"Overestimate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sum, he gave some semblance of reality in the United States, after other men had tried and failed, to that great but ill-starred revolt against Victorian pedantry, formalism and sentimentality which began in the early 90's. It would be difficult, indeed, to overestimate the practical value to all the arts in America of his intellectual alertness, his catholic hospitality to ideas, his artistic courage, and above all, his powers of persuasion. It was not alone that he saw clearly what was sound and significant; ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... the street, trampling under foot all who were in the way. One man was gored through and through by a maddened bull. At least a dozen persons', it is said, were killed, though probably this is an overestimate. One observer tells us that "the first sight I saw was a man with blood streaming from his wounds, carrying a dead woman in his arms. He placed the body on the floor of the court at the Palace Hotel, and then told me he was the janitor of a big building. The first ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... Jerome, at the bidding of Pope Damasus (A.D. 382), was the author of that famous Latin version of the Scriptures called THE VULGATE, is known to all. It seems scarcely possible to overestimate the critical importance of such a work,—executed at such a time,—under such auspices,—and by a man of so much learning and sagacity as Jerome. When it is considered that we are here presented with the results of a careful examination of the best Greek Manuscripts to which a competent scholar ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... place as literary editor of the New York Tribune, where for twenty-five years he disseminated the knowledge of the best thought and literature broadcast over the land. When we consider the immense circulation of that periodical and the quality of its readers, we can hardly overestimate the value of his work. Many ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... to assume that neither in the city nor country are we likely to overestimate the influence of the press. The daily and weekly paper have a wide circulation among rural people and furnish a source of penetrating and persistent social influence all the more significant because the readers are little conscious of ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... be hard to overestimate the weariness and cynicism and despair that have been caused in the world by its more recklessly hopeful men—the men who plump down happily anywhere and hope, the optimists who are merely slovenly in ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... that we cannot but admire the real statesman as the vastest human Poetry. Ever to look beyond the present moment, to foresee the ways of Destiny, to care so little for power that he only retains it because he is conscious of his usefulness, while he does not overestimate his strength; ever to lay aside all personal feeling and low ambitions, so that he may always be master of his faculties, and foresee, will, and act without ceasing; to compel himself to be just and impartial, to keep order on a large scale, to silence ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... and harmonies of the virtues, and manifesting the unapproached beauty and majesty of the gentler virtues,(4) which in pre-Christian ages were sometimes made secondary, sometimes repudiated with contempt and derision. We cannot overestimate the importance of this teaching by example. The instances are very numerous, in which the fitness of a specific mode of conduct can be tested only by experiment; and Jesus Christ tried successfully several experiments in morals that ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... disembodied spirits, he would have been its ablest citizen; but he was utterly disqualified to live in a human world. He was absolutely incapable of judging people. His tendency was to underestimate men and to overestimate women. His life bore all the scars inevitable to such an instinct. Women, in particular, had played ducks and drakes with his career. Weakly chivalrous, mindlessly gallant, he lacked the faculty of learning by experience—especially where the other ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... the Secretary of the Navy shows the saving in our naval expenditures which would result. The Senator from Alabama, Mr. Morgan, in his argument upon this subject before the Senate of the last session, did not overestimate the importance of the work when he said that 'The canal is the most important subject now connected with the commercial growth and progress of ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... a whole division of cavalry, under command of the noted Rebel, Major General Sam Jones, had been sent to effect our capture, to offset in a measure Longstreet's repulse at Knoxville. A gross overestimate of our numbers had caused the sending of so large a force on this errand, and the rough treatment we gave the two columns that attacked us first confirmed the Rebel General's ideas of our strength, and led him to adopt cautious tactics, instead of crushing us out ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... The Faerie Queene, the Don Quixote of Cervantes, the poems and novels of Scott, Grimm's and Andersen's Fairy Tales, much of Defoe and Swift, Goldsmith's Vicar of Wake field, Coleridge's Ancient Mariner (he himself was very fond of that poem), and many other things, and I cannot overestimate the good they did me. His talks to me during our walks gave me, under the guise of pleasantry, not so much specific information concerning things (though that was not wanting), but—character; that is, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... to be entailed on the third and fourth generation. When a slave escapes from a Southern plantation, he at once takes a name as the first step in liberty—the first assertion of individual identity. A woman's dignity is equally involved in a life-long name, to mark her individuality. We can not overestimate the demoralizing effect on woman herself, to say nothing of society at large, for her to consent thus to merge her existence so wholly in that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... overestimate the fervent love of liberty, the intelligent courage, and the sum of common sense with which our fathers made the great experiment of self-government. When they found, after a short trial, that the confederacy of States, was ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... opportunity for strolls into the country and jaunts to the local entertainments. Over and above this, every Thursday evening she went to the subscription library to change the week's supply of books, and there again she met friends and acquaintances. It is hard to overestimate the value of church or chapel—but particularly chapel—as a social institution, in places like Woodhouse. The Congregational Chapel provided Alvina with a whole outer life, lacking which she would have been poor indeed. She was not particularly religious ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... and the glowing words of praise for the two friends of the dead, spoken with such peculiar force by the minister, led her, as was natural, to overestimate their worth and to undervalue her own. With the same spirit, therefore, with which she admired Herbert and Bob for their acts, she condemned her own inactivity, and there in that little room beside the remains of the humble newsboy ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... But I overestimate our numbers, for it was not the whole of the Heilbron contingent that reached the firing line. We had to leave some of them behind with the horses at the foot of the kop, and there were others who remained at the first safe position they ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... beings. The theories of Darwin and Wallace brought to a head and presented in a concrete shape the somewhat vague speculations as to development and evolution which had long been floating in the minds of naturalists. In the actual working out of Darwin's great theory it is impossible to overestimate the influence of Lyell. This is made abundantly clear in Darwin's letters, and it must never be forgotten that Darwin himself was a geologist. His training in this science enabled him to grasp the import of the ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... put it that way,—I'm sure I don't know; beyond that it embarrasses me horribly to have you overestimate me so. If any courage has been shown this night, it is yours ... But I'm forgetting again." He thought to divert her. "Where shall I tell the cabby to go ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... contemptuously. "Probably also a bee. Who but a bee would overestimate human beings like that? Your Miss Cassandra, or whatever her name is, doesn't know her history. Those cities and towers and other human devices you speak of are none of them any good to us. Who would take such an impractical view of the world as you do? If you don't accept ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... feeling of the eighteenth century; and it is difficult to overestimate its value in the support it gave to religion in times when such aid was ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Now, however, that this question is raised, I feel it desirable to say without any hesitation that the majority of golfers possess vastly exaggerated notions of the effect of strong cross winds on the flight of their ball. They greatly overestimate the capabilities of a breeze. To judge by their observations on the tee, one concludes that a wind from the left is often sufficient to carry the ball away at an angle of forty-five degrees, and indeed sometimes, when it does ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... although such observations unquestionably have certain value for comparative psychology, it is well known that unless an observer knows the history of an act, he is not able to evaluate it in terms of intelligence and is especially prone to overestimate its value as evidence ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... excitedly," said the elder gentleman; "yet I think she does not overestimate the unfortunate position in which your odd fancy places you. I know nothing of the reasons that have impelled you to this step; I only know that the popular opinion is that the cause is utterly inadequate. You ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... "I think you overestimate the help crisis," I said. "There are two things that they really want. The first is to have employers absolutely dependent on them, and the second is a gay life. To take the first. I remember that when I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... case, his want of discrimination was rather due to an overestimate of Inductive proof than to an undervaluation of Mathematical Demonstration. That Mathematics, Astronomy, and Physics were more perfect Sciences than the others in point of precision, he distinctly ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... features of the campaign on our side has been the success obtained by the Royal Flying Corps. In regard to the collection of information it is impossible either to award too much praise to our aviators for the way they have carried out their duties or to overestimate the value of the intelligence collected, more ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... else in Him, more than we, that guaranteed it? What, as President Tucker asks, is this power which shall make "maybe" into "is" for us? "Without doubt the trend of modern thought and faith is toward the more perfect identification of Christ with humanity. We cannot overestimate the advantage to Christianity of this tendency. The world must know and feel the humanity of Jesus. But it makes the greatest difference in result whether the ground of the common humanity is in Him or in us. To borrow ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... Affairs. His uncle M. de Talleyrand thinks a great deal of him and often entrusts him with very delicate work. This morning he gave M. de Marsan a valuable paper to copy—a paper, Monsieur, the importance of which it were impossible to overestimate. The very safety of this country, the honour of our King, are involved in it. I cannot tell you its exact contents, and it is because I would not tell more about it to the police that they would not help me in any way, and referred ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... just as prevalent among ignorant whites as among negroes, though with the latter there is generally a tendency to overestimate. Where negroes make wrong estimates, in three cases out of four they will be found excessive. With whites the variation will be diminutive as often as excessive. In judging of numbers of men, a column ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... interesting volume of the letters I have received from correspondents unknown to the world of authorship, but writing from an instinctive impulse, which many of them say they have long felt and resisted. One must not allow himself to be flattered into an overestimate of his powers because he gets many letters expressing a peculiar attraction towards his books, and a preference of them to those with which he would not have dared to compare his own. Still, if the homo unius ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... cannot overestimate real intensity of feeling behind Irish question here. It is growing every day and is not at all confined to Irishmen. The passage of resolution of sympathy with almost unanimous vote in Senate last night is but a slight evidence of interest here. I wish the President could do just a little for ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... of Truth, so the life-principle within us expands, the old bonds and limitations which had no existence in reality fall off from us, and we enter into regions of light, liberty, and power, of which we had previously no conception. It is impossible, therefore, to overestimate the importance of being able to realise the symbol for a symbol, and being able to penetrate to the inner substance which it represents. Life itself is to be realised only by the conscious experience of its livingness in ourselves, and it is the endeavour ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... circumstances differ, but the one man is but the other turned inside out. And all round about us we see the fierce fight to get more and more of these things, the tight grip of them when we have got them, the overestimate of the value of them, the contempt for the people who have less of them than ourselves. Our aristocracy is an aristocracy of wealth; in some respects, one by no means to be despised, because there often go a great many good qualities to the making and the stewardship of wealth; ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... had put several small relics in a row on the edge of the lower part of the big mahogany bookcase, and was counting on her fingers the names of the friends for whom they were intended. Her grief was sufficiently real to make her, perhaps, overestimate the number of those to whom such relics would be precious. A tender smile was on her lips at the recollection of an old soldier servant of Sir David's who had been with him in Egypt. She hesitated a moment between two objects—one, a good silver-mounted ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... Coll. fourth series, iv. 422.] An established priesthood is naturally the firmest support of despotism; but the course of events made that of Massachusetts revolutionary. This was a social factor whose importance it is hard to overestimate; for though the influence of the elders had much declined during the eighteenth century, their political power was still immense; and it is impossible to measure the degree in which the drift of feeling ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... me as an individual. Then I guessed that nocturnal prowlings were not in the least her habit, and I was also reminded (I had been struck with the circumstance in talking with her before I took possession) that it was impossible to overestimate her simplicity. ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... the joys of youth, preserves inviolate memories which nothing can destroy. The place whose quiet fame is made is surer of the future than the one which is on the brink of fabulous glory. It is impossible to overestimate the significance ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... becomes more and more apparent that the exact number of lives lost will never be known. Up to the present time the disposition has been to under rather than overestimate ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... romantic tales have done to marriage and the sober-satisfying everyday life, no one can estimate, no one can overestimate. Romanticism, which extols sex as the prime and only thing of life, prudery which closes its eyes to it and makes sour faces, need special places in Dante's Inferno. Neither has dealt with reality,—reality, which is satisfying and pleasant unless ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... occurrences—say of regeneration. We find that no physical explanation in the least meets the needs of the case, and we are consequently obliged to look for it in something differing from the operations of chemistry and physics. Of this argument Dr. Johnstone[10] says: "It is almost impossible to overestimate the appeal which it ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... been disposed to overestimate the value of their services during this period, attaching undue importance to the current rumors of intending revolt on the part of the Californians, and of the approach of Mexican troops to reconquer the province. They also claim the credit ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... is—How has it worked in practice? The method of voice production here recommended has given the writer advantages that it would be difficult to overestimate. Lungs naturally weak grew to three times their former size and strength; his voice increased in depth, richness and resonance; though constantly speaking in large churches for years, he has never known what hoarseness, sore throat ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... young men, Goodrich having only just graduated; while Greenway, whose father had served with honor in the Confederate Army, had been out of Yale three or four years. They were natural soldiers, and it would be well-nigh impossible to overestimate the amount of good they did the regiment. They were strapping fellows, entirely fearless, modest, and quiet. Their only thought was how to perfect themselves in their own duties, and how to take care of the men under them, so as to bring them to the highest point of soldierly perfection. ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... Jane could hear the twinkle in his voice. "My dear lady," he said, "you overestimate my play as, in your great kindness of heart, you overestimate many other things connected with me. But I shall like to think of you at the golf links at eleven o'clock to-morrow morning. You might drive there, but the walk through the woods is too charming to miss. Only remember, ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... the fine art of approaching him. I would, therefore, be a doorkeeper, and throw some doors wide open, that men and women may unhindered enter. This essay aims to stand as a porter at the gate. We shall never overestimate Shakespeare, because we can not. Some men and things lie beyond the danger of hyperbole. No exaggeration is possible concerning them, seeing they transcend all dreams. Space can not be conceived by the most luxuriant imagination, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... feel complimented at your estimate of my integrity," Trueman replies, "but you greatly overestimate my ability and the hold which ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... will pardon the criticism, but you talk too much, and too many of you try to talk at once. My head is aching from the roar and din of your noisy orators. Gentlemen, what does it all amount to? You are talking about prohibition, but you overestimate your political strength. Disastrous failures attend upon all your endeavors to conquer existing evils by the votes of men alone. Give women the legal power to combat intemperance, and they will soon ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... unscrupulous intriguers, without an atom of moral sense or loyalty, and both possessed ability, differing in kind, perhaps, which they used in the accomplishment of their own ends. France can never overestimate the great evil these two men did to the national cause. Napoleon's power and penetrating vision kept them in check only when he could grasp the nettle. Even when absent on his campaigns, they knew he was kept in close touch with what was going on. It was not ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... been, and no doubt was, very much below the real value of the property. It is impossible to sell off a large and expensively improved estate like theirs all at once. It is probably true that the machinery and buildings were worth all they received for the whole property; and it would not be an overestimate to give the real value of what they sold at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. They had begun, ten years before, with one hundred and twenty-five families; as after the second year they had bred no children, and as they then lost some members who left on account of their aversion to ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... of progress disappointed civil rights leaders, who had perhaps overestimated the racial reforms made when Forrestal was Secretary of the Navy. It can be argued that as Secretary of Defense Forrestal himself was inclined to overestimate them. Nevertheless, he could demonstrate some systematic improvement in the lot of the black sailor, enough improvement, according to his gradualist philosophy, to assure continued progress. Ironically, considering ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... "You overestimate me," he replied. "All I can do, for now, is to camp down here and try to figure the problem out—with your help. Whatever this thing is, it's evident it stands between us and our plan. Either Chicago lies on the other side—(provided, of course, as you say, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... made them overestimate the distances they did—and they did overestimate them, very much. When we were tracking up on the Rat Portage, in the ice water, at the Arctic Circle, don't you remember we figured on double what we ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... the oldest poem in the English language, and valuable for that reason. While it is rather terrifying in some of its details its unreality saves it from harmful possibilities. Parents and teachers are inclined rather to overestimate the unpleasant consequences of reading terrifying things when they are of this character. Few, if any, children will read the story if it displeases them and those who do will not retain the disagreeable impression it makes for any great length ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... "I've dismantled it. One of van Manderpootz's few mistakes was to leave it around where a pair of incompetents like you and Denise could get to it. It seems that I continually overestimate the intelligence of others. I suppose I tend to judge them by ...
— The Ideal • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... population, it is very difficult to speak positively. The invert himself is a misleading guide because he has formed round himself a special coterie of homosexual persons, and, moreover, he is sometimes apt to overestimate the number of inverts through the misinterpretation of small indications that are not always conclusive. The estimate of the ordinary normal person, feeling the ordinary disgust toward abnormal phenomena, is also ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the house. Elizabeth's vigorous mind, her clear insight, and strong common-sense, made her quick to judge and discriminate. As Dinah knew, she very seldom made a mistake in her opinion of a person. Dinah's charitable nature was rather prone to overestimate her friends and acquaintances—"all her geese were swans." As Elizabeth often said, when she cared for any one she simply could not see their faults. "If we were all as blind as Dinah," her sister would say, ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... of an artist. Moreover, and this tests the prudence of men more severely, he was always ready to accept what the world and time brought him, so that he supported with an equable mind the good and the evil which Fortune sent him. In truth it is impossible to overestimate what art gains by good society, gentle manners, and modesty, joined with other excellent traits, especially when these emanate from the intellect and from superior minds. Thus everyone should render himself no less pleasing ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... contains the principle, that solicitude for the future is at bottom heathen worldly-mindedness. The heathen tendency in us all leads to an overestimate of material good, and it is a question of circumstances whether that shall show itself in heaping up earthly treasures, or in anxious care. These are the same plant, only the one is growing in the tropics of sunny prosperity, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... itself, it was said that the personal roll of Peter Poyas embraced a membership of six hundred names. More than one witness placed the conjectural strength of Vesey's forces as high as 9,000, but I am inclined to write this down as a gross overestimate of the people actually enrolled as ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... always emphasized in the training of the colonial girl was manners or etiquette—the art of being a charming hostess. As Mrs. Earle says, "It is impossible to overestimate the value these laws of etiquette, these conventions of custom had at a time, when neighborhood life was the whole outside world." How many, many a "don't" the colonial miss had dinned into her ears! Hear but a few of them: "Never sit down ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... are naturally inclined to overestimate the value of any new sources of information opened by their own diligence or sagacity of research, and a little of this feeling is perceptible in Mr. Bancroft's Preface; but, after all, we apprehend that the new evidence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... influential in determining the course of events. It chanced that I myself was an actor in one of these lesser incidents, when second secretary to our legation in France, during the summer of 1862. I may possibly overestimate the ultimate importance of my adventure, for Mr. Adams, our minister of the court of St. James, seems to have failed to record it, or, at least, there is no allusion to it in his biography. In the perplexing tangle of the diplomacy of the ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... can be collected. But from what we now possess it is proved incontestably that it is one of the most wonderful and subtle productions of human wisdom. It is impossible to overestimate the debt that the philosophy, culture and civilization of India owe to it in all her developments ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... It is difficult to overestimate the importance of Mr. Humphrey Crewe, of his value to the town of Leith, and to the State at large, and in these pages only a poor attempt at an appreciation of him may be expected. Mr. Crewe by no means underestimated this claim upon the community, and he had of late been declaring that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... principles and its makers. Although it is always easy to exaggerate the influence that any single spirit may have upon a movement embracing {300} many nationalities and many different orders of mind, it would be difficult to overestimate the effect of Burke's words and Burke's actions in animating the coalition of monarchical Europe against insurgent France. And upon a responsibility for the intervention of other States in the affairs of France depends also a proportionate degree of responsibility ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... indeed, be difficult to overestimate the influence which the lives of the great and good have exercised upon the elevation of human character. "The best biography," says Isaac Disraeli, "is a reunion with human existence in its most excellent state." ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... spiritual region, strength and courage do go together. The consciousness of the divine power with us, and that alone, will make us bold with a boldness that has no taint of levity and presumption mingled with it, and never will overestimate its own strength. The charge to Joshua, then, not only insists upon the duty of strength, but on the duty of conscious strength, and on the duty of measuring the strength that is at my back with ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... "You overestimate my worth and his interest. He is a man who lives in a world of his own and needs no society, save such as is afforded in his tasteful and elegant home. He loves books, flowers, music, paintings, and his dog! He is a stern man, and shares his griefs and joys with no one. All this ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... impossible to overestimate the value of all this work in industry. The Prime Minister, speaking last year on this subject, said, "It is a strange irony, but no small compensation, that the making of weapons of destruction should ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... were playing old Harry with the country! For in his opinion the country was in a bad way, partly owing to Industrialism, with its rotting effect upon physique; partly to this modern analytic Intellectualism, with its destructive and anarchic influence on morals. It was difficult to overestimate the mischief of those two factors; and in the approaching conference with his brothers, one of whom was the head of an industrial undertaking, and the other a writer, whose books, extremely modern, he never ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... corpse in the grave. Such notions may be superstitious and unscriptural, as indeed they are, but they are quite distinct from a belief in the necessity of a human priest to give the sacraments their virtue. And, without going to such lengths as this, men may overestimate the efficacy of the sacraments, to the disparagement of prayer, and preaching, and reading the Scriptures, and yet may be perfectly clear from the opinion which makes this efficacy depend immediately on a human administrator. And so again, ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... nature, he insisted upon making the full preparations which he considered essential to success not only in battle, but in pursuit of a defeated enemy. From his point of view, Thomas was unquestionably right in his action. How he came to make so great an overestimate of the Confederate strength, in view of the means of information in his possession and the estimate General Sherman had given him before he started for Savannah, it is difficult to conjecture. But the fact is now beyond ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... was the first and probably the best of Cooper's historical romances. Even his admirers must confess that it is crudely written, and that our patriotic interest inclines us to overestimate a story which throws the glamor of romance over the Revolution. Yet this faulty tale attempts to do what very few histories have ever done fairly, namely, to present both sides or parties of the fateful conflict; and its unusual success in this difficult ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... that he ought to be able to judge the number but to find it hard to do so, and knowing from experience that the larger the number the harder it is to judge he seemed to reason conversely that the more effort it takes to judge the more points there are, and hence he would overestimate the number. ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... certainly did not overestimate the value of the manuscript, and it would be extremely interesting could we trace the evidence by which it came to be believed that it was written by the hand of St. Tecla. A note in Arabic at the foot of the first page of Genesis says that ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... thirteenth volume of the British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, we find, in a review of the control of prostitution, an estimate in regard to the syphilization of a nation. The estimates are made on the most conservative figures, as, in the desire of the reviewer not to overestimate, he starts by figuring out the actual number of prostitutes in England, Wales, and Scotland to be only 50,000, when they were estimated, by those who had carefully studied the subject, as being more than double that number; the conservative estimate is, however, suitable for our purpose; so that ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... impossible to overestimate the value of the insistence on the social aspect of human affairs as Mrs. Gilman has ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... the distances they did—and they did overestimate them, very much. When we were tracking up on the Rat Portage, in the ice water, at the Arctic Circle, don't you remember we figured on double what we had actually done? A man's wife corrected him on how long they had been married. ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... met in developing the aesthetic appreciation is the tendency to overestimate its dependence on, in the first place, skill in creative work and the active emotions involved in achievement, and in the second place, the intellectual understanding of the situation. It has been largely taken for granted that the constructive work in the arts or in music increased one's ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... born to greatness. He had none of the advantages which even the poorest boys may now enjoy. But he achieved greatness by always making the best use of such opportunities as came in his way. He was not afraid of work. He did not give up to discouragements. He did not overestimate his own abilities. He was earnest and faithful in little things; and that, after all, is the surest way of attaining to great things. There is no man to whom we Americans owe a greater debt of gratitude. ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin
... overpraise Balzac in parts or to mispraise him as a whole. But so long as inappropriate and superfluous comparisons are avoided and as his own excellence is recognized and appreciated, it is scarcely possible to overestimate that excellence in itself and for itself. He stands alone; even with Dickens, who is his nearest analogue, he shows far more points of difference than of likeness. His vastness of bulk is not more remarkable than his peculiarity of quality; and when these two things ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... sexes, such as health and comfort require; they would really be conferring an amount of benefit on the community at large, and, at the same time, we believe, upon themselves, which it would not be easy to overestimate. ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... against both the good and the bad qualities shown not only by the individual but by his brothers, sisters, parents, and other relatives. Conscientious sufferers from visible defects of any kind are apt to overestimate their importance. Moreover, many supposedly hereditary defects may equally well be the result of an unfavorable environment like that which caused similar defects in the parents. Under ideal conditions they might never appear at all. In such matters, too, the best course is to consult a good physician. ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... matter, to which man owes his extraordinary control over the elements. To the knowledge acquired by his observations on the nature or operations of mind, he owes no new power over that which he surveys: in at least its direct consequences, his science is barren. It would be difficult, however, to overestimate its indirect consequences. It seems impossible that the metaphysical province should long exist blank and unoccupied in any highly civilised country, especially in a country of active and acquiring ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... CHILDREN USUALLY OVERESTIMATED. One of the most common errors made by the teacher is to overestimate the intelligence of the over-age pupil. This is because she fails to take account of age differences and estimates intelligence on the basis of the child's school performance in the grade where he happens to be located. She tends to overlook the fact ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... show how far Dr. Brownson himself was, at this period, from being able to give any but the evasive answer he actually did give to the searching philosophical questions put by his youthful admirer. But it is not easy, especially in the light of Isaac Hecker's subsequent experiences, to overestimate the influence which this new presentation of our Saviour had upon the development of his mind and character. For reasons which we have tried to indicate by a brief description of some of his life-long ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... It is impossible to overestimate the excitement, the animosity, and the contention which arose in the New England colonies from these discussions over "singing by rule" or "singing by rote." Many prominent clergymen wrote essays and tracts upon the subject; of these ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... can't be positive till I know you better.... I'm afraid you've got a tendency to overestimate the gullibility of people in general. It's either that, or.... No: I don't believe you're ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... shown by many of the strikers and their families it would be hard to overestimate. Small inconveniences were made light of. Families on strike themselves, or the friends of strikers would crush into yet tighter quarters so that a couple of boys or two or three girls out of work might crowd into the vacated room, and so have a shelter over their heads "till the strike was ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... hard to overestimate the services performed by this committee. Each member took a hearty interest in the work in hand and freely gave of his time and advice in carrying the work forward to a successful conclusion. Any lack of interest or enthusiasm on the part of the members of a given ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... Freedom, an anti-slavery paper which had been started some three or four years before. John Pierpont, than whom there could not be a more competent witness, in his brief and beautiful sketch of the life and writings of Rogers, does not overestimate the ability with which the Herald was conducted, when he says of its editor: "As a newspaper writer, we think him unequalled by any living man; and in the general strength, clearness, and quickness of his intellect, we think all who ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... his overestimate of her ignorance of affairs had not lured him into giving her the names of the parties at interest to transcribe. But did she really understand? To test her, ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... as Edwin Booth, Lawrence Barrett, John McCullough, Barry Sullivan, George Rignold, E.L. Davenport, Ristori, Adelaide Neilson, Modjeska, Mary Anderson, Mrs. D.P. Bowers, and Rose Eytinge in the leading roles. It is impossible to overestimate the value of listening night after night to the great thoughts and subtle philosophy of the master dramatist from the lips of such interpreters, to say nothing of the daily association with the men and women who lived and moved in the atmosphere of the drama and its ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... One can scarce overestimate the value of modern methods of communication to the world. So much of our development has been more or less directly dependent upon it that it is difficult to fancy our situation without the telegraph and telephone. The diligence with which the ancients ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... be hard to overestimate the effect of the British blockade of the German ports upon the fortunes of the war. The Germans for a long time attempted, by the use of neutral ships, to obtain the necessary supplies through Holland, Sweden, Norway, and Switzerland. Millions of dollars' ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... while we would not be so unscientific as to deny for a moment that it would be better for every woman to get her advice and instruction concerning the use of contraceptive directly from a doctor, nevertheless it is impossible to overestimate the help men and women could give each other were the free exchange of information on methods of birth control legal ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... groups of ancient rocks, each of which may in their turn have formed continents and oceanic basins, have been disturbed, folded, and denuded even in the course of a few out of many of those geological periods to which our imperfect records relate. It is not easy for us to overestimate the effects which causes in every day action must produce when the multiplying power of time ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... difficult to overestimate the variety and extent of the influence that the monks exercised for centuries in Europe. The proud annals of the Benedictines, Franciscans, Dominicans, and Jesuits contain many a distinguished name. The most eminent philosophers, scientists, historians, ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... you overestimate my service to him, possibly. I dare say the boat could have picked him ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... Can we overestimate the influence of these associations, of these Soldiers'-Aid Societies, rising up in every city and village, in producing just such a state of mind, in keeping the soldier one of us, one of the people? Five hundred ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... overestimate the drift in the direction of radicalism. The Plumb Plan has not yet been made the sine qua non of the American labor program. Although the American Federation of Labor endorsed the principle of government ownership of the railways at its conventions ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... of those who feel that female dignity is compromised by it, I have here omitted a woman's flippant overestimate of the number of women in London society who suffer from nervous disorders at the climacteric ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... had a slender view of his law reading, and spoke slightingly of Ford as a lawyer. They had both diligently studied to the lower depths of the law, had a fair appreciation of their acquisitions, and would not overestimate the few months of solitary reading of a ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... You did not overestimate the originality of the Cortrights' seaside garden, and even after your intimate description, it contained several surprises in the shape of masses of the milkweeds that flourish in sandy soil, especially the dull pink, and the orange, about which the brick-red monarch butterflies ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... you mean by coming here at this hour?" he demanded savagely. "You came here to warn me!—really, you overestimate ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... that I may be pardoned if I appear to overestimate the remarkable mental capacity and power of comprehension and discrimination which my pupil possesses, I wish to add that, while I have always known that Helen made great use of such descriptions and comparisons as appeal to her imagination and fine poetic nature, ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... seemed to grow more shy, and there was a certain monotony in walking this tiny quarter-deck of space. So I went round to the west side, where the water-lilies are. Fish were rising about three yards beyond the weedy beds, and I foolishly thought I would try for them. Now, you cannot overestimate the difficulty of casting a fly across yards of water-lilies. You catch in the weeds as you lift your line for a fresh cast, and then you have to extricate it laboriously, shortening line, and then to let it out again, and probably come to grief ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... published. His letters are like his conversation, free, frank, without a trace of arriere pensee, praising others where possible—and no man ever found it more possible to praise others more genuinely—depreciating himself and his work most unduly. "You so overestimate the value of what I do," he writes on one occasion, "that you make me feel ashamed of myself, and wish to be worthy of such praise." Again, "You have indeed passed a most magnificent eulogium on me, and I ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... accounts for his remarkable likeness to Christ and fruitfulness in serving God and man. No pen-portrait of him which fails to make these features very prominent can either be accurate in delineation or warm in colouring. It is difficult to overestimate their importance in their relation to what George Muller was ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... much better than the Atlantic ever had that I am probably inclined to overestimate everything I saw on the voyage. It was the first trip at sea that ever gave me any pleasure. The huge vessels are in themselves a great comfort, and in the placid waters and the sliding down the rotund side of the great globe under warmer and warmer skies one gains a very agreeable experience. ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... vitality, known as "gummata," with a tendency to break down or ulcerate, may form in almost any part of the body, and the damage that occurs is considerable indeed. Various diseases result which the lay mind would not associate with syphilis, but it would be difficult to overestimate the resultant diseases that may occur in any organ of ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health
... impossible to overestimate the value of the Celtic contribution to our national literature and character: the race that gave us Ossian, and Finn, and Cuchulain, that sang of the sorrowful love and doom of Deirdre, that told of the pursuit of Diarmit and Grania, till every dolmen and cromlech in Ireland was associated ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... to automobilism of this great trial one can hardly overestimate it. There is no place here for the freak machine or scorching chauffeur, such as one has found in many great events of the past. A great touring contest over such a course would be bound to have important results in many ways. The ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... harmony of thought will bring happiness and contentment; the will, rightly drilled,—and divinely guided,—can drive out all discordant thoughts, and usher in the reign of perpetual harmony. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of forming a habit of cheerfulness early in life. The serene optimist is one whose mind has dwelt so long upon the sunny side of life that he has ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... Moreover, this voice was so decisive and so loud that it acted like those legendary trumpet-blasts which shattered the walls of Jericho; in a few days the Spanish Government, with a powerful minister at its head, had fallen. The significance of this event we cannot easily overestimate. For the first time in history, the voice of international public opinion, unsupported by pressure, political, social, or diplomatic, proved potent enough to avenge an act of injustice by destroying a Government. A new force has appeared in the world, and it tends to operate ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... in prospective, and are good enough to propose that I step into Count Schwarzenberg's place and rule the country in the Elector's name, as he has done. But I am not blind to my own shortcomings, and do not overestimate myself. I know very well that I am as yet but an inexperienced young man, who has still a great deal to learn, and is by no means in a position to take the place of so distinguished and adroit a statesman as Count ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... they overestimate their abilities, and their wandering disposition brings them into trouble. Once I found a herd of seven up to their backs in soft snow, and tired out,—a strange condition for a caribou to be in. They were taking the affair philosophically, resting till they should ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... for gladness, which we feel on waking in seasons of happiness, even before our reason, locating it, reminds us what the actual source of our joy may be. He was at first afraid lest his excitement, working on the imagination, should have led him on the previous night to overestimate the fineness of the instrument, and he took it from the drawer half expecting to be disappointed with its daylight appearance. But a glance sufficed to convince him of the unfounded nature of his suspicions. The various ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... indeed, was chiefly in slender plumpness and bloom. But it served her purpose as no classic mould would have done. She did not overestimate it. But she was probably better satisfied with it than with most of those conditions of her life that people were always telling her were ideal. They spoke of her as the only child in a way that implied congratulations ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... also more than a slight thing in his life. It meant a good deal to him; he had worked hard and put the best that was in him into its making; and hard as the work had been, it had been a labour of love. He wasn't a man to overestimate his ability; he possessed a singularly sane and clear appreciation of the true value of his work, harbouring no illusions as to his real status either as dramatist or novelist. But at the same time, he knew when he had done good work. And A Single ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... basis of our civilization. Its supremacy and power it is impossible to overestimate; it enters every avenue of development, and it may be set down as the prime factor in the world's progress. Its utility and its universality are hand in hand, whether in the magnificent iron steamship of the ocean, the network of iron rail ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... prestige which the methods of the natural sciences have gained, particularly in their application to the phenomena of the physical universe, has undoubtedly led scientific men to overestimate the importance of mere conceptual and abstract knowledge. It has led them to assume that history also must eventually become "scientific" in the sense of the natural sciences. In the meantime the vast collections of historical facts which the industry ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the hypothesis which I had presupposed suggested itself to me with surprising force. I found that just the ones who perceive the repetition least hate it most, and that those who have a strong perception of the uniform impressions and who overestimate their number are the ones who on the whole ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... claims it for its own. Then, and not before, sin is actually felt and acknowledged, and, if unaccompanied by repentance, grows a thousand-fold more virulent by its self-consciousness. Be it considered, also, that men often overestimate their capacity for evil. At a distance, while its attendant circumstances do not press upon their notice, its results are dimly seen, they can bear to contemplate it.... In truth, there is no such thing in man's nature as a settled and full resolve, either ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... it already is, by no means completes the list of the last three years' gains of pictures for England. Such a record shows how compact with treasures the little island is becoming. And meanwhile, what is America doing in this way? The overestimate of the importance and value of Mr. Belmont's collection in New York shows how far the American public yet is from knowing its own ignorance and poverty in respect ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... reason to believe that although the business genius must have a good inheritance, yet the inheritance does not determine what its possessor shall make of himself. Many persons are inclined to overestimate the influence of inheritance in determining success in business. The folly of this attitude is every day ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... one in every respect; it is not easy to overestimate either its delightfulness or its moral power. It is not possible for a great society to place before itself a more eminently Christlike purpose. It has been greatly honored of God in its results thus far. And no decently ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... Physical Education. While outdoor games are not necessary to maintain health, yet we can scarcely overestimate the part that the great games of baseball, football, tennis, golf, and croquet, play in the physical development of young people. When played in moderation and under suitable conditions, they are most useful and beneficial ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... NEWSPAPERS.—It is impossible to overestimate the influence of the newspapers and the periodical press in general, in the protection of wild life. But for their sympathy, their support and their independent assaults upon the Army of Destruction, our game species would ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... efforts to achieve this end, and she really almost succeeds—at least she can reach a higher point on the trunk of a tree than any other dog of her size I know—say six feet; if the bark is rough, perhaps seven feet would not be an overestimate. Her attempts are unremitting—once the frenzy is on it is with the greatest difficulty that she can be separated, panting and exhausted, from ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... easy to estimate the effectiveness of the constitutional and of the occasional factors in their relation to each other. Theory is always inclined to overestimate the first while therapeutic practice renders prominent the significance of the latter. By no means should it be forgotten that between the two there exists a relation of cooeperation and not of exclusion. The constitutional factor must wait for experiences which bring it to the surface, while the ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... resort of pilgrims, chiefly as the site of the graves of the great apostles, while many flocked to the tomb of Saint Martin of Tours. Meanwhile, wrote Henry C. Sheldon in a "History of the Christian Church," there were emphatic cautions against an overestimate of the value of pilgrimages. The eminent Greek Father, Gregory of Nyssa (332-398), said that change of place brings God ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... indifference to the plight of their offspring, and utter incapacity to alter it, are the inevitable result of their slavery. It is hopeless to attempt to reform their habits or improve their condition while the women are condemned to field labour; nor is it possible to overestimate the bad moral effect of the system as regards the women entailing this enforced separation from their children and neglect of all the cares and duties of mother, nurse, and even house-wife, which are all merged in the mere physical toil of a human hoeing ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... overestimate me, Mr. Williams. I have only a poor smattering of knowledge which I absorbed from two friends who are really educated men,—Mr. Little and ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... clearly "she was destined by Providence to blacken paper, as she sweat ink from every pore." But, if we may credit her admirers, who were numerous, she had fine eyes, a pleasing expression, and an agreeable address. She evidently did not overestimate her personal attractions, as will be seen from the following quatrain, which she wrote upon a portrait made by ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... attracts a reader's interest at once. As a very natural result, and justly, too, newspapers have been broadly accused of exaggeration for the sake of a large number. But at present many papers are inclined to underestimate rather than overestimate, perhaps to avoid this accusation. In a number of instances in the past year, among them the Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York, the first figures were smaller than the official count printed later. That does not mean, ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... Edward Carson in it—it is impossible to describe or overestimate the effect of this in Ireland. The fact that Mr. Redmond could, had he chosen to do so, have sat in the same Cabinet with Sir Edward Carson had no mollifying influence. If Mr. Redmond had consented, he would, on the instant, have ceased to be ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... rudimentary development, under the prevailing conditions of mutual antagonism and isolation, and hence contribute little to the expansion of the horizon. Knowing only their little world, such primitive groups overestimate the size and importance of their own territory, and are incapable of controlling an extensive area. This is the testimony of all travellers who have observed native African states. Though the race ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... the action of the piece, the only thing that showed Irving's great ability was the scene in the forest of Montmorency, where, as Robespierre, he reveals at one moment, in his talk with the English envoy, his ambition, his overestimate of himself, his suspicion of everybody and everything, his willingness to be cruel to any extent in order to baffle possible enemies; and then, next moment, on the arrival of his young friends, boys and girls, the sentimental, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... first meeting of the Tile Club, in which the subject of drawing for Scribner's Monthly was first mooted, and I do not believe I overestimate the importance that the position of the club, taken at that time, has had and still has—not as a club, for it was dissolved some years back—in the influence its personal art has wielded upon the printed ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... overestimate the ethnologic importance of the materials thus obtained. They are invaluable as the genuine production of the Indian mind, setting forth in the clearest light the state of the aboriginal religion before its contamination by contact with the whites. To the psychologist ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... slipped by. Now that the enemy was near he wanted nothing but to drive on up to the end of the shaft, come out into that world wherever the shaft ended, then try to fight his way through to the great hall where he hoped to find Phee-e-al. And his haste made him overestimate the passing time; their journey had been ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... "You overestimate me, my friend. Much of that is merely contracted for. Actually it'll take me nearly nine months to get rid of it. And by that time I'll have more. Anyway, I think I have something like ten million left. And remember that way back in the twentieth century some old ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... am not disposed to blame the politicians and the business men. They govern the nation, it is true, but they do it in a rather absentminded fashion. Those revolutionists who see the misery of the country as a deliberate and fiendish plot overestimate the bad will, the intelligence and the singleness of purpose in the ruling classes. Business and political leaders don't mean badly; the trouble with them is that most of the time they don't mean anything. They picture themselves as very "practical," which in practice ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... read everything, and let you hear from me on my return. In the meantime, I should add that I am helping two Socialist publications, and a good many individuals too, and that my resources have been absurdly exaggerated in the public prints. I say this, that you may not overestimate what I might ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... to the "trade" are often so condescendingly written that they infuriate the men to whom they are addressed. It is safer to assume that the man you are writing to is an intelligent human being. It is better to overestimate his mentality than to underestimate it, and it is better to "talk" to him in the letter than ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... function of the night. He flattered himself that he was able to look at any situation straight in the face, so to speak. He flattered himself that he was not a man to be led away by vanity. He was, as a rule, on very good terms with himself, but he was rather inclined to undervalue than overestimate the distinction which he enjoyed among his fellow-men. And the result of his due consideration of his last meeting with Phyllis was to make him feel that he had never met a girl who was quite so nice; ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... importunities for rewards for services. I assure your Majesty truthfully that, even if you had here three hundred encomiendas and a like number of offices, you could not recompense them for their services, which they exaggerate and overestimate beyond what they have actually performed for your Majesty. The most deserving of them merits very little, unless it be a reward for having conducted himself with great freedom, and for having destroyed the property ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair
... literary accomplishment. They could not have helped imitating it, if they would; and they did not think of avoiding imitation of it, if they could. It modified, to a very large extent, their grammar; it influenced, to an extent almost impossible to overestimate, the prosody of their finished literature; it supplied their vocabulary; it furnished models for all their first conscious literary efforts of the more deliberate kind, and it conditioned those which were more ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... country. Too much encouragement cannot be given to the reported efforts of certain railway companies to divert a portion of the tide of immigration to the Southern states. It is impossible, in the opinion of the Bureau, to overestimate the importance of this subject as bearing upon the effect of immigration on the ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... gentlemen, that a general fire in the congested section of this city is in my opinion not so improbable a thing as you Bostonians imagine. The conflagration hazard in Boston's congested district is not a thing one can exactly calculate, but it would be difficult to overestimate its gravity. . . . ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... an intimate knowledge of women clerks and secretaries in the City for the past twenty years, says that it is difficult to overestimate the poverty of a vast number of girls. Many of them are the chief breadwinners of the family. She knows of half a dozen cases of men of forty and a little older who are living on the earnings of their daughters; there may be two girls in the family, one getting 12s. and the other ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... often expounded. I think that at present the tendency is rather to do injustice to the common-sense embodied in this system, to the soundness of its aims, and to its value in many practical and immediate questions, than to overestimate its claim to scientific accuracy. That claim may be said ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... to a sick or dying man, he says, "we overestimate the value of human life, and, besides, we in a measure usurp the place of Providence, when we believe we may save it by committing sin." In other words, Dorner counts falsifying with the intention of ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull |
