Use hearsay in a sentence

This, though true in the main, may not have been absolutely correct, even as it was first delivered, and may have been somewhat less accurate as it was reported to Sir Thomas, who perhaps added from hearsay a few errors of his own, like that about Sir James Tyrell's knighthood.

He told me how he and others had looked upon me (from hearsay information), as a "made" or manufactured man, having had a certain impress of opinion stamped on me which I could only reproduce; and what a change took place in his feelings when he found, in the discussion on Wordsworth and Byron, that Wordsworth, and all which that name implies, "belonged" to me as much as to him and his friends.

Whatever is sincerely felt or believed, whatever forms part of the imaginative experience, and is not simply imitation or hearsay, may fitly be given to the world, and will always maintain an infinite superiority over imitative splendor; because although it by no means follows that whatever has formed part of the artist's experience must be impressive, or can do without artistic presentation, yet his artistic power will always be greater over his own material than over another's.

How Pythagoras came by his ideas, whether St Paul was acquainted with all the Greek poets, what Tacitus must have known by hearsay and systematically ignored, are points on which a false persuasion of knowledge is less damaging to justice and charity than an erroneous confidence, supported by reasoning fundamentally similar, of my neighbor's blameworthy behavior in a case where I am personally concerned.

He would not so easily have believed anything against me before, but he was now glad to flatter himself that he had found a reason to do just what he had resolved upon without a reason; and on some slight pretenses and hearsay evidence I was sent to the Tower, where the lady who was my greatest enemy was appointed to watch me and lie in the same chamber with me.

Some minor questions may be put, or kept in controversy, as one writer or another, who regards history as a matter of opinion, not of fact, and relying on tradition or hearsay evidence or on superficial investigation, gives a place to guesswork instead of truth, to historical conceits instead of historical verities.

Having cited these authorities, I shall attempt to submit them to a critical examination, and so eliminate all accretions, hearsay and controversial opinions, and thus sift out what reliable residue is possible.

Even if in single cases the rule of evidence that forbids hearsay evidence works an injustice, yet in the long run it is obvious both that, if hearsay were allowed, litigants would take less trouble to get original evidence, and that much hearsay is thoroughly untrustworthy.

Persons convicted of perjury, forgery, etc., are not to be admitted as legal witnesses, but that the record of their contrition must be produced at the time the objection is made, for the Court mil take no notice of hearsay and common fame in such respect.

Here the persons have nothing of a dim, equivocal hearsay air about them, such as marks in some measure his earlier efforts in comedy.

The lame boy was then three years old, but a few dark memories, no doubt retouched by hearsay, were retained by him of Mad Jack, who in his most sober moments never guessed that he would be known to the ages as the father of the greatest poet of his time.

The interview was conducted laboriously upon both sides in French, and this, together with the fact that he was optimistic, and that Terence respected the medical profession from hearsay, made him less critical than he would have been had he encountered the doctor in any other capacity.

Forster is mainly right in his estimate of Swift's character, and altogether so in insisting on trying him by documentary rather than hearsay evidence, it is equally true that he is sometimes betrayed into overestimates, and into positive statement, where favorable inference would have been wiser.

Its creditors were clamorous; whilst the Executive, turn to which side it would, found itself confronted by threats, reproaches, accusations of slavery and cruelty based upon hearsay, and which, like the annexation that steadily approached, could not be met, because neither of them had yet assumed the evidenced consistency of actual fact.

How was it possible that any great scientific discovery could be made by a self-educated colonial newspaper editor, who knew nothing of European science except by hearsay, when all the great scientific minds of Europe had failed to make the discovery?

She knew of the negotiations concerning the French marriage, as we all did, although only by an indefinite sort of hearsay, and I was sure the half-founded rumors that had reached her ears had long since become certainties, and that her heart was full of trouble and fear of her violent brother.

All persons who undertake to narrate from hearsay things which are supposed to have taken place before they were born are liable to error, and are apt to call in imagination to the aid of memory: and hence it arises that many a fancy piece has been substituted for genuine history.

Besides being incapable, he regarded him as eminently dishonest; as vaunting impartiality while elevating discreditable and improbable hearsay into positive assertion, and fortifying his falsehoods by a pretentious parade of figures and official documents.

Now, for the first time in my life, do I experience the benefits of a sentimental name, which has rather troubled me before, as belonging to a quite unsentimental and commonplace person, and thereby raising expectations, through hearsay, which actual vision dispelled with painful suddenness.

They undoubtedly contain absurdities, they are often full of misinformation, they repeat stories on dubious authority, and sometimes on hearsay, but usually the source of their information is stated, and especially where it is dubious, as if they did not care to state marvels without due support.

Ordinarily this was either for his inferiors, or for those unfortunates who had come to cross purposes with him, or for those who had made blunders costly to him that his most glacial manner was reserved; but every one about the Salamander office knew of it, either by hearsay or by actual experience.

If he has had personal experience, let him write a description of those subjects which he understands; but if he attempts to "make" a book, he must necessarily collect information from hearsay, when he will most probably gather some chaff with his grain.

As I see this scheme now drawn out, simple as it is, the scope of it seems not only far too great for adequate completion by my own labor, but larger than the time likely to be given to botany by average scholars would enable them intelligently to grasp: and yet it includes, I suppose, not the tenth part of the varieties of plants respecting which, in competitive examination, a student of physical science is now expected to know, or at least assert on hearsay, something.

I learn from hearsay (for my mother was mortally afraid of firearms) that the hunting of ducks and bears and men is wonderfully interesting, but I am sure that the man who has never hunted a country school has something to learn of the pleasures of the chase.

It is so large, indeed, that considered as a group or community of men living together it has no sensible degree of homogeneity in any of their material circumstances or interests; nor is anything more than an inconsiderable fraction of the aggregate population, territory, industry, or daily life known to any one of these patriotic citizens except by remote and highly dubious hearsay.

Blaisdell took time for a curious scrutiny and study of Jean, that, frank and kindly as it was, and evidently the adjustment of impressions gotten from hearsay, yet bespoke the attention of one used to judging men for himself, and in this particular case having reasons of his own for so doing.

They rest, however, upon hearsay evidence; and, since conversations repeated rarely bear exactly their original signification, some caution must be given before they are credited: yet, even if true, one can scarcely condemn a man who is forced into an enterprise from which he shrinks, screening himself from all the consequences of defeat, and striving to preserve an inheritance which he might justly regard as a trust, rather than a property.

The DeWitt drawing was done from hearsay evidence, is inaccurate in details, and represents a theater with a movable stage, probably not long regularly used for plays; it gives little idea of the stage, but does afford a good general notion of the interior of a public theater.

They all understood Spanish, although they spoke the language but imperfectly; but when it came to questioning them upon their knowledge of the country which they would be called upon to pass through, they all frankly confessed utter ignorance of it, beyond the fact that from hearsay they understood it to be full of perils of every imaginable description.

The imagination, however, refuses to conceive that a man of serious age and of high functions should have degraded himself to the level of a Peeping Tom in this way; all the French historians, nevertheless, repeat the story though on the merest hearsay evidence.

Even with rude intellects, or minds otherwise occupied, if the dissimilarity is not clearly perceived it is vaguely felt; in default of scientific notions, the simple hearsay caught on the wing, and which seem to have flickered through the mind like a flash of light over a hard rock, still subsists there in a latent state, amalgamating and agglutinating into a solid block until at length they form a massive, refractory sentiment utterly opposed to faith.

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 to them.

Thousands of mourners who had never seen him, who knew only his writings, and judged of the gentleness and courtesy of his nature from these, and from such hearsay reports as passed outward from the privacy of his country home, grieved as for the loss of a friend.

We gain a good deal of knowledge through the atmosphere; we learn a great deal by accidental hearsay, provided we have the mordant in our own consciousness which makes the wise remark, the significant fact, the instructive incident, take hold upon it.

If a courtesan relies solely upon the report of other people (i.e., hearsay) about a man, and goes to him without ascertaining herself whether he possesses good qualities or not, she may either gain or lose pleasure in proportion as he may be good or bad, and therefore this is called a mixed doubt about the gain and loss of pleasure.

It was iron with the blacksmith, and wood with the carpenter, and seeds and soils and the rotation of crops with the farmer, and without at all meaning to exalt himself thereby, he would put the reading of some leisure hour into a few well-chosen words, which seemed like treasures of wisdom to men who had gathered their knowledge by the slow process of hearsay and observation; and what with one thing, and what with another, the minister grew in favor with them all.

Of the underground chambers I can only speak from the report, for the keepers of the building could not be got to show them, since they contained, as they said, the sepulchers 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 thing is, that as a matter of hearsay or conjecture, we make abstractions of particular vices, and irritate ourselves against some particular quality or action of the person we dislike: whereas individuals are concrete existences, not arbitrary denominations or nicknames; and have innumerable other qualities, good, bad, and indifferent, besides the damning feature with which we fill up the portrait or caricature in our previous fancies.

This story of bedlam broken loose, of men gone crazed, by the sudden subversion of all known values and all standards of life, was at first something which had no historian and can be recorded only by way of hearsay stories which do not always tally as to the truth.

He is unlike the majority of psychical researchers, inasmuch as he has not based his knowledge on hearsay, but has actually seen, heard, and felt occult phenomena, both collectively and individually.

For this reason, while the change in my mother was apparent to all who were brought into immediate contact with her, and by hearsay to many who were not, the greater proportion of the populace were of the opinion that every calamity that befell the nation for years to come was attributable, either directly or by inference, to her recklessness and her extravagance in the past.

In describing these sports I shall give no anecdotes of others, but I shall simply recall scenes in which I myself have shared, preferring even a character for egotism rather than relate the statements of hearsay, for the truth of which I could not vouch.

From their way of life, they allowed their hair to grow without being shorn; and the Greeks, who lived far away from them, and knew of them only by hearsay, believed, not only that their hair was long, but that it grew down their backs like the bristles of a hog.

We all now illustrate together, in higgledy-piggledy fashion, or as a vast monotonous mob, our own wonderful period and order, and nothing else; whereby the historic imagination, under its acuter need of facing backward, gropes before it with a vain gesture, missing, or all but missing, the concrete other, always other, specimen which has volumes to give where hearsay has only snippets.

Opinions differ as to his trustworthiness in matters of fact, but it is certain, from his positive manner of recounting the incidents and the actual words of interviews at which he could not have been present, and as to which he is not likely to have had more than hearsay information, that his testimony is to be received with caution.

She had taught him the secret that was seething in his blood, throbbing in his veins, the secret that flushed his cheeks and took away his breath the moment he approached anything in the shape of a woman: the secret which the boy knew by hearsay but not by experience.

The historian is not bound, as the lawyer is, to reject hearsay evidence, because it is his business to ascertain the truth of individual assertions, whilst the lawyer has to think of the bearing of the evidence not merely on the case of the prisoner in the dock, but on an unrestricted number of possible prisoners, many of whom would be unjustly condemned if hearsay evidence were admitted.

Everywhere in the American churches there are signs of a tendency to drop all that rests merely on tradition and hearsay, to cling only to such facts as bide the test of critical search, and such doctrines as can be verified in human consciousness here and to-day.

Inasmuch as special sets could hardly have been designed and erected on such short notice, most of the company's first activities were staged away from the studio, "on location," and Lucinda knew nothing of them save through hearsay.

Now that he, came to think of it, he had more than once been aware of a studied coolness in the master's manner, of a rather ostentatious indifference to the quality of the work he brought to the class: and this he knew by hearsay to be Schwarz's attitude towards those of his pupils in whom his interest was waning.

The single testimony of Matthew the publican for a score of miracles which he is said to have witnessed, confirmed by the hearsay testimony of Mark and Luke, but quite unsupported by the testimony of John the Galilean fisherman, who is also said to have witnessed them.

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.

I know little, except through hearsay, of the last-named lady's proficiency in the saddle, but having frequently witnessed that of the former, and having also been favored with a personal introduction at the gracious request of the Empress, I can unhesitatingly say that anything more superb than her style of riding it would be impossible to conceive.

As the tale generally goes, structural changes are produced in the unborn child corresponding to some mental experience of the mother, usually a vivid impression of strong emotion, but when a given individual is pinned down to sources, it is usually a case of hearsay.

Then again in most human records, when one gets back beyond the third or, at most, the fourth generation, the investigator has to depend on the hearsay evidence of relatives, friends or neighbors, and how vague this generally is can only be appreciated by those who have themselves tried to collect such data.

The communication was, of course, "private;" and it expressed the writer's knowledge, from hearsay, of the "value, merit, and ability" of my book, and the satisfaction it would afford my correspondent, to give it a "handsome an elaborate review in both the widely circulating and reviewing publications with which he had the honor of being connected."

The fair daughter and tall son have lived peaceful, uneventful lives; and though their young eyes may sometimes turn a little wearily toward the mountain barrier, beyond which lies the great busy world, known more to them by hearsay than by actual experience, they are happy, far happier than are most of the men and women in the crowded thoroughfare of the world's cities.

All they know is that we are fighting Germans, who for some incomprehensible reason have declared themselves to be our enemies; that the Germans, by hearsay accounts, are dreadful people who stick babies on bayonets and drop bombs on women and children.

Owing to the shortcomings of our present methods of education, we rarely get taught physiology at school or college, we never thoroughly learn the principles of hygiene, or if we acquire some of them by hearsay, we seldom realize them in such a way as to shape our behavior accordingly.

We all desire that truth should prevail; but that truth must be established by intimate acquaintance with every detail of the building and a knowledge of the latest explorations, and not depend on facts accepted from hearsay, or a desire to establish any preconceived theory.

He would not so easily have believed anything against me before, but he was now glad to flatter himself that he had found a reason to do just what he had resolved upon without a reason; and on some slight pretences and hearsay evidence I was sent to the Tower, where the lady who was my greatest enemy was appointed to watch me and lie in the same chamber with me.

At all events, without the insensibility of this wretch, we speedily agreed to forget the Fleet Rules, and in all our conversations to make as if we had never been there at all, and knew of the place, if at all, then only by hearsay and common bruit and rumor.

The facts which we now purpose to state are not from hearsay, not from one-sided newspapers, nor from partisan historians, but directly from the lips of one who had occasion to visit Confederate prisoners frequently during the war, whose whole soul was in, and with, the Confederate cause, and who could not be, and would not be, by any who knew him, accused of sympathy with the "Yankees," as he usually styles Union soldiers when speaking of them.

Marco Polo, whose celebrated journey was performed during the twenty years closing the thirteenth century, made known the center and eastern extremity of Asia, Japan, a portion of the islands of the Indian Archipelago, a part of the continent of Africa, and, by hearsay, the large island of Madagascar.

Spite of the autobiographic method that leads the casual reader to think that Harte was intimately connected with this early pioneer life and derived the material for his sketches from personal observation and experience, his is, in truth, only hearsay evidence.

Mary had conceived a romantic affection on hearsay evidence for her cousin, Philip of Spain, the son and heir of the Emperor Charles V., a young prince twelve years her junior, whose charms and merits had been grossly overpraised to her by interested persons.

I have good reason to say that the Emperor in his prudence understood this clearly, and that it was only after long deliberation that he chose this marriage, partly making inquiries about all that was needful to learn about her by hearsay, but judging also from her mother of the daughter's noble disposition.

Those who have lived a part or all of their lives in the country know from observation, while those who have spent their days in town know from hearsay or books, that a very large proportion of our birds remain with us only from April to October or later; while yet others, on the approach of winter, come from the north to escape the rigors of an arctic climate, and a considerable number of most interesting species are strictly resident.

The duty was nobly performed, and the army nobly saved; and though those who were not present, and who judge of the battle from hearsay, may be mystified by the circumlocution and vagueness of official reports, those who stayed at Chickamauga know very well that Thomas alone retrieved that disaster and saved Rosecrans's army.

Much of the slang I already knew by hearsay, such as "bulls" for policemen, a "mouthpiece" for a lawyer to defend one when he is "ditched" or arrested; in fact, as I busily scribbled away I must have collected a lexicon of a hundred words or so for future reference.

Numerous deaths attended by unqualified practitioners were certified by qualified practitioners who had probably never seen the cases; and deaths were certified by medical practitioners who had not seen the patient for weeks or months prior to death, and who knew only by hearsay of the deaths having occurred.

Let us explain ourselves, however; not to the police, with whom I, an honest man, decline to discuss such matters, but to the few respectable and conscientious persons who, upon hearsay, or after seeing the performance, allowed themselves to be led away into sharing that opinion, for which, perhaps, the name alone of the guilty poet should have been sufficient refutation.

He suspected, though, that there would prove to be a rider of some sort to her agreement as regarded marrying him, for he had young Cunningham in mind; and he knew enough of Englishmen from hearsay and deduction to guess that Cunningham would interject any obstacle his ingenuity could devise.

Fully aware of the unreliability of much of the material thus placed in my hands, for my own satisfaction I weeded out all stories based upon hearsay, all stories told by unknown persons, all rumors and indefinite statements, and, finally, all stories, no matter by whom told, which were not confirmed by dependable witnesses.

By these mystified and jabbering doctors, whose little-or-no wisdom consists in foolish words of little or no meaning, and dog Latin, or disputes about precedence and the receipt of fees, the laws of vital existence and the astonishing functions of the animal economy, are understood by hearsay and inspiration!

Two men were burned alive, without trial, by the gentlemen of Mobile, just before my arrival there; and no newspaper even alluded to the circumstance, till, many months after, a brief and obscure paragraph, in a northern journal, treated it as a matter of hearsay.

It is not to be wondered at that the pretended wizards and witches should have shrunk from a judicial investigation at a time when all believed firmly in their supernatural powers, and when the examination into the alleged facts was carried on in a manner so different from the procedure of the present day, hearsay evidence of the vaguest description being admitted as proof, and when that failed, torture being resorted to in order to extort a confession.

Entering upon his defense, Sydney, like Russell, denied that he had ever conspired to the death of Charles; nor was he a friend of Monmouth, with whom he had spoken but three times in his life: he objected to the evidence of Howard, which was based upon hearsay, but if such testimony were true, he was but one witness, and the law required two.

This information does not rest on hearsay, or on authority which could excite my distrust: I visited the place at all hours, to ascertain the fact, and have the evidence of my own senses in proof of the assertion, that the women had free egress and ingress at all times.

Strange as it may seem to those who have formed their opinion of him from hearsay, it is not the less true that he is commonly a good conversationalist, and can say well and pointedly what he has got to say, with a wealth of illustration in anecdote, quotation, and proverb.

Sir Andrew Barnard, as far as I recollect from hearsay, at the time, was then in command of the Rifles in Spain; and, as I now remember the story, either he or some other officer of rank, upon being told of the circumstance, remarked that, as Demon was such a smart runner in England, there was very good ground for a Rifleman to use his legs in Spain.

In our day so rapidly are anticipations realized, and sanguine hopes converted into existing facts, one wonderful discovery followed by another, that it is strange to find men possessing any breadth of intellect rejecting truths from hearsay, instead of examining all things and holding fast to the truth.

It is "the imperishable glory of transcendentalism in our country that in the decay and disintegration of the ancient creed," it sounded the high-note "that the soul can in some sense know the object of its worship; that it need not feed on hearsay, and tradition, and arguments, but can have vision."

Sir John Hawkins states this without any reserve; and also relates, on hearsay, that Purcell, coming home late one night, heated with wine, was refused admittance by his wife, and by being kept a considerable time in the street, caught cold, and died in consequence.

They ought to teach the woman to know what love is, and what matrimony is, so that she should not give herself, bound hand and foot, to a contract which she knows by hearsay only, nor enter the dim future guided by paternal, maternal, or religious authority alone.

In the course of the investigation of the facts and rumors surrounding these matters, it was necessary to explore hearsay and other sources of information not admissible in a court proceeding obtained from persons who saw or heard and others in a position to observe what occurred.

This account-though only a piece of hearsay, and as such entitled to no absolute credit-tallied so well with the infrequency of his letters and their lack of warmth, that Phyllis did not doubt its truth for one moment; and from that hour she felt herself free to bestow her heart as she should choose.

Reproach of the most bitter kind was and is deserved by the prejudiced persons who distorted facts and gladly relied upon any hearsay evidence that would seem to square with their theories, and even refused to admit the weight of incontrovertible statistics produced against their rash and windy statements.

It is not a difficult matter to preside with dignity at a trial, preserve order, exclude hearsay testimony, apply the other simple rules of evidence that are ordinarily involved in a case of assault, larceny, burglary or homicide, and instruct a jury as to "reasonable doubt," "good reputation" and the "presumption of innocence" in words of one syllable.

Assuming that the judge have the rectitude of a granite monolith and be impervious to influence of every sort, he is nevertheless compelled when inflicting sentence to depend in large measure upon "hearsay" testimony and evidence that could not possibly be admitted upon actual trial.

Those who know Ireland only by hearsay, or from books, or even from the stage, will be slow at first to appreciate his work; but we who know and love the real Ireland, we, who have wandered through her glens and by her streams, and looked upon her wonderful skies, who have felt within ourselves her sadness, her mirth, and her poetry, must at once acknowledge that in the work of Synge the soul of Ireland has, for the first time, received adequate expression.

Many are familiar, by experience or hearsay, with the specially delicious flavor of food cooked in primitive ways, such as burying the saucepan in a hole in the ground, of clambakes, or of cooking food by dropping heated stones into the mixture, in which cases the closely covered food is slowly cooked at a low temperature.

Why are miracles so constantly performed in holes and corners, in obscure localities, among little knots of ignorant and enthusiastic adherents, attested by the vaguest hearsay evidence of unknown or incompetent witnesses, and apparently under circumstances inevitably calculated to defeat their object and engender doubts in the minds of reasonable and conscientious men.

The uncertain favor of Princes, and the envy of those who judge by hearsay or appearance, without either reason or truth, make even the best sort of court lives miserable, to say nothing of the innumerable temptations, vices, and excesses of a life of pomp and pleasure.

How the race for the Derby Stakes was originally organized is not very well known, but that machinery of some kind existed for collecting the stakes, and handing the amounts won to the winners of them, may be taken for granted; indeed, we know that it was so, but, for lack of authentic information on the subject, it is better not to risk the publication of merely hearsay statements.

Through the ages, the knowledge of sexual and amatory artifices, contraptions, inducements grew and multiplied in such variety, through legend and experiment, through the accretions of poetic myths and hearsay, that a voluminous corpus was achieved.

Moreover, although we are ready to grant that the pathway to our goal is full of pitfalls, marked by the wreckage of old theories, yet we claim that the skeptic or the mystic can know of their existence only by traveling over the pathway himself; for in the world of the inner life nothing can be known by hearsay.

Where there is any doubt or vagueness in my recollection, or where there is hearsay testimony, I state the fact explicitly; otherwise I wish the reader to understand that the incidents happened as I say they happened, and that upon the truth of every statement in this book I pledge my honor as a man and my reputation as a writer.

The name of Kant will always be intimately connected with the word metaphysics, not because he buried himself in it, as some have supposed who only know his system of philosophy by hearsay; but because his labors consisted in forbidding reason to approach this science which is constantly threatening to invade it, and to get the upper hand by putting itself in its place.

Whether she was really persuaded of the holy character of the sinister adventurer who had contrived so cleverly to exploit her credulity, or whether there was in this curious infatuation for an unworthy object a question of hypnotism, combined with the extravagance of a badly balanced mind and imagination, it is difficult to say, especially when one has not followed otherwise than by hearsay the different incidents of this almost unbelievable tragedy.