got used to your friendly sympathy, and it comforts me. I have tried and trust the fidelity of one or two other friends, and I lean upon it. The natural affection of my father and the attachment and solicitude of our two servants are precious and consolatory to me, but I do not look round ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... home, the New England agents stopped at Flushing, Stamford and New Haven, to collect all the evidence they could against Governor Stuyvesant. The hearsay stories of the Indians they carefully picked up. Still the only point ascertained, of any moment was, that Governor Stuyvesant had told an Englishman, one Robert Coe, that if the English attacked him, he should try to ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott

... has always been in the Yeaman family, and very likely to be true, for the reason that an origin not gratifying to the pride of an old house would not have been accepted on the dubious authority of hearsay.] ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton

... was burned on June 29, 1613, when a play called Henry VIII or All is True was being performed. So far as stylistic tests can decide, this was not long after the composition of the play. Sir Henry Wotton, the antiquarian, writing from hearsay knowledge, says that the play being acted at the time of the fire was "a new play called All is True." Shakespeare's scenes in this drama may thus have been his last dramatic work. A praise of King James in the last scene was probably written not later than the rest of the ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... to have their own way, and to be allowed freely to excite and foster revolutionary sentiments. The press, which groaned under the most odious and intolerable censorship, was to be wholly resigned to them. I do not state these facts from hearsay. I happened by chance to be present at two conferences in which were set forward projects infected with the odour of the clubs, and these projects were supported with the more assurance because their success was regarded as certain. Though I had not seen Napoleon since ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... will lead ye into her own and the colonel's praises! and Tourville and Mowbray may be both her vouchers—I, and you, and Belton, must be only hearsay confirmers. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... population a degree of reluctance to labour far exceeding the reality. Those who pay a reasonable price for work, and are punctual in their payments, do not fail to get as many labourers as they require. I assert this not from any vague hearsay, but from various unquestionable and authentic documents, amongst which are the examinations taken by Committees of the House of Assembly appointed to inquire into the causes and difficulties alleged to exist in the cultivation of estates. Whilst the poverty of the planters ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... to explain what riotous living is. I only know, from hearsay, that it is an excellent way to get rid of money. And so this spendthrift king ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum

... porter's cottage, where I will shortly write out the substance of what he has said, and get him to sign it. You will then have far better grounds for interfering between Mr. and Mrs. Manston than if you went to them with a mere hearsay story.' ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... point, and divided the subject among them. Miss Lucy followed these letters closely, and remembered them wonderfully, though (as I afterwards found) she had never seen Bath, and knew no more of the people mentioned than the little hearsay facts she had gathered from ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... torero. He risks his life at every point of the conflict, and it is his coolness, his courage, his dexterity in giving the coup de grace so as to cause no suffering, that raise the audience to such a pitch of frenzied excitement. I speak wholly from hearsay, for I have myself only witnessed a corrida de novillos—in which the bulls are never killed, and have cushions fixed on their horns—and a curious fight between a bull and an elephant, who might have been described as an "old campaigner," in which there was no bloodshed, ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... swore in his blasphemy that he would dethrone him;" and "advocated the very depths of the lowest sensuality." With regard to many statements of a similar kind, equally at variance with truth, in Dr. Cumming's volumes, we presume that he has been misled by hearsay or by the second-hand character of his acquaintance with free-thinking literature. An evangelical preacher is not obliged to be well-read. Here, however, is a case which the extremest supposition of educated ignorance will not reach. Even books ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... that no evidence of any fact shall be received, if a higher degree of evidence of the same fact can possibly be obtained. Hence, a copy of no instrument is admitted, if the original be in existence; no hearsay witness is received, if ocular testimony can be produced. The rigorous examination of every circumstance offered to be proved has excited the surprise of intelligent Protestants. Miracles, which to them seemed proved to the utmost degree of demonstration, have, to their ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... her entrance on October 17, in a new opera, Mercadante's "Elisa e Claudio," which made the hit of the season, largely because of the infatuation of the public for the new singer. Mr. White gives us a description of her (from hearsay and the records) in his article published in The Century ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... course never had any real existence. For that very reason she has been so hard to kill. Nothing is so long-lived as a chimera, nothing so difficult to lay as a ghost. From her first appearance, or rather mention, in literature, Mrs. Grundy has been a mere hearsay, a bugaboo being invented to frighten society, as "black men" and other goblins have been wickedly invented by nurses to frighten children. In the old play itself where we first find her mentioned by name, she ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... had much weight with me in his favour, and that was the word jointure in the taylor's letter, whereas my aunt never had been married, and this Mr Fitzpatrick well knew.——As I imagined, therefore, that the fellow must have inserted this of his own head, or from hearsay, I persuaded myself he might have ventured likewise on that odious line on no better authority. What reasoning was this, my dear? was I not an advocate rather than a judge?—But why do I mention such a circumstance as this, or appeal to it for the justification of my forgiveness?—In short, had he ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... ever were heard of; both of those wherein cities have fought against cities, or nations against nations; while some men who were not concerned in the affairs themselves have gotten together vain and contradictory stories by hearsay, and have written them down after a sophistical manner; and while those that were there present have given false accounts of things, and this either out of a humor of flattery to the Romans, or of hatred towards the Jews; and while ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... have said to Pilate:—Historical truths are merely probabilities. If you had fought at the battle of Philippi, that is for you a truth which you know by intuition, by perception. But for us who dwell near the Syrian desert, it is merely a very probable thing, which we know by hearsay. How much hearsay is necessary to form a conviction equal to that of a man who, having seen the thing, can flatter himself that he has a sort ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... they can safely cross the railroad between trucks of the fast express. Their snouts are so long and thin, it is also claimed that two can drink from a jug at the same time; never having seen it done, however, this is not vouched for, but merely repeated as hearsay. ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen

... things rare, That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems. O! let me, true in love, but truly write, And then believe me, my love is as fair As any mother's child, though not so bright As those gold candles fix'd in heaven's air: Let them say more that like of hearsay well; I will not praise ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare

... and calm,—that the reader could hardly fail to feel that the earnestness of the preacher had its source in the experience of the man, and that his belief in the facts of the spiritual world came from insight, and not from hearsay. His biography confirms this impression. We now learn that he was tried in many ways, and built up a noble character through intense inward struggle with suffering and calamity,—a character sensitive, tender, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... compact of righteousness, we might hesitate to accept The Times' version of British innocence, and we might hesitate to accept Lord Bryce's report on the German atrocities in Belgium, knowing as we do that it is based almost entirely on the hearsay evidence of refugees who would be anxious to distinguish themselves as witnesses from the general ruck of destitution; but it happens that the general charges of German aggressiveness and German brutality ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato

... learnt from the lips of truthful and credible witnesses;" but we must add that the greater part of the kingdoms and towns spoken of by Marco Polo he certainly did visit. We will follow the route he describes, simply pointing out what the traveller learnt by hearsay, during the important missions with which he was charged by Kublai-Khan. During this second journey the travellers did not follow exactly the same road as on the first occasion of their visit to the Emperor of China. They had lengthened their route by passing to the north of the celestial ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... "I have but little regret over it. I have it from hearsay that it is an ugly beast, hairy and horned, with ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... paved with hearsays, sir, and as all this talk of mine is hearsay, if you are in earnest, sir, go and see for yourself. I know you have a kind heart, and they tell me that you are a great scholar, which would to God I was! so you ought not to condescend to take ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... report, for the keepers of the building could not be got to show them, since they contained, as they said, the sepulchres of the kings who built the labyrinth, and also those of the sacred crocodiles; thus it is from hearsay only that I can speak of the lower chambers. The upper chambers, however, I saw with my own eyes, and found them to excel all other human productions. The passage through the houses, and the various windings of the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... Authentic and Impartial Narrative of the Tragical Scene which was witnessed in Southampton County (Virginia) on Monday the 22nd of August last. New York, 1831. (This gives a table of victims and has the advantage of nearness to the event. This very nearness, however, has given credence to much hearsay and accounted for several instances ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... scarcely giveth leisure to the moralist, to say so much, but that he, laden with old mouse-eaten records, authorizing himself (for the most part) upon other histories, whose greatest authorities are built upon the notable foundation of hearsay, having much ado to accord differing writers, and to pick truth out of partiality, better acquainted with a thousand years ago than with the present age, and yet better knowing how this world goeth than how his own wit runneth, curious for antiquities and inquisitive of novelties, ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... about things. If their tempers were worse perhaps their work might be better. They won't use maps or timetables or books of reference. When we move to a new place they pick up what they can about it by hearsay; not one of our lot has the gumption to possess a contoured map or a Michelin guide. They have hearsay minds. They are fussy and petty and wasteful—and, in the way of getting things done, pretentious. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... of evidence upon which many judges look askance—that sort of evidence which is circumstantial and that sort which purely is hearsay. In this connection, and departing for the space of a paragraph or so from the main theme, I am reminded of the incident through which a certain picturesque gentleman of the early days in California acquired a name which ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb

... River, as well as a portion of Lake Michikamau, some years ago was explored and correctly mapped; but the other rivers that flow to the eastward have either been mapped only from hearsay or not at all. Of the several rivers flowing into Ungava Bay, the Koksoak alone has been explored. This river, which is the largest of those flowing north, rises in lakes to the westward of Lake Michikamau. Next to the Koksoak, the George is the ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace

... a witch' in March, 1646-47, which if it actually occurred, forms the first instance of an execution for witchcraft in New England. The quotation here given is the only known authority for the statement, and opens the question whether something probably recorded as hearsay in a journal, may be taken as authoritative evidence of an occurrence.... The fact however remains, that the official records are as our author says, silent regarding the actual proceedings, and it is only by inference that it may be found from these records that the executions took place." ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor

... Religion, striving to maintain itself upon the dogmatic creeds of the past, was rapidly petrifying into a mere "dead Letter of Religion," from which all the living spirit had fled; and those who could not nourish themselves on hearsay and inherited formula knew not where to look for the renewal of faith and hope. The generous ardour and the splendid humanitarian enthusiasms which had been stirred by the opening phases of the revolutionary movement, had now ebbed ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... out and invited him to enter. He knew scarcely two words of the native tongue and she as little English. But he understood well enough what her smiles meant, and her pretty gestures, and he followed her. He sat down on a mat and she gave him slices of pineapple to eat. I can speak of Red only from hearsay, but I saw the girl three years after he first met her, and she was scarcely nineteen then. You cannot imagine how exquisite she was. She had the passionate grace of the hibiscus and the rich colour. She was rather tall, slim, with the delicate features of her ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... Leesboro till the battle of South Mountain. What is said of them, therefore, is not from observation. The incident between Reno and Hayes occurred in the camp of the latter, and could not possibly be known to the author of the regimental history but by hearsay. Yet he affirms as a fact that the Kanawha division "plundered the country unmercifully," for which Reno "took Lieutenant-Colonel Hayes severely though justly to task." He also asserts that the division ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... thousands still tread the earth whom he benefited, and neither class can forgive, for they are of clay. But all those who lived when Washington lived are gone; not one survives; even the last body-servant, who confused memory with hearsay, has departed ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... little boys and girls going to the baths, many of them belonging to the poorer classes; for where there are no swimming baths attached to the school they get tickets free or at a very low rate. About fishing I can only speak from hearsay, for I have never caught a minnow myself, but I have met Germans who are keen anglers, and I have found that they knew every London shop beloved of anglers, and the English ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... Europe, I wonder, have looked about them, have used their sensible independent American brains (our very best characteristic), have left school histories and hearsay behind them and judged the English for themselves? A good many, it is to be hoped. What that judgment finally becomes must depend not alone upon the personal experience of each man. It must also come from that liberality of outlook which is attained ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister

... conscientiously lend my counsel to direct your action on receiving or dismiss- ing candidates. To do this, I should need to be with you. I cannot accept hearsay, and would need to know the circumstances and facts regarding both sides of the [10] subject, to form a proper judgment. This is not my present province; hence I have hitherto declined to be consulted on these subjects, ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... those who give their time in speculating as to whether this one or that one had the insight and the powers attributed to him, but we are able to know for ourselves. Neither are we among those who attempt to lead the people upon the hearsay of some one else, but we know whereof we speak, and only thus can we speak with authority. There are many things that we cannot know until by living the life we bring ourselves into that state where it is possible for them to be revealed to us. "If any man will do His ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine

... clothes on, but they spoke never a word; and as they sat there, the young man's busy brain arrayed before him many and many a scene of death, and sickness, and suffering, and sorrow, and madness, and despair, which, he knew well from hearsay (and he now believed it), had been the terrible result ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... world has ever seen, and in his struggles against the wild, hill tribes he laid the seeds of success for his later wars in Gaul,—wars in which he was to carry the Roman eagles into lands that had only been known by hearsay ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

... written Douglas." Mr. Croker conceives that he has detected an inaccuracy, and glories over poor Sir Joseph in a most characteristic manner. I have quoted this anecdote solely with the view of showing to how little credit hearsay anecdotes are in general entitled. Here is a story published by Sir Joseph Mawbey, a member of the House of Commons, and a person every way worthy of credit, who says he had it from Garrick. Now mark: Johnson's ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... and promised the same thing. So threatening were they, that Dotty was thoroughly scared, and Tod, though not really afraid of arrest, began to think that these men could make things very unpleasant for them. He knew by hearsay of the rough manners and ugly tempers of this particular lot of fishermen. He had heard stories of their dislike for the summer guests, who sometimes visited them out of curiosity ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells

... however, one notable instance of this on record, in the story (as related by Warton, in his History of English Poetry) of the gallant troubadour Geoffrey Rudel, who died for love—and love, too, from hearsay description of the beauty of the ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... this volume has been in the press Sir G. Arthur's Life of Lord Kitchener has appeared, giving a different version of this story and probably the correct one. Walter Kitchener was speaking, I think, from hearsay.] ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... it had first boycotted the fish, he had sent his steamer and purchased it from the company. Now the boot was on the other leg. The Commission and even the lawyers have all told me that they were prejudiced against the whole Mission by hearsay and misinterpretations, before they even began their exhaustive inquiry. Their findings, however, were a complete refutation of all charges, and ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... try to delude us by elaborate sophisms. In such contests the state gives the rewards to others, and takes the dangers for herself. The persons to blame are you who are so foolish as to institute these contests; who go to see an oration as you would to see a sight, take your facts on hearsay, judge of the practicability of a project by the wit of its advocates, and trust for the truth as to past events not to the fact which you saw more than to the clever strictures which you heard; the easy victims of new-fangled arguments, unwilling to follow received conclusions; ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... son (which I published in a previous chapter), and from the fact that he called at Oscar Wilde's house that Lord Queensberry at the beginning did not believe in the truth of his accusations; he set them forth as a violent man sets forth hearsay and suspicion, knowing that as a father he could do this with impunity, and accordingly at first he pleaded privilege. Some time between the beginning of the prosecution and the trial, he obtained an immense amount of unexpected evidence. He then justified his libel and gave the ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... the streets, trying to think things out. His burning desire was to go straight to Eleanor and lay the whole matter before her. But according to his ethics it was a poor sport who would discredit a rival, especially on hearsay. He must leave it to Rose, and let her furnish the proof she said ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... the speaker more particularly. It was not long before he realized that all this high praise was hearsay and that not a single man in Natera's army had ever laid eyes ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela

... middle of one of his confidences about the Italian Court. It was no use. Without stopping to take breath, at once Forepaugh began to tell us the most marvellous theosophical adventures, which he knew not by hearsay, but because he had passed through them himself. We might express an opinion: he stated facts. And it seemed that he had no more intimate friend than Sinnett, and that to Sinnett he had confessed his scepticism, ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... upon the Texan coast, according to Sibley, upon an island or peninsula in the Bay of St. Bernard (Matagorda Bay). In 1804 this author, upon hearsay evidence, stated their number to be 500 men.[56] In several places in the paper cited it is explicitly stated that the Karankawa spoke the Attakapa language; the Attakapa was a coast tribe living to the east of them. In 1884 Mr. Gatschet ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... 300 years after the event in question, is too fallacious and bold. Greece was never concerned with Buddhism, and besides the fact that the classics furnish their few synchronistic dates simply upon the hearsay of their respective authors—a few Greeks, who themselves lived centuries before the writers quoted—their chronology is itself too defective, and their historical records, when it was a question of national triumphs, too bombastic and often too diametrically ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... by hearsay and faith; but now I go where I shall live by sight, and shall be with Him in whose company I ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... mother were shadowy and half-mythical beings of hearsay to her, because just before her birth her father had been murdered from ambush. The mother had survived him only long enough to bring her baby into the world and then die broken-hearted because the child was not a boy whom she might suckle from the hatred in her own breast and rear as ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... inordinate fondness for the dance was the chief vice of the French court. Unfortunately the moral turpitude of the king and his favorites rests upon less suspicious grounds than the revolting stories told on hearsay by the unfriendly writer of the Eusebii Philadelphi Dialogi (Edinburgi, 1574), ii. 117, 118. The "Affair of Nantouillet," occurring just about the time of the Polish ambassadors' arrival in Paris, is only too authentic. The "Prevot de Paris," ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... want no hearsay evidence here; how can you swear that she has had them when you did not see her have them? A. She told me so, and I ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various

... except what you have told him; and I doubt very much whether any boy of his age possesses the capacity to conjure up a very lively feeling of gratitude for an obligation of which he knows nothing except from hearsay. Therefore I hope that you will not allow yourself to worry over any ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... rage, he began to investigate. Gradually he learned the story (from sailors in wine-shops and general hearsay) of the mysterious schooner that had twice saved Code Schofield from actual capture, and had aided him on one ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams

... Brewster never changed a muscle of his serious face nor did his voice have the slightest sign of any other feeling than a reverent desire to help his fellow-man. But the two men knew Sam Brewster by experience as well as from hearsay. ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... the week after the second month of her stay in Roseland. In conversation with her mother, Stella said, "I am really glad I went to Aunt Helen's, for I have lived in two months a year of my life. I have seen so much of a world concerning which I previously knew nothing only by hearsay. I feel it has done me good in many ways. Aunt was kind to me, and made everything very pleasant, and so did her friends. I do say I am glad that I have lived in her world and tasted of its pleasures, because I don't go now on what I hear about that world. I know from my own personal ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge

... insist on matters of hearsay, nor to dwell at any greater length on those afflicting events, I must refer the courteous reader to the history of the times for what followed, it being enough for me to state here that as soon as the news spread of the battle and the victory, the persecuted ran flocking in ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... not speaking from hearsay. I was in France during the week preceding that battle, the most anxious and gloomy period, probably, of the entire war. What I am about to relate is based either on authoritative information gathered on the spot, or on my own observations. In telling it, nothing is ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... and so will you. From the moment I met him, he seemed as one I had known of old. It was Charlecotism, of course; and his signature filled me with presentiment. Nay, though the fire and the swamp have become mere hearsay to me now, I still retain the recollection of the impression throughout my illness that he was to be all that I might have been. His straightforward good sense and manly innocence brought Phoebe before me, and Currie tells me that I had fits of hatred to him as my supplanter, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... in the picturesque and the dramatic. He was only with Zumalacarregui, however, during the latter half of his career, when the forces of the Carlists had already assumed a certain numerical importance, and their resources were on the increase. Of its earlier portion he could speak but from hearsay; and it was during that earlier period that Zumalacarregui had the greatest difficulties to contend with—difficulties in overcoming which he displayed extraordinary talent and perseverance. Besides this, we have always looked ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... that he was damnably proud.' In serious illustration of the charge, Aubrey repeats a tale related by an old attendant, who had seen the Lord High Admiral in the Privy Garden wipe with his cloak the dust from Ralegh's shoes 'in compliment.' Aubrey's description of Ralegh is all hearsay; since he was not born till 1627. He may have been told anecdotes by members of the family; for his grandfather was a Wiltshire neighbour of Sir Carew Ralegh, and he was himself a schoolfellow of Sir Carew's grandchildren. But he was utterly uncritical, ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... the excitement of what was coming, yet knew a touch of fear. He had never been under fire, and knew only from hearsay just what it meant to be in a ship that might be destroyed any instant without the least chance of anyone escaping. In space warfare, there usually just were no survivors. You won and lived—or you lost and were blasted out ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans

... effect that he was born in Virginia cannot be conclusive. "No man's unsupported testimony," he adds, "as to the place of his birth would be taken in evidence in a court of justice, for his knowledge of the event must necessarily be from hearsay or from records." This is silly enough. I did not see the whole article, or learn by what arguments the writer endeavored to substantiate his doubts, if he really had any, as to the true birthplace of the Pater ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... that one can recall experiences of their very early years which they have actually learned from hearsay, from countless repetition ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... probably only got his ideas of "Kesmur" from hearsay) echoed the prevalent opinion by saying, "The women although dark are very comely" (ch. xxvii.). Bernier is enthusiastic: "Les femmes surtout y sont tres-belles," and hints at their ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... since they had last seen her. She felt a need for a reaction of gaiety, after her sadness of the days just past. The Graces fixed their round eyes upon her, upon that Lily who was so thoroughly up in all sorts of things which they knew only by hearsay: men, love. A life fit to kill a horse; and a very nice girl, for all that: a kind of forbidden fruit, pink and fair-haired, soft to the touch; and no jealousy between them, friendship rather, a rare thing, ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... seen; so many of friends, so many of physicians, so many continually of other men, which unless we should believe, we should do nothing at all in this life; lastly, with how unshaken an assurance I believed of what parents I was born, which I could not know, had I not believed upon hearsay -considering all this, Thou didst persuade me, that not they who believed Thy Books (which Thou hast established in so great authority among almost all nations), but they who believed them not, were to be blamed; and that they were not to be ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... for both have made a trial of their strength on the subject of your Memoirs. What Nature did, you had the evidence of your own eyes to vouch for, but what was done by Fortune, you know only from hearsay; and hearsay, I need not tell you, is liable to be influenced by ignorance or malice, and, therefore, is not to be depended on. You will for that reason, I make no doubt, be pleased to receive these Memoirs from the hand which is most interested ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre

... provinces, as in Paris," he said, "you must believe only half of all that you hear. Do not alarm yourself; a piece of hearsay, three leagues away from Angouleme, is sure to be far from the truth. Old Sechard, our neighbor, left Marsac some days ago; very likely he is busy settling his son's difficulties. I am going to Angouleme; I will come back and tell you whether you can return home; your confessions and ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... half explained by the fact that life in general, all round us, was perceptibly more theatrical. And there were other reasons, whether definitely set before us or not, which we grasped in proportion as we gathered, by depressing hearsay, that the French drama, great, strange and important, was as much out of relation to our time of life, our so little native strain and our cultivated innocence, as the American and English had been directly addressed ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... it is not, I reject it. And what am I to go by? My brain. That is the only light I have from nature, and if there be a God, it is the only torch that this God has given me by which to find my way through the darkness and the night called life. I do not depend upon hearsay for that. I do not have to take the word of any other man, nor get upon my knees before a book. Here, in the temple of the mind, I go and consult the God—that is to say, my reason—and the oracle speaks to me, and I obey the oracle. What should I obey? Another man's oracle? Shall I ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... a sweet spectacle to see two middle-aged women, one fat and one lean, stumping the country on a campaign for young love—subjects in which we are versed only by hearsay and a stray novel or so!" I said all this ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... ordinary sense, to do all I can to get you out of the ice again. You know as well as I do that this is impossible at the present time, and that we are compelled to spend a winter here. Some of you know what that means, but the most of you know it only by hearsay, and that's much the same as knowing nothing about it at all. Before the winter is done your energies and endurance will probably be taxed to the uttermost. I think it right to be candid with you. The life before you will not be ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... five or six years of his life there, diligently trading in every big and little thing that had money in it; so we are compelled to assume that many of the folk there in those said latter days knew him personally, and the rest by sight and hearsay. But not as a CELEBRITY? Apparently not. For everybody soon forgot to remember any contact with him or any incident connected with him. The dozens of townspeople, still alive, who had known of him or known about him in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... servants of the post office, travelling over considerable tracts of country, would naturally become the means of conveying local gossip from stage to stage, and of spreading hearsay news as they went along. In this way, and as being the bearers of welcome letters, they were no doubt as gladly received at the doors of our forefathers as are the postmen at our own doors to-day. Indeed, complaint was made of ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde

... little or no esteem; if this be delivered, are either needless or superfluous. What concerneth this requisite in our Author, his lines do everywhere declare the faithfulness and sincerity of his mind. He writeth not by hearsay, but was an eye witness, as he somewhere telleth you, unto all and every one of the bold and hazardous attempts which he relateth. And these he delivereth with such candour of stile, such ingenuity of mind, such plainness ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin

... out upon a remnant of Life's jetsam—that which is submerged, which never comes to the surface unless drawn there by some searching and rescuing hand; that which the home-sheltered never see by daylight, never know, save from hearsay. In the neighboring rectory of Grace Church one dim light was burning in an upper room. The marble church itself looked a part of the winter scene; its walls and pinnacles, already encrusted with ice crystals, glittered fantastically in the rays of the arc-light; beneath them, ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... judges intimidate witnesses in the testimony for souls?" "They introduced them, and intimidated them." "Perhaps you are speaking from guess? or from hearsay? witness from witness? or from a trustworthy man we heard it?" Or, perhaps, "you don't know that at the last we shall proceed to inquire into your own character and investigate it." "Have a knowledge that the judgments of money are not as the judgments of souls. Judgments ...
— Hebrew Literature

... literary men wrote seldom herself, and at her death even caused to be destroyed the greater part of the few notes she had made toward an autobiography. In the present Memoirs Madame Lenormant chiefly relies upon her own personal knowledge of Madame Recamier's life, and upon contemporary hearsay. It is a very interesting book, as we have it, though at times provokingly unsatisfactory, and at times inflated and silly in style. It is not only a history of Madame Recamier, but a sketch of French ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... Chinaman, the waters of the river, the bamboo brakes. Also, it'll do for a study of comparative religions; because, look you, an infidel Chinaman in great distress invoked exactly the saint that he must know only by hearsay and in whom he did not believe. Here there's no room for the proverb that 'a known evil is preferable to an unknown good.' If I should find myself in China and get caught in such a difficulty, I would invoke the obscurest saint in the calendar before Confucius or Buddha. Whether this is ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal



Words linked to "Hearsay" :   indirect, comment, hearsay evidence, rumour, gossip, rumor, hearsay rule, scuttlebutt



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