"Misinterpretation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... misinterpretation, then came back, and gravely said, "No, Sir, be ruled only by your own judgment: or, should my advice have any weight with you, remember it is given from the most disinterested motives, and with no other view than that of securing ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... was in the old Bible. "Well," I said, "if it is in my Bible, I never saw it. Will you please get the text-book and let me see it?" He left the room and soon came stalking in with his Bible open, with all the bigoted pride of the narrow sectarian, who founds his creed on some misinterpretation of Scripture, and he puts the Bible down on the table before me and fairly squealed into my ear, "There it is. You can read it for yourself." I said to him, "Young man, you will learn, when you get a little older, that you cannot trust another denomination to read the ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... of his work and misinterpretation of his motives was a keen grief to him throughout life. He never became hardened to such attacks, and they afflicted him to the end. "'Hypatia,'" he once said, "was written with my heart's blood, and was received, as I expected, with curses from many ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... generally accepted sense, they would have returned, to be again forgiven; but Jesus said to disease: "Come out of him, and enter no more into him." He said also: "If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death;" and "Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven." The misinterpretation of such passages has retarded the progress of Christianity and the ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... sexual organs and emotions are swept wholly out of consideration; and it was also necessary to show that the lying and dissimulation so widely attributed to the hysterical were merely the result of an ignorant and unscientific misinterpretation of psychic elements of the disease. This was finally and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... house. Although there is some gossip, nothing at all occurs between them beyond a little perfectly natural flirtation. The young man's father, hearing the gossip, speaks to the young lady in order that she may take steps to protect herself and his son against surmise and misinterpretation. Thereupon a sudden flood of light breaks upon her soul, by which she sees that she is really attached to the young man, and being a woman of unusual character, or perhaps absurdly averse to lying even upon such a subject, in answer to a question admits that this is so, and that she very properly ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... when every seaman on board the Swash, from the captain to Jack Tier, was on deck. Mulford met Spike at the cabin door, and pointed toward the fiery column, that was booming down upon the anchorage, with a velocity and direction that would now admit of no misinterpretation. For one instant that sturdy old seaman stood aghast; gazing at the enemy as one conscious of his impotency might have been supposed to quail before an assault that he foresaw must prove irresistible. Then his native spirit, and most of all ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... literature we do so by reference to the eternal truth, not by what the writer considers the present phase of truth; and if literature so tested is found guilty of suppression, evasion or misinterpretation, we call the work insincere, though the author may have written in perfect good faith. That is a necessary distinction to keep in mind. If you call a man's work insincere, the superficial critic will take it as calling the man himself insincere; ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... permeates his motives, at times giving him urban cravings that keep him from utilizing to the full his social resources in the country. Any attempt to understand rural life that minimizes the common human fellowship which the newspaper offers the farmer is certain to lead to unfortunate misinterpretation. Mentally the farmer is far from being isolated in his experiences, for he no longer is confined to the world of local ideas as he once was. This constant daily stimulation from the world of business, sports, and public affairs at times awakens ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... of no misinterpretation, we see stated the doctrine of telepathy, which is only now beginning to find acceptance among scientific men, but which, as I view it, has been amply demonstrated by the experiments of recent years and ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... principles, which on account of their thoroughness are interesting. From the documents it can be ascertained how near some of the critics came to that worship of the Faultless Hero with which Dryden in his heroic plays occasionally conformed, while he guarded himself against misinterpretation in his prefaces. ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... this passage, in explanation, adds, that 'Montaigne in his Essays supposes his cat thought him a fool for losing his time in playing with her;' but, under favour, this is a misinterpretation of the essayist's sentiment, and something like a libel on the capacity of both himself and cat. Montaigne's words are: 'When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me? We mutually divert each other ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... say that even though the reports we were getting were detailed and contained a great deal of good data, we still had no proof the UFO's were anything real. We could, I said, prove that all UFO reports were merely the misinterpretation of known objects if we made a ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... looked hot and unhappy. Were you proposing to Miss Mathewson by letter? It's always best to say those things right out: letters are liable to misinterpretation," jeered Chester. ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... question which, in the popular treatment of the theory of descent, is justly considered as its most important outcome and as the keystone of the evolutionist edifice—to the well-known proposition, "Man is descended from the Ape." While we simply ignore all the misrepresentation, distortion, and misinterpretation which this ape, or pithecoid hypothesis, has met with on all sides, we will only remark that this fundamental proposition, in the sense of our modern doctrine of evolution, can rationally have only this plain ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... error, fallacy; misconception, misapprehension, misstanding^, misunderstanding; inexactness &c adj.; laxity; misconstruction &c (misinterpretation) 523; miscomputation &c (misjudgment) 481; non sequitur &c 477; mis-statement, mis-report; mumpsimus^. mistake; miss, fault, blunder, quiproquo, cross purposes, oversight, misprint, erratum, corrigendum, slip, blot, flaw, loose ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... November. The moment he shows his face, all other faces are glum. We defy month or man, under such a trial, to make himself even tolerably agreeable. He feels that he is no favourite, and that a most sinister misinterpretation will be put on all his motions, manners, thoughts, words, and deeds. A man or a month so circumstanced is much to be pitied. Think, look, speak, act as he will—yea, even more like an angel than a man or a month—every eyebrow arches—every nostril distends—every ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... docility of the American Negro was counted among the reasons why it was thought he could never gain his freedom on this continent. But this was a misinterpretation of his real character. Besides, it was next to impossible to learn the history of the Negro during the years of his enslavement at the South. The question was often asked: Why don't the Negroes rise at the South and exterminate their enslavers? Negatively, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... But no experienced woman of the world, as she declared herself to be, could forget that this was a ludicrously delicate topic with a widower. She must either avoid it altogether, or expose herself to misinterpretation in pursuing it. It took him a few minutes to perceive that Diane had chosen the latter course, and had done it with a fine disdain of anything he might choose to think. She was not of the order of women who hesitate for petty considerations, or who ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... summary of causative factors given at the end of the case study deals only with the factors of delinquency. To avoid misinterpretation of the coordinated facts, what they are focused upon should ever be remembered. The statement of these ascertained factors brings out many incidental points which should be of interest to lawyers and other ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... I observed slowly, "the position of an elderly gentleman with a marriageable daughter and a wife," I went on bravely, "who finances a young lady interested in manicuring in an establishment in Bond Street is liable to misinterpretation." ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... conception of Deity was exalted, the notion of His terrestrial presence or proximity was abandoned; and the difficulty of comprehending the Divine Government, together with the glaring superstitious evils arising out of its misinterpretation, endangered the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... I believe that just that is the proof. The Lord could not in fact have exposed His law to the possibility of mutilation or misinterpretation, but must in fact have left a guardian of His truth to ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... Don't you know that the fabulous days of Orpheus and Amphion are long past, and that wild beasts have quite lost all respect for even the most admirable of singers?" But this gleeful turn, by which the Baroness at once effectually guarded against all misinterpretation of her warm interest in me, I was put immediately into the proper key and the proper mood. Why I did not take my usual place at the pianoforte I cannot explain, even to myself, nor why I sat down beside the Baroness on the sofa. Her ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... that its earlier state is its lower one, and that the organization of the Lobster is not as high in the class of Crustacea as that of the Crab. While using illustrations of this kind, however, I must guard against misinterpretation. These embryological changes are never the passing of one kind of animal into another kind of animal: the Crab is none the less a Crab during that period of its development in which it resembles a Lobster; it simply passes, in the natural course of its growth, through a phase ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... overloaded by fate. Philosophy failed to prevent war. Nietzsche's philosophy did not cause it. His philosophy affords a convenient phraseology in which to express a philosophy of war, granting sufficient misinterpretation of his philosophy. Probably what influence he has had has been due rather to his literary impressiveness than to his thought as a contribution ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... that they are not mentioned in the secretary's letter to Mr. Moran, or by Mr. Davis in his letter to the New York "Herald." They must have been as unsuccessful as myself in the search after anything in these speeches which could be construed into misinterpretation of the government on the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... man's father—now happily deceased—had offered an instructive example of social and religious survival—survival, to be explicit, of the once famous Clapham Sect, and that in its least agreeable aspect. His theology was that of obstinately narrow misinterpretation of the Scriptures; his piety that of self-invented obligations; his virtue that of unsparing condemnation of the sins of others. His domestic morality was Hebraic—death kindly playing into his hands in regard of it. He married four times—Reginald, the only ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... phenomena". A rarity in the mountains. Miners, on way home from celebration, give nine cheers for mother and children. Outcry at Indian Bar against Spaniards. Several severely wounded. Whisky and patriotism. Prejudices and arrogant assurance accounted for. Misinterpretation by the foreigner. Injustices by the lower classes against Spaniards pass unnoticed. Innumerable drunken fights. Broken heads and collarbones, stabbings. "Sabbaths almost always enlivened by such merry events". Body of Frenchman found in river. Murder evident. Suspicion ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... fanciful philology, based on a misinterpretation of a Greek transliteration of the name Jerusalem. The Solymi are traditionally placed in Lycia. Both Juvenal and Martial use ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... self-consciousness, revolting against a misinterpretation which would injure her vanity, though it was not likely to aim at her honour, Alma ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... already done by that excellent prelate. "The cause of his loyalty being called in question, he tells us, was a few lines in a preface to one of his books; the objection, says he, I must not pass in silence, because it was the only part of his life that was liable to misinterpretation, even by the confession of those that envied ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... If, for example, there is reason to believe that savages have always regarded the lower animals as powerful beings, there is no need, in accounting for the veneration given them, to resort to the roundabout way of assuming a misinterpretation of names ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... allowed in the gospel history, the influence of myth is a psychological cause sufficient to explain the remainder. The idea is regarded as prior to the fact: the need of a deliverer, he pretends, created the idea of a saviour: the misinterpretation of old prophecy presented conditions which in the popular mind must be fulfilled by the Messiah. The gospel history is regarded as the attempt of the idea to realise ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... sent a delegation of priests and Levites of the Pharisaic party to personally question him. He answered without evasion, "I am not the Christ," and with equal decisiveness denied that he was Elias, or more accurately, Elijah, the prophet who, the rabbis said through a misinterpretation of Malachi's prediction, was to return to earth as the immediate precursor of the Messiah.[310] Furthermore, he declared that he was not "that prophet," by which was meant the Prophet whose coming Moses had foretold,[311] and who was not universally identified in the Jewish mind with ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... perhaps caused Hubert to accentuate his words, so that they conveyed a meaning different from that which he intended. Certainly his hesitations were capable of misinterpretation, and Miss Watson said, her ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... of officers and guards, and in all respects royally treated. Plutarch speaks of him as being [39][Greek: semnos proskunomenos], worshipped with a degree of religious reverence. The whole of this notion took its rise from a misinterpretation of the title above. I have mentioned, that in early times Cahen was a title universally conferred upon priests and prophets: hence Lycophron, who has continually allusions to obsolete terms, calls the two diviners, Mopsus ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... This is a perfectly tenable position. Human imagination cannot invent anything that is outside of fact. It may, and of course too frequently does, misinterpret facts. In attempting to explain and account for such facts with insufficient knowledge, it gets far away from the truth, but this misinterpretation of fact must not be confused with the fact itself. In a word, it must be borne in mind by the student of tradition that every tradition which has assumed the form of saga, myth, or story contains two perfectly independent elements—the fact upon which it ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... intolerant and exclusive sense; and that it is to such persons that St. Paul refers in the justly admired fifteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians; and that the inadvertence to this has led a numerous class of divines to a misconception of the Apostle's reasoning, and a misinterpretation of his words, in behoof of the Socinian notion, that the resurrection of Christ is the only argument of proof for the belief of a future state, and that this was the great end and purpose of this event. Now this assumption ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... impressions. The mere idea of succeeding phases of movement is not at all the original movement idea. This is suggested first by the various illusions of movement. We may believe that we perceive a movement where no actual changes of visual impressions occur. This, to be sure, may result from a mere misinterpretation of the impression: for instance when in the railway train at the station we look out of the window and believe suddenly that our train is moving, while in reality the train on the neighboring track ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... letter declares that Cicero threw himself bodily at his old friend's feet, and that Pompey did not lend a hand to raise him, but told him simply that everything was in Caesar's hands. This narrative is, I think, due to a misinterpretation of Cicero's words, though it is given by a close translation of them. He is describing Pompey when Caesar after his Gallic wars had crossed the Rubicon, and the two late Triumvirates—the third having perished miserably in the East—were in arms ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... act for the Government to dissolve Parliament, since it is not provided in the Provisional Constitution as to how Parliament should be dissolved, nor does that instrument specifically prohibit the Government from dissolving Parliament. But this is a misinterpretation. For instance, the Provisional Constitution has not provided that the President shall not proclaim himself Emperor, nor does it prohibit him from so doing. According to such interpretation, it would not be illegal, if the President were ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... resignation the said Warren Hastings did not admit; and the use of the term resigned on that occasion was therefore a manifest and wilful misconstruction and misapplication of the words of the act of his present Majesty. And such misinterpretation and false extension of the term of resignation was the more indecent in the said Warren Hastings, as he was at the same moment disavowing and refusing to give effect to his own clear and express resignation, ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of visual misinterpretation, distortion by pressure, or poor condition of the ridge detail of the prints in file, it is advisable to allow a margin for such discrepancies. Except in cases where the ridge count of the final and/or key is questionable on the print being searched, ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... knowledge that Mrs. Prichard had been in Australia once on a time. The imperfection of this knowledge had affected the name of the place, and when he officiously struck in to supply it, he did so inaccurately. "Horstrian she is!" He added:—"Rode in a circus, she did." But this was only the reaction of misinterpretation on a ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... face; and Dysart's misinterpretation of his philosophy almost stung him into fierce retort; but as his heavy lips unclosed in anger, his eyes fell on Dysart's ravaged face, and he sat silent, his personal feelings merged ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... maintained that "good works are necessary to salvation in order that we may not lose it again." (387. 391.) At the same time Menius, as stated above, claimed that he had never employed Major's proposition, and counseled others to abstain from its use in order to avoid misinterpretation. The same advice he gave with respect to his own formula that new obedience is necessary to ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... letter, from one of my most faithful readers, corrects an important piece of misinterpretation in the text. The waving of the reins must be only in sign of the fluctuation of heat round the ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... right after him came the doctor—a very pleasant and distinguished-looking young man. He apologised for the guard's bluntness and his misinterpretation of his message. He had not meant to offend a gentleman, and so forth. He introduced himself as Dr. Mayer, family physician at the house of the so-called "Silver King," Mr. Dumany, the father of the little "Silver Prince." After learning that I did not smoke, and had ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... seemed desirable, and this has been attempted in the following chapters. When the doctrine of immanence began, as it has been of late, to be reasserted in a somewhat pronounced manner, most of those who were best able to judge felt conscious of certain dangers likely to arise through misinterpretation and over-emphasis; that those anticipations have been abundantly realised, no careful student of recent developments will dispute, and the present book is intended both to call attention to these dangers and to bring out the distinction ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... silence Don Hermoso had read the man's real character in his face, and had instantly come to the conclusion that he would rather see his daughter lying dead than in the power of such a ruffian; he therefore cut short the officer's protestations by assuring him that his words admitted of no misinterpretation, and that therefore he must persist ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... produced. On its appearance, it was condemned off-hand, by a certain class of readers, as an outrage on their sense of propriety. Conscious of having designed and written, my story with the strictest regard to true delicacy, as distinguished from false—I allowed the prurient misinterpretation of certain perfectly innocent passages in this book to assert itself as offensively as it pleased, without troubling myself to protest against an expression of opinion which aroused in me no other feeling than a feeling of contempt. I knew that "Basil" had nothing ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... so sacred in these meanings," resumed Kate, "and if I may only get the truth, I care not what any one says about it. I see now wherein lies the whole misconception or misinterpretation rather. It is in the idea of God. If we conceive of Him as limited to human ways and capacities, as the ancient Hebrews did, we naturally ascribe such works ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... What a monstrous misinterpretation of pure minds by minds impure! To us the dissecting-room was a temple, and the dead an awe, revolting to all our senses, until the knife revealed to our minds the Creator's hand in structural beauties that the trained can ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... thought she saw a sudden deprivation of that esteem with which she was vain enough to presuppose he was wont to regard her. And yet he was mistaken, greatly mistaken. Furthermore, he was unfair to himself and unjust to her in the misinterpretation of her behavior. His displeasure pained her ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... with no comment save that Southern prospects were less rosy than had been supposed. Then ensued a long silence, for this time there was no possibility of that editorial wiggling about the circle from excuses for misinterpretation to a complacent resumption ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... stranger. Col. 4:10-14. On the contrary they are wanting, except in a general form, in the epistles to the Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Thessalonians (in 2 Thessalonians wholly wanting as in this epistle), Titus, and the first to Timothy. The other objections are founded on misinterpretation, as when it is inferred from chap, 1:15 that the author had never seen those to whom he wrote; and from chap, 3:2 that they had no personal acquaintance with him. But in the former passage the apostle speaks simply of the good report which had come to him from the Ephesian ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... propitiated. Identification of the doubles of the dead with animals—now with those which frequent houses or places which the doubles are supposed to haunt and now with those which are like certain of the dead in their malicious or benevolent natures—is in other cases traceable to misinterpretation of names; this latter leading to the identification of stars with persons and hence to star and sun worship. In their normal forms, as in their abnormal forms, all gods arise by apotheosis. Originally the god is the superior living man whose power is conceived ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... business themselves, indeed they could not have contrived matters half so well, for they had previously made a present of the youngest of the horses to the king of Boossa, but most likely, owing to Pascoe's misrepresentation, or rather his misinterpretation, the monarch was not made sensible of the circumstance. The canoe was to be sent to them in a day or two, when they determined to prepare her for the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... habit of looking at society exclusively from the juridical point of view, to insist that no respect at all, except the respect that arises from being too weak to have your own way, is due from either to the other. This shallow and mischievous notion rests either on a misinterpretation of the experience of civilised societies, or else on nothing more creditable than an arbitrary and unreflecting temper. Those who have thought most carefully and disinterestedly about the matter, are agreed that in advanced societies the expedient course is ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... man fall below his own high level or fail to set his private remarque upon his labor. It is in a way unfortunate that Stevenson, early in his career, so frankly confessed to practising for his craft by the use of the best models: it has led to the silly misinterpretation which sees in all his literary effort nothing but the skilful echo. Such judgments remind us that criticism, which is intended to be a picture of another, is in reality a picture of oneself. In his lehrjahre Stevenson "slogged at his trade," beyond peradventure; but no ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... affairs of men were too often hampered. Law, if you had asked him, and he had accurately expressed himself, was a mist formed out of the moods and the mistakes of men, which befogged the sea of life and prevented plain sailing for the little commercial and social barques of men; it was a miasma of misinterpretation where the ills of life festered, and also a place where the accidentally wounded were ground between the upper and the nether millstones of force or chance; it was a strange, weird, interesting, and yet futile battle ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... do nothing of the kind. Let me say that once and for all," I returned peremptorily. "I've made my position clear to you, because you're my sister and you ought to be spared any further misinterpretation of my actions. But to have you dear people intriguing after billets for me would ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... said, it is a thing with a mania for Corruption. The Charnel-House is its bridal-couch, and the midnight stars whisper to one another of its perversion. There is no need for it "to kill the thing it loves," for it loves only what is already dead. Favete linguis! There must be no profane misinterpretation of this subtle and delicate difference. In analysing the evasive chemistry of a great poet's mood, one moves warily, reverently, among a thousand betrayals. The mind of such a being is as the sand-strewn floor of a deep sea. In this sea we poor divers for pearls, and stranger things, must hold ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... this, if it be not a vulgarism, will only mean, "I saw the thing to be what I wanted to see." So that this method of parsing the pronoun what, is manifestly no improvement, but rather a perversion and misinterpretation. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... there any sin more fearfully avenged on men and Nations than that same, which indeed includes and presupposes all manner of sins: the sin which our old pious fathers called "judicial blindness;"—which we, with our light habits, may still call misinterpretation of the Time that now is; disloyalty to its real meanings and monitions, stupid disregard of these, stupid adherence active or passive to the counterfeits and mere current semblances of these. This is true of ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... a writer but as a man, must occupy us a little longer. For some considerable time—indeed it may be said until the publication of his letters—it was not very favorably judged on the whole. We may, of course, dismiss the childish scandals (arising, as usual, from clumsy or malevolent misinterpretation of such books as the Physiologie de Mariage, the Peau de Chagrin, and a few others), which gave rise to the caricatures of him such as that of which we read, representing him in a monk's dress at a table ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... disobedience, recognize the unturnable edge of its sword—and in the worst extremity of their need, strive not to avert, but to evade. The utmost deceivableness of unrighteousness cannot deceive itself into satisfactory misinterpretation; it is reduced always to a tremulous omission of the texts it is resolved to disobey. But a little while since, I heard an entirely well-meaning clergyman, taken by surprise in the course of family worship in the house of a wealthy friend, and finding himself ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... from the Misinterpretation of the words Eternall Life, Everlasting Death, and the Second Death. For though we read plainly in Holy Scripture, that God created Adam in an estate of Living for Ever, which was conditionall, that is to say, if he disobeyed not his Commandement; which was not essentiall ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... Middleton started as he beheld her face. Once more the hunted, helpless look it had worn when first he had looked on it. But more. Such an utter fear and sickening unto death. But not fear, terror for herself. Fear for the death of an ideal, a fear caused by her misinterpretation of his intent with the pistol. It had not been real, it had not been real. He was as other men, the men of her world and all the world was alike and life not worth living. With a finesse he had not suspected he possessed, he laid the pistol ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... advisable only in the case of speeches of the greatest importance; it is too laborious for ordinary purposes, since the account includes at most only a part of the speech. The best way, doubtless, to get a speech is to take notes on it. And yet this must be done properly or there is a danger of misinterpretation of statements or of undue emphasis upon any single part of the speech. The report of a speech should be as well balanced and logical as the speech itself, differing from the original only in length and the omission of details. The speech report must be accurate and truthful ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... was, though ingenious, a misinterpretation of Gaubil's. Mr. Wylie has sent me a paper of his own (in Chin. Recorder and Miss. Journal, July, 1871, p. 45), which makes things perfectly clear. The expression transcribed by Pauthier, Yao san wen, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... is in the main a misrepresentation and a misinterpretation of Christ; not consciously indeed—if it were so the remedy would be easy; but unconsciously, which makes the remedy difficult. One need not stop to define Christianity, for there is only one sincere meaning to the word; it implies a kind of life whose spirit and method reproduce ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... are studying a man's life we want to know the facts; otherwise we shall not be able to judge correctly of his life and work. There are two principal sources of error in writing biography: the first is ignorance, which leads to the omission of important particulars or to a misinterpretation of those that are known; the other source of error is prejudice for or against the person whose life is portrayed. This prejudice leads, on the one hand, to such a presentation of the biographical facts as to magnify ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... freedom of action which was quite incompatible with her continuing to occupy the dependent position of a governess. For that reason she felt it incumbent on her to leave her situation. But, while doing this, she was equally determined not to lead to any misinterpretation of her motives by leaving the neighborhood. No matter at what inconvenience to herself, she would remain long enough at Thorpe Ambrose to await any more definitely expressed imputations that might be made on her character, and to repel ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... that long-forgotten night of crime in Spencer's Folly. It is naively written and reveals a clean, if reticent, nature; but that its effect may be unquestionable I will insert a few lines to cover any possible misinterpretation of his manner or conduct. There is an open space, and our handwritings were always strangely alike. Only our e's differed, and I will be ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... grown cold. Absorbed in worldliness and pleasure-seeking, the professed people of God were blinded to the Saviour's instructions concerning the signs of His appearing. The doctrine of the second advent had been neglected; the scriptures relating to it were obscured by misinterpretation, until it was, to a great extent, ignored and forgotten. Especially was this the case in the churches of America. The freedom and comfort enjoyed by all classes of society, the ambitious desire for wealth and luxury, begetting an absorbing devotion to money-making, the eager ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... in Christianity as it will be ten thousand years hence," it would be a grave misinterpretation to suppose that he implied any lack of belief in the Christianity of to-day. It is but another assertion of his claim to be in sympathy with the esoteric rather than the exoteric teaching of the present; to be on the mount with the few and not on the plain with the many. For as ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... or sopouny, founded by one Petroff, considered it their duty to blow upon one another during Divine Service. This arose from a misinterpretation of the ninth verse of the fortieth psalm. It was also their custom to pile benches one upon another and pray from the top of them, until some hysterical female fell to the ground in a religious paroxysm. One of those ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... which accompanies this nondescript collection of translations is scattered throughout various works, and is somewhat liable to misinterpretation if taken out of its immediate context. Before proceeding to consider it, however, it is necessary to notice certain phases of the general literary situation which created peculiar difficulties for the translator or which are likely to be confusing to the ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... as minority feelings are given free expression in an atmosphere of mutual concern, there is little danger of misinterpretation by the majority. Such a climate prevailed in the meetings of the Fair Play settlers and the sessions of the Fair Play men; at least, there is no available evidence to ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... morning in an access of enthusiasm I sat down and wrote a note to Mr. Spence, asking if he would be kind enough to call on me at his leisure,—"on a matter of business," I added, so as to preclude any possible misinterpretation on his part. ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... only surmise. Probably this versatile tone-poet has said his best. He is not a second Richard Wagner, not yet has he the charm of the Lizst personality, but he bulks too large in contemporary history to be called a decadent, although in the precise meaning of the word, without its stupid misinterpretation, he is a decadent inasmuch as he dwells with emphasis on the technique of his composition, sacrificing the whole for the page, putting the phrase above the page, and the single note in equal competition with the phrase. In a word, Richard Strauss is a romantic, and ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... the Union forced us to regard as paramount what he regarded as subsidiary. Our fear for the Union sprang from other sources than his. But we believe he acted from the highest convictions of duty, and he certainly exposed himself with unflinching courage to obloquy and misinterpretation when silence would have been easy ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... took hold of me, as if to draw me back, kissing my hands as he did so, but his gross misinterpretation of my resistance and the immoral position he was putting me into were ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... either the consciousness which individuals have of higher powers, with which they feel themselves to be related, or the words in which they, or others, seek to express that consciousness. Those words may be an expression, that is to say an interpretation or a misinterpretation, of that consciousness. But the words are not the consciousness: the feeling, without which the consciousness does not exist, may be absent when the words are spoken or heard. It is however through the words that we have ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... irregularly and coarsely laminated (This term is open to some misinterpretation, as it may be applied both to rocks divided into laminae of exactly the same composition, and to layers firmly attached to each other, with no fissile tendency, but composed of different minerals, or of different shades of colour. The term "laminated," in this chapter, is applied in these ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... knowledge of the Scottish law. I had a vague dislike and dread of the deception which Mr. Brinkworth was practicing on the people of the inn. And I feared that it might lead to some possible misinterpretation of me on the part of a person whom ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... to be reformed. In the public school, the repulsive impress of our aesthetic journalism is stamped upon the still unformed minds of youths. Here, too, the teacher sows the seeds of that crude and wilful misinterpretation of the classics, which later on disports itself as art-criticism, and which is nothing but bumptious barbarity. Here the pupils learn to speak of our unique Schiller with the superciliousness of prigs; here they are taught ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... there? The inference is only fair and reasonable that at the very outset he had recognised the misinterpretation of Lord Raglan's orders, and was seeking to change the direction of the charging horsemen, diverting them from the Russian battery towards ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... once more to guard against any mistake. I do not wish to prove a theory of gynaecocracy, or rule of woman. The title chosen for this chapter at once opens the way to misinterpretation. It might appear as if I supported Bachofen's supposition that, under a system of maternal descent women possessed supreme rule in the family and in the clan: this is a dream only of visionaries. I declare here that I consider the theory of ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... open to the reproach of essential inaccuracy. As far as possible for a man of genius, he was a devotee of facts. He is never a careless, though occasionally an impetuous writer; his graver errors are those of emotional misinterpretation. It has been observed that, while contemning Robespierre, he has extenuated the guilt of Danton as one of the main authors of the September massacres, and, more generally, that "his quickness and brilliancy made him impatient of systematic thought." ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... ludicrous result. He interprets the last line of Parting at Morning as meaning that the woman "desires more society than the seaside home affords"! But it is the man who speaks, not the woman. The confusion plainly arises from a misinterpretation of "him" in "straight was a path of gold for him." Berdoe reads this as "lucrative work for the man"! Of course "him" refers to the sun who has "looked over the mountain's rim" . . . Here is an instance of making obscurity where none ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... full meaning might be lost by a verbal error; or that wrong information might be laid before me as to one single transaction in the life of a friend or of a blood-relation, and it might lie with me to clear him of mistakes and misinterpretation." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Dr. Westcott, showed me that I had been misunderstood, and led me to refer to the place again. I immediately withdrew the note which had been interpreted in a way very different from what I had intended, and at the same time perceiving that my argument was obscure and liable to the misinterpretation of which Dr. Lightfoot has made such eager use, I myself at once recast it as well as I could within the limits at my command, [8:1] and this was already published before Dr. Lightfoot's criticism appeared, and before I had any knowledge ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... particular virtue or vice for which he was looking, the reflection of personal preferences or aversions? It seemed to her suddenly that the Governor, whom she had thought commonplace, towered an immense vague figure in a cloud of misinterpretation and misunderstanding. His followers believed in him; his opponents distrusted him; but was this not true of every political leader since the beginning of politics? The power to inspire equally devotion and hatred had been throughout history the authentic sign of ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... uneasiness of mind that causes many sorts of discomfort. It is unfortunately true, however, that her lack of familiarity with the facts about pregnancy and her belief in unfounded traditions frequently lead to the misinterpretation of natural conditions. An anxious frame of mind also causes real ailments to assume an importance out of all ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... regret when I learned from the conclusion of the article on "Specialized Administration," that this statement is held by Mr. Spencer to be a, misinterpretation of his views. Perhaps I ought to be still more sorry to be obliged to declare myself, even now, unable to discover where my misinterpretation lies, or in what respect my presentation of Mr. Spencer's views differs from his own most recent version ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... interpretation than that I mean them to bear; so that the misunderstanding of them must result, ultimately, from the mere fact that their matter sometimes requires a little patience. And I see the same kind of misinterpretation put on the words of other writers, whenever they require the same ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... gentleman [Mr. Wilberforce] who has just sat down, and said he rose only to save himself from misinterpretation, has declared that he has no objection to peace. Now I should expect a warmer declaration from that honourable gentleman, when I recollect his conduct on a former occasion. I recollect a time when he came to ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... could wind his son around his finger. Yes, it was all quite clear. And Brian helpfully would be shocked and thrilled at the sacrificial tribute of penance. Kenny pursed his lips and nodded. He would even concede the sunsets. That, after John Whitaker's cold-blooded misinterpretation, was necessary to ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... '"Of misinterpretation from Mr. Trevor I am in no fear. Had he one sinister design, he never could have imagined the conduct he has so nobly pursued. But to suppose the possibility of such a thing in him would be a most unpardonable injustice. The man ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... feelings were not intense, and in the expression of his opinions his tone was mild and his manner gentle. It often happened, also, that he did not undertake to controvert opinions and expressions with which he had no sympathy. This peculiarity may at times have led to a misunderstanding, or to a misinterpretation of his views. Upon this basis of his early impressions, and matured opinions his ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... friends, but familiar friends. We have all read Continental autobiographies, of which the chapters under the general title "Early Years" contained records of fears based upon images implanted in the mind and flourishing there— images arising from some childish misapprehension or misinterpretation of some ordinary and perfectly explainable circumstance. "I was afraid to pass a closed closet alone after dark," one of these says. "I had heard of 'skeletons in closets'; I knew there were none in our closets in the daytime, but I couldn't be sure that they did not come ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... this intelligent appreciation of the position by rulers and ruled, and their readiness to accommodate their respective actions to it and play their parts as organs for the discharge of special functions, with the haziness of conception, the misinterpretation of events, and the utter lack of co-operation displayed by the corresponding sections of the allied communities, we shall grasp the secret of the superiority of the seemingly weaker group of belligerents and the paltry results ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... difficulty of conceiving what will happen, and how we shall be dealt with, when this familiar world passes away. And this belief in a "final judgment, unlike any other that has ever been in the world," Mr. Maurice would have us regard as a misinterpretation of Bible and Creed—a "dream" which St. Paul would never "allow us" to entertain, but would "compel" us instead "to look upon everyone of what we rightly call 'God's judgments' as essentially resembling it in kind and principle." "Our eagerness to deny ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... distressed souls, especially if their bodies be predisposed by melancholy, they religiously given, and have tender consciences, every small object affrights them, the very inconsiderate reading of Scripture itself, and misinterpretation of some places of it; as, "Many are called, few are chosen. Not every one that saith Lord. Fear not little flock. He that stands, let him take heed lest he fall. Work out your salvation with fear and ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... received light to let it shine: they must do their part to bring all things out. In Luke xii. 2, is recorded how he brought it to bear on hypocrisy, showing its uselessness; and, in the case recorded in Matthew x. 25, he uses the fact to enforce fearlessness as to the misinterpretation of our ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... unless her mother or some other discreet female is present, to prevent misinterpretation or remark. I have also taken a good deal of interest in Benjamin Franklin, before referred to, sometimes called B. F., or more frequently Frank, in imitation of that felicitous abbreviation, combining dignity and convenience, adopted by some of his betters. My acquaintance ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... such moments, or in connexion with similar subjects, is generally traced to one cause alone; and yet half the time it should rather be attributed to some other source. Anxiety, modesty, mere nervousness, or even vexation at this very misinterpretation, often raise the colour, and make the voice falter. Elinor had fully made up her mind, and she felt that a frank explanation was due to Mr. Ellsworth, but her regard for him was too sincere not to make the moment a painful one to her. He was rejected; but rejected with so much ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... therefore he was. Judas was damned. Wherefore he, Abel Ah Yo, was damned; and he did not want to be damned. So, quite after the manner of humans, he squirmed and twisted to escape damnation. The day came when he solved his escape. The doctrine that Judas was damned, he concluded, was a misinterpretation of God, who, above all things, stood for justice. Judas had been God's servant, specially selected to perform a particularly nasty job. Therefore Judas, ever faithful, a betrayer only by divine command, was a saint. ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... questions too often wrongly answered, notwithstanding the fact that with a little careful scrutiny the point may be easily settled. The error, which is too often committed, of pronouncing the leg upon which the animal travels soundly as the seat of the lameness, is the result of a misinterpretation of the physiology of locomotion in the crippled animal. Much depends upon the gait with which the animal moves while under examination. The act of walking is unfavorable for accurate observation, though, if the animal walks on three legs, the decision is easy ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... the best interests of Europe" by rejecting every fair term, the time will have arrived "for adopting measures of more active coercion against her"—she cannot sanction such a Declaration except on terms which are so clear in themselves as to exclude all misinterpretation. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... moral law alone must be regarded as the principle on which that and its realization or promotion are aimed at. This remark is important in so delicate a case as the determination of moral principles, where the slightest misinterpretation perverts men's minds. For it will have been seen from the Analytic that, if we assume any object under the name of a good as a determining principle of the will prior to the moral law and then deduce from it the supreme practical principle, this would ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... that private property is a danger to the soul and a neutralizer of love. Every monastic community tried to cut under sex dangers by celibacy, and property dangers by communism. This was an enormous misinterpretation of Christianity, but it shows that men took the teachings on the dangers of private property seriously. The modern Christian world does not. It has quietly set aside the ideas of Jesus on this subject, lives its life without much influence from them, and contents itself ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... luncheon, the chair was still vacant. Elsa became alarmed. Perhaps he was ill. She made inquiries, regardless of the possible misinterpretation her concern might be given by others. Mr. Warrington had had his meals served in his cabin, but the steward declared that the gentleman was not ill, only tired and irritable, and that he amused himself ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... is a misinterpretation of the teaching of Jesus to represent asceticism as the last word of Christian Ethics. Renunciation and unworldliness are undoubtedly frequently commended in the New Testament, but they are urged not as ends in themselves but as means to a fuller self-realisation. Such was not the ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... from a recent daily paper reads, "'Rest while you work,' says Annie Payson Call,"—and then the editor adds, "and get fired," and although the opportunity for the joke was probably thought too good to lose, it was a natural misinterpretation of ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... Californian sketches, and the conditions under which they were conceived, is peculiarly tempting to an author who has been obliged to retain a decent professional reticence under a cloud of ingenious surmise, theory, and misinterpretation. He very gladly seizes this opportunity to establish the chronology of the sketches, and incidentally to show that what are considered the "happy accidents" of literature are very apt to be the results of quite ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... it was an entire misinterpretation of his instructions, which were to have Averell join Stoneman's column, so soon as he had masked the latter's movement towards the Aquia and ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... its wording be? Coffin didn't have to look up the last one. It was branded on his brain. An invitation to return and talk matters over. But necessarily short, compact, with minimum redundancy: which meant an increased danger of misinterpretation. ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson
... matter of fact, these are the arguments always used, even by those who deny the doctrine of a plenary inspiration. They seldom or never accuse the writer of a mistake, but always rely on a supposed mistranslation, or misinterpretation, in order to avoid the force of a passage. Hence, also, we find believers in this doctrine of plenary inspiration, differing in opinion on a thousand matters, and with no probability of ever ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... of events limps after the logic of thoughts, it always follows. Let the mind of one man perceive the true meaning of the doctrine of the general resurrection and judgment and eternal life, as a natural evolution of history from within, and it will spread to the minds of all men; and the misinterpretation of that doctrine so long prevalent, as a preternatural irruption of power from without, will be set aside forever. For there is a providential plan of God, not injected by arbitrary miracle, but inhering in the order of the world, centred ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... they, whose constitutional rights are thus systematically assailed, are themselves the aggressors. At the present time this imputed aggression, resting, as it does, only in the vague declamatory charges of political agitators, resolves itself into misapprehension, or misinterpretation, of the principles and facts of the political organization of the new ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... to me now, either as part of the endless mockery of life, or as strains of hidden music, deep and true, running ever beneath the world's dull misinterpretation. ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... letter to Oscar, aunty wrote that he deserved a much worse punishment than he had received, for his wilful misinterpretation of his father's warning, obeying the letter, rather than the spirit, and for his obstinacy about the motto. The ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... since they are accompanied in many instances by the totems of the personages: e. g[TN-27] for AAK, which means turtle, is the image of a turtle; for CAY (fish), the image of a fish; for Chaacmol (leopard) the image of a leopard; and so on, precluding the possibility of misinterpretation. ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... strong epithet is probably undeserved, as the notion he controverts, in all likelihood, arose merely from the misinterpretation of the strictly true statement which any coral fisherman would make to a curious inquirer; namely, that the outside coat of the red coral is quite soft when it is taken out of the sea. At any rate, he did good service by eliminating this much error from the current notions about coral. ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... had divined the court's complacent misinterpretation ere he saw its smile; the facile theory that brooding so much over her fascinating picture had unhinged his brain. From that moment a hardness came over his heart. He shut his lips grimly. What was the use of talking? Whatever he said would ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... of misunderstanding of the vocal action just mentioned,—the attempt to define the precise muscular contractions indicated in the sympathetic sensations, another common misinterpretation of these sensations must be noted. As a consequence of the sub-conscious character of the sympathetic sensations, the two classes of muscular sensation of vocal tone, direct and sympathetic, are frequently confounded ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... A.D., and may easily have made a mistake. Such a mistake actually occurs (S. A. xxiii. 165) where he seems to assert that Argentaria Polla, Lucan's faithful widow, subsequently married Statius. The mistake as regards Seneca is probably due to a misinterpretation of Martial i. 61 'duosque Senecas unicumque Lucanum facunda loquitur Corduba'. Not being acquainted with the works of the elder Seneca the rhetorician, Sidonius invented a new author, ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... Upon the misinterpretation of such objective planes depends the illusion of underestimation of the height or incline of a hill one is breasting, and of the converse overestimation of one seen across a descending slope or intervening valley. The latter illusion is especially striking, ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... Anglicanism; in his public utterances he touched upon the Darwinian doctrine with a weary disdain. This contradiction involved no insincerity; Mr. Lashmar merely held in contempt the common understanding, and declined to expose an esoteric truth to vulgar misinterpretation. Yet he often worried about ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... supervising everything as on a battlefield, there he stayed more than two hours, exposed to a heavy rain which began after the fire, and to all the heat and smoke. Alone, unguarded, evidently anxious to dispel all misinterpretation which malevolence could draw from the unhappy event, he displayed great energy ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... subsequently shipped by the governor from Quebec to England, and never returned to Virginia. It is this treatment of Van Braam, more than any thing else, which convinces us that the suspicion of his being in collusion with the French in regard to the misinterpretation of the articles of capitulation, was groundless. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... strenuous sense. Single clauses in my writing, or sentences read out of their connexion, may possibly have been compatible with a transphenomenal principle of energy; but I defy any one to show a single sentence which, taken with its context, should be naturally held to advocate that view. The misinterpretation probably arose at first from my having defended (after Renouvier) the indeterminism of our efforts. 'Free will' was supposed by my critics to involve a supernatural agent. As a matter of plain history, the only 'free will' I have ever thought ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James |
