"Confuse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... confuse me!—But why should I play the prude? I will own there was a time, when I thought myself handsome. 'Tis past. Alas! the enchanting beauties of a female countenance arise from peace of mind—The look, which captivates an honourable man, must be reflected ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... Julien, "you confuse the cases; we are now concerned with the veracious history of the pug, not the uncertain future of ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... sinister garment had met his eyes, it had been the sign of some frightful deception! He did not know the countenance it masked so darkly, but that same cloak he knew!... So well did he know it, that never could he confuse it with another hooded cloak of black—never! Its shape was peculiar; its cut singular—unmistakable! It was the impenetrable mask of one of those counterfeit personalities assumed at the pleasure of that enigmatic, sinister, formidable bandit, ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... Mr. Falkirk, looking puzzled, 'that in the general buzz of tongues yesterday—which is fit to confuse anything with more brains than a mosquito—I heard various buzzings which seemed to have reference to him. Perhaps I was wrong. I did not mean to listen, but if a fly gets into your ear it is difficult not to know it. Was I ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... a vague idea of women's ignorance; how naturally they are inclined to respond to a man; how the dominating egotism of a man and his confident professions and his demands confuse them; how deeply his appeals for his own happiness stir them to pity.... They have heard of love—and they do not know. If they ever dream of it it is not what they have imagined when a man suddenly comes crashing ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... that, in addition to lowering the lights at night, the authorities intend, in order to confuse the enemy, to alter the names of some of our thoroughfares, and a start is to be made with Park Lane, which is to be changed to ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... upon him were those of the three giants of the law whom he had now to oppose. They stared at him mercilessly—no doubt with the intention of staring him down. But they did not even confuse him; for the simple reason that he did not look towards them. They might stare themselves stone blind, but they would have no magnetic influence upon that strong, ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... eyes averted. He contended that to look fixedly into the eyes of anyone undergoing interrogation was calculated to confuse him and render the replies ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... a system of contention and difference warring against the laws of nature herself, and attempting by these new fangled, petty, puny, and most contemptible contrivances, organized in defiance of the best lessons of human experience, to confuse, impede, and disarrange the palpable will of the Creator of the world. I can see in this proposition for female suffrage the end of all that home life and education which are the best nursery for a nation's virtue. I can see in all these attempts to invade the relations between man and wife, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... certain things that happen to every one, and others we think might have happened to us, and may yet. So as we read, we unconsciously slip into the life of the other man and confuse our identity with his. To put yourself in his place is the only way to understand and appreciate him. It is imagination that gives us this faculty of transmigration of souls; and to have imagination is to be universal; not to have it is to be provincial. Let me see—wouldn't ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... most gracious Princess Turandotte!" said he; "has your highness no little riddle at hand with which to confuse weak heads?" ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... (occidere, to kill, etc.) prior to the [preaching of the] Gospel, no matter how decidedly he, with words only, denies it, to spite the Wittenbergers, in order that he also, as novus autor (new author), may produce something of his own and confuse the people ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... former class of Mars subjects. They are even more obstinate in their views, but conceal their opinions, and often pass for assenting parties when in reality they are but waiting for the right opportunity to strike their "mental blow" and confuse their opponent. ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... committed by the positive school, is this. They confuse the negative conditions of happiness with the positive materials of it. Professor Huxley, in a passage I have already quoted, is caught, so to speak, in the very act of committing it. 'Theft, murder, and adultery,' all these three, ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... support that Steptoe strangely clung to in his designs for the future, and a wild idea seized him. The surveyor was really the only disinterested witness between the two parties. If Steptoe could confuse his mind before the actual fighting—from which he would, of course, escape as a non-combatant—it would go far afterwards to rehabilitate Steptoe's party. "Very well, then," he said to Marshall, ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... may have been a necessary and even a beneficent phase in that struggle upward from the Brute which marks our progress from Gospel Times until the present day—but whether it has been a good or a bad phase in Economic Evolution, it is not Scientific and it is not English to confuse the system with the living human beings attached to it, and to contrast "Rich" and "Poor," insisting on the supposed luxury and callousness of the one or the humiliations and ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... enlightened, intelligent, almost methodical fashion. He does not confuse issues, and complain indiscriminately. Even when in the hands of others, he remains the man who had the courage to cut off his own foot, and finish the work of the shrapnel. He is too modest and respectful to give advice to the surgeon, but he ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... declared: "I am the State," but he announced his position frankly. He was an autocrat and he said so. It was a more honest and therefore less harmful position than that of a majority of voters in our country today. Can it help but confuse and deteriorate one sex, trained to believe and call itself living in a democracy, to say silently year by year at the polls, "I am the State"? Can it help but confuse and deteriorate the other sex, similarly trained to acquiescence year after year in a national ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... emergency nearly every country has, at one time or another, been tempted to confuse the monetary with the fiscal functions of the Treasury. To borrow by the issue of money seems to have a seductive charm hard to resist. Lloyd George established a new precedent for Great Britain by issuing nearly $200,000,000 of Government currency notes, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... plans ran on. She would pack her own pretty things—out of sight! They must not confuse, or call for pity. There would be no note. She, that woman at the bungalow would explain, and would tell him that there could be no reconsideration, for she, Joyce, had ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... British Isles—search them all over—you will discover no more agreeable institution of its kind than the Venables Free Library, Merchester; which, by the way, you are on no account to confuse with the Free Public Library attached to the Shire Hall. In the latter you may study the newspapers with all the latest financial, police and betting news, or borrow all the newest novels—even this novel which I am writing, should the Library Sub-Committee of the Town Council (an austerely moral ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... gradually becomes a mere impression of light. The details have been effaced little by little, and melted into a general hue of gold and warmth: the windowless houses and the walls extending in terraces confuse interchangeably their blank masses. The dark green hills of Boudjareah and Mustapha seem to have opened their sombre flanks to disclose a marble-quarry: the city, piled up with pale and blocklike forms, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... picking up many words of Kafir, and it is quite mortifying to see how much more easily the little monkey learns than I do. I forget my phrases or confuse them, whereas when he learns two or three sentences he appears to remember them always. It is a very melodious and beautiful language, and, except for the clicks, not very difficult to learn. Almost everybody here speaks it a little, and it is the first thing necessary ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... bad qualities, you may be sure they are not very important! Do not make too much fuss about either. Do you see? The thing is that you, you yourself, are not ANY of your qualities—you are the being that perceives them. The thing to see to is that they should not confuse you, bamboozle you, and hide you from the knowledge of yourself—that they should not be erected into a screen, to hide you from others, or the others from you. If you cease from running after qualities, then after a little time your soul will become ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... don't tease anybody but the men. I don't tease father or mother or you,—but men are fair game; they are such thumby, blundering creatures, and we can confuse ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... each year in which he lives a life of carefully dramatised hospitality. Things in no way blameworthy in themselves—his choice of tradesmen, his childrens' hats and measles, his difficulties with his relations—will be, if he is a permanent resident, 'out of the picture,' and may confuse the impression which he produces. If one could, by the help of a time-machine, see for a moment in the flesh the little Egyptian girl who wore out her shoes, one might find her behaving so charmingly that one's pity for her death would be increased. But it is more probable that, even if she ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... objection, that the minutiae of the creation are so multifarious as to confuse the mind of God, we are content to let it refute itself in every mind which has any just sense of divine knowledge and wisdom. The second objection, that some things are beneath God's notice, if it be not a captious cavil, must result from pushing too ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... add to the impressiveness of the scene, it was about this time that Charlestown, set on fire a little while before, that it should not give cover to the Americans, and that the smoke should confuse the rebels, burst into general conflagration. The town had been for weeks almost deserted, in dread of this fate; now at the command of Howe red-hot shot were thrown in among the houses, and marines landed from the ships and fired the wharves and waterside buildings. ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... number of words I and U were written indifferently, even by classic writers, as optimus or optumus, maximus or maxumus. This is but a simple and natural thing. The same obscurity occurs often in English, as, for instance, in words ending in able or ible. How easy, for instance, to confuse the sound and spelling in such words as ...
— The Roman Pronunciation of Latin • Frances E. Lord
... between the lightning and the thunderbolt is particularly well indicated. In every part of Europe belemnites and stone hatchets are alike regarded as thunderbolts; so that we have the curious result that people confuse under a single name a natural fossil of immense antiquity and a human product of comparatively recent but still prehistoric date. Indeed, I have had two thunderbolts shown me at once, one of which was a large ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... however, I remark that the supplement which stands in our Authorised Version in this text is a misleading and unfortunate one. 'As though God did beseech you' and 'we pray you' unduly narrow the scope of the Apostolic message, and confuse the whole course of the Apostolic reasoning here. For he has been speaking of a world which is reconciled to God, and he finds a consequence of that reconciliation of the world in the fact that he and his fellow-preachers are entrusted with the word ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... silence. From the corner that she kept to, through the doors left open, Matrena could follow all the movements of the reporter and watch Natacha's chamber at the same time. The attitude of Rouletabille continued to confuse her beyond all expression. She watched what he did as if she thought him besotted. The dyernick on guard out in the roadway also watched the young man through the bars of the gate in consternation, as though he thought ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... stout stone wall, and numerous batteries occupied the commanding ground in rear, was selected for assault. Neither feint nor demonstration, the ordinary expedients by which the attacker seeks to distract the attention and confuse the efforts of the defence, was made use of; and yet division after division, with no abatement of courage, marched in good order over the naked plain, dashed forward with ever-thinning ranks, and then, receding sullenly before the storm of fire, left, within a hundred yards of the stone wall, a ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... quiet than ever, he took less active part in the last election. But when the menace of treason became an aggressive act, he saw very clearly the inevitable necessity of arms. We all talked of it constantly,—watching the news,—chafing at the sad necessity of delay, which was sure to confuse foreign opinion and alienate sympathy, as has proved to be the case. As matters advanced and the war-cloud rolled up thicker and blacker, he looked at it with the secret satisfaction that war for such a cause opened his career both as thinker and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... endless revolutions, whose causes are the inherent powers of nature, intellectual as well as physical, without the intervention of a deity. But the Poet ridicules the "non-human," i.e., the not-ourselves, the negation of ourselves and consequently a non-existence. Most Easterns confuse the contradictories, in which one term stands for something, and the other for nothing (e.g., ourselves and not-ourselves), with the contraries (e.g., rich and not-rich poor), in which both terms express a something. So the positive-negative ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... conscious of its striking beauty, this vivid lily lifts a chalice that suggests a trap for catching sunbeams from fiery old Sol. Defiant of his scorching rays in its dry habitat, it neither nods nor droops even during prolonged drought; and yet many people confuse it with the gracefully pendent, swaying bells of the yellow Canada Lily, which will grow in a swamp rather than forego moisture. La, the Celtic for white, from which the family derived its name, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... idea amused him, and he could imagine a man refraining from any excess that might disturb and perplex or confuse ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... the attending to them, that constitutes the greater part of their badness. Carlyle has the same practical common sense that the Christian Scientists show; but, as in their case, he lets his practical wisdom confuse his ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... the praise of her lover. But Clifford scarcely listened, for a thousand thoughts and feelings contested within him; and the light touch of Lucy's hand upon his arm would alone have been sufficient to distract and confuse his attention. The darkness of the night, the late excitement, the stolen kiss that still glowed upon his lips, the remembrance of Lucy's flattering agitation in the scene with her at Lord Mauleverer's, the yet ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... If you are an impatient reader, skip to them at once. In reading aloud, omit, if you please, the sixth and seventh verses. These are parenthetical and digressive, and, unless your audience is of superior intelligence, will confuse them. Many people can ride on horse-back who find it hard to get on and to get off without assistance. One has to dismount from an idea, and get into the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... distinguished, yet as tone which veils confuse and smother, Amid this voice two voices, one commingled with the other, Which did from off the land and seas even to the heavens aspire; Chanting the universal chant in simultaneous quire. And I distinguished them amid that deep ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... the artist must be up there in the lofty gallery! For there he was, still at work on his picture. The artist is the only really happy man. He need fear no exile; every land is his home. No foreign tongue can confuse him; his thoughts find a medium of expression intelligible to all. Wars have no terror for him; he paints them, but takes no part in them. Storms and tempests, by land or sea, speak to him not of danger, but are merely the symbols of nature's ever-varying moods. ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... Hornby," I said, "I would disregard this paper altogether. It will only confuse you and get you into difficulties. Answer the questions that are put, as well as you can, and if ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... promotion in any work, but more especially in the professions, one must know one's business. That is a trite statement, but it will bear repeating. The young graduate at first will not know his business. His mind will be a chaos of theories based upon myriads of formulae which cannot but confuse him in the early days, when he is most earnestly trying to apply one or more of them to the more or less petty tasks which will be assigned to him. All he can do under the circumstances—all anybody could do under the circumstances—is to wait patiently, the while doing the ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... was a place where I was accosted in every court, effusively congratulated on the marvellous preservation of my stale spoilt life, and invited right and left to spin my yarn over a quiet pipe! Well, perhaps such invitations were not so common as they have grown in my memory; nor must you confuse my then feelings on all these matters with those which I entertain as I write. I have grown older, and, I hope, something kindlier and wiser since then. Yet to this day I cannot blame myself for abandoning my chambers and avoiding ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... stab for me! But I would not give him the satisfaction of showing that it hurt. He wanted to confuse me, to put me off my guard; but ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... danger or blame Help us to fear neither death nor shame; Nor let weak senses with fears confuse us When the enemy ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... happened that those short and simple rhymes, often sacred, which are repeated in schools as helps to memory, made a part of her studies; and no sooner had the sound of verse struck upon her fancy than it seemed to confuse and agitate anew all her senses. It was like the music of some breeze, to which dance and tremble all the young leaves of a wild plant. Even when at the convent she had been fond of repeating the infant rhymes with which they had sought to lull or to amuse her, but now the taste ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and roundabout way, hang together. What Darwin means is, that, since that environment is a perfectly known thing, and its relations to the organism in the way of destruction or preservation are tangible and distinct, it would utterly confuse our finite understandings and frustrate our hopes of science to mix in with it facts from such a disparate and incommensurable cycle as that in which the variations are produced. This last cycle is that of occurrences before the animal is born. It is the ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... inviolable. Charlatanism is for confusing or obliterating the distinctions between excellent and inferior, sound and unsound or only half-sound, true and untrue or only half-true. It is charlatanism, conscious or unconscious, whenever we confuse or obliterate these. And in poetry, more than anywhere else, it is impermissible to confuse or obliterate them. For in poetry the distinction between excellent and inferior, sound and unsound or only half-sound, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... whose self-possession enabled her to conceal the terror and uneasiness his recital inspired her with, listened calmly and silently till he had ceased speaking, and then asked him, with a playful smile, if he was quite sure of being in his right senses? "For how otherwise could you," said she, "confuse a poor obscure widow like myself with the rich and powerful princess you speak of? My friend, you are under the influence of a dream; believe me, I am neither more nor less than poor widow Rossin, and can boast ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... that I shall be remembered of an evening in the coming winter time, at one or two friends' I could mention near the Lake of Geneva. It runs with a spring tide, that will always flow and never ebb, through my memory; and nothing less than the waters of Lethe shall confuse the music of its running, until it loses itself in that great sea, for which all the currents of our ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... officer, who was delighted at this unexpected change in affairs, though he had only heard enough of the conversation to confuse him as to ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... sports, where it would seem that convention would rest practically at the zero point, the bugbear of good form, although mashed and disguised, rises up to confuse the directed practicality. The average man is wedded to his theory. He has seen a thing done in a certain way, and he not only always does it that way himself, but he is positively unhappy at seeing any one else employing a different method. From the swing at golf to the manner of lighting ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... did not believe I should live out one-third of it. After I had gone through the routine of questions, and had been put in the prison uniform, a cap was drawn down over my face, as if I was about to be hung, and I was led, thus blind-folded, around and around, evidently to confuse me, with regard to the interior of the prison—in case I might ever have any idea of breaking out. At last I was brought to a cell door and the cap was taken off. There were, properly no "cells" in this prison—at least ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... lived! Some forgitful, but everybody's liable to forgit. Only tell him one thing at once, and don't confuse him, and he'll git through an amazin' sight of ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... Peterborough had not satisfied himself with depriving the enemy of all information as to his advance. He took steps to confuse and alarm them by false news. By means of large bribes he prevailed upon two peasants to carry each a copy of the same letter to Colonel Jones, who commanded in San Matteo. He took the further step of insuring their ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... false witness!' Mary Hall blubbered out. 'I would not do it. But you do not know how they confuse a body. And they threaten with cords and thumbscrews.' She shuddered with her whole body. ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... the arm-chair in which the patient was always directed to sit, was nailed to the floor, since its immovability tended to impart this same excellent characteristic to the occupant. Patients invariably grew excited when talking about themselves, and their excitement tended to confuse their thoughts and to exaggerate their language. The inflexibility of the chair helped to counteract this. After repeated endeavours to drag it forward, or push it back, they ended by resigning themselves to sitting quietly. ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... Their number, variety, gorgeousness of bindings, and wealth of illustration confuse the visitor who at this season wanders through the bookstores of a great city, whether aimlessly, or with the design of purchase. Books stare at him from the long rows of shelves; books are piled in reckless profusion upon the counters; they protrude from under the ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... real nature of our inmost being, we should see how absurd it is to desire that individuality should exist eternally. This wish implies that we confuse real Being with one of its innumerable manifestations. The individuality disappears at death, but we lose nothing thereby, for it is only the manifestation of quite a different Being—a Being ignorant ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... so fast now, but what he said was even more incoherent. The light and the presence of another person in the room seemed to confuse and trouble him. She took his hand and felt the pulse. The hand was hot, and grasped hers convulsively. She put his coat over his shoulders, and then she sat with her arm about him, and gradually he stopped talking, and turned his face to ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... affairs may expose their places, their apprehensions from the hazards to which the discontents of a few popular men at elections may expose their seats in Parliament,—all these causes trouble and confuse the representations which they make to ministers of the real temper of the nation. If ministers, instead of following the great indications of the Constitution, proceed on such reports, they will take the whispers of a cabal for the voice of the people, and the counsels ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... warfare has found supporters among the wise. If you want to catch mice you must waste bacon, and if we are to tempt men into a snare we must know what their notions and ideas are, and begin by endeavoring to confuse them. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... confuse my readers if I dwelt more at length upon the buildings of a monastery. It is enough for the present that we should understand clearly that the essential buildings were (1) the church, (2) the cloister, (3) the dormitory, (4) the refectory, (5) the chapter-house. In these five buildings ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... of pain and wrong My spirit doth deep confuse, And I sit all day on the deck, and long— And ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... from any such confusion. She did not add, as with no less truthfulness she might have done, that what had induced a slight access of confusion in her had been the sudden and unexpected possession of eleven golden sovereigns. But she had a feeling, somewhat obscure, that such a happening should not confuse a red Deeping; therefore she did not say anything ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... because each of these separate bodies must have a separate head—it follows that chronology, as a pre-Christian chronology, will, like the Imperial eagle, be two-headed. Now this accident of chronology, on a first glance, seems but too likely to confuse ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... will not startle your nerves and confuse your intellect with a history that, as yet, you could not understand. Do not importune me again; I will ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... around the room with exactly the same steps, laughing at the same instant and enjoying the dance equally. But if one youth asked his partner a question, both the twins would make answer, and that was sure to confuse and embarrass the youth. Still, the maids managed very well to adapt themselves to the ways of people who were singular, although they sometimes became a little homesick for Twi, where they were ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... with a new set of masks labelled Alessandro de Medici, Antoine Riczi, Nicolas de Caen, Theodore Passerat and other fabulous minnesingers whose verses were created only in the mind of Cabell. It has pleased him to confuse others besides the erudite reviewer of the Boston Transcript by quoting the first lines of the non-existent originals in Latin, Italian, Provencal—thus making his skilful ballades, sestinas and the less mediaeval narratives part of a remarkably ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... pronouns and all abbreviating substitutes. What is interesting is passed over, what is of no importance is described with minuteness, his exhaustive clearness is such as with its numerous details to confuse our apprehension of what is in itself perfectly clear. This is what used to be described in the phraseology of historical criticism as ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... counteract the idea. The explanation was given by Rich himself, in the presence of his friend Bencraft, the contriver, and perhaps the actor of the scheme, which he designed only as an innocent affair, to confuse the dancers, without adverting to the serious consequences ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... this point were not all that had been hoped. Two bulletins seem to be an accepted number, but more than that a question. We do not desire to confuse our children, or to detract in value from a bulletin when once posted, and most certainly not to cheapen our rooms; but if the standard is held high in each case, the number would not matter. Take for instance a hero bulletin. ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... religious observances the Bretons are prone to confuse the sacred with the profane, and chief among these is the wedding ceremony—the customs attendant on which in some ostensibly Christian countries are yet a disgrace to the intellect as well as the good feeling of man. In rural Brittany, ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... be very kind," returned Katherine, softly. If this man were safely married and settled, she thought, she would like to be friends with his wife, and serve him in any way she could. If his eyes did not always confuse and distress her, how much she ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... on which Mill (vide Subjection of Women, last third of Chapter I) has endeavoured to confuse the issues for his reader, first, by representing that by no possibility can man know anything of the "nature," i.e., of the "secondary sexual characters" of woman; and, secondly, by distracting attention from ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... said, "I think 'twas the fountain was Diomed: I know not. And as for persuasion; he was a man forked, vain, and absolute as all. Let the waterless stone be sudden Diomed—you will confuse my wits, Mariner; where, then, were I?" She smiled, stooping lower. "You have ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... only forget that she was some day to be William's wife, the old delightful comradeship would return, and she would be at ease again with him. In time, after she had become accustomed to the idea of marriage, it would not so confuse her, of course. She loved him dearly, and she wanted to make him happy; but for the present—just while she was "getting used to things"—she would try to forget, sometimes, that she was going to ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... scoffing finesse of which he makes effective use, sometimes with his equals, and almost invariably with his superiors. He puts questions to power as embarrassing as are those which infancy puts to mature age. He affects excessive humility, in order to confuse him whom he addresses with the very height of his isolated elevation. He exaggerates the awkwardness of his manner and the rudeness of his speech, as a means of covering his real thoughts under the appearance of mere uncouthness; yet, despite all his self-command, there is something in his air, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... first and the second of things previously named, these words are unobjectionable if not too far removed from the names that they stand for. If they are they confuse, for the reader has to look back to ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... introduction into the United States, seedsmen sell California and Southern burr clover as two varieties, but the correctness of the distinction thus made has been questioned. Many persons were wont to confuse it with alfalfa, or, as it is frequently called, lucerne, but the latter is much more upright in its habit of growth, grows to a greater height, has more blossoms, blue in color, and seed pods more loosely coiled. It is also to be distinguished ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... home. Love led me, Beatrice. It was my chart and compass through the wilderness. Not even pain and hunger could confuse them. Nothing but death could ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... many subjects of thought on his own part which returned to his mind as the surprise of the moment calmed down. He had a great deal to think about. Old difficulties which seemed to have passed away for long years were now coming back again to embarrass and confuse him. "Our pleasant vices are made the whips to scourge us," he said to himself. The past had come back to him like the opening of a book, no longer merely frivolous and amusing, as in the Contessa's talk, ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... of memory encouraged Miss Webling to hope that she could remember a little farther back to the contents of the letter and the telephone number written there. But her memory would not respond. The effort to cudgel it seemed to confuse it. She kept on forgetting more and ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... one of the best, oldest, and simplest of games. One player is blindfolded, is turned round two or three times to confuse his ideas as to his position in the room, and is then told to catch whom he can. If he catches some one, yet cannot tell who it is, he must go on again as blind man; but if he can tell who it is, that person is blindfolded ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... true; and therefore God takes us for what we are, and will do so to all eternity; and you will find it so, my dearest friends. In spite of all doctrines which men have invented, and then pretended to find in the Bible, to drug men's consciences, and confuse God's clear light in their hearts, you will find, now and for ever, that if you do right you will be happy even in the midst of sorrow; if you do wrong, you will be miserable even in the midst of pleasure. Oh believe this, my dear friends, and do not rashly count on some sudden ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... "there was nothing new, and nothing true, and no matter." They not only believe their pet doctrine to be true, but they seem to assume that it is also new. They further treat it as if it were an exact science and a great moral question as well. Unwarranted assumptions merely confuse and this question of national economic policy is too important to be clouded with confusions. It is worth while, therefore, to look at these assumptions one by one and try, before attempting any discussion of the tariff, to ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... an irrepressible exclamation of horror from Ishmael and a low cry of anguish from Judge Merlin. But neither ventured to speak, lest by doing so he should confuse Katie, ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... that," he observed. "If it hadn't been because of my missus I wouldn't have been out so early." He blew a puff of smoke and continued: "This Blue Disease seems to confuse folk. My missus was took with it last night." He paused to examine us at his leisure. ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... so. What they did was to sell them a sea-passage, giving very good value for the money. Nothing more. As long as men will travel on the water, the sea-gods will take their toll. They will catch good seamen napping, or confuse their judgment by arts well known to those who go to sea, or overcome them by the sheer brutality of elemental forces. It seems to me that the resentful sea-gods never do sleep, and are never weary; wherein the seamen who are mere mortals condemned ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... prejudice. So you think on the whole that to do a young lady—for I suppose the second is in your own class—a real, an unspeakable injury would be better than to shock her prejudices? If that is how you of the new generation confuse what's right ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... my readers should not be intimidated by the apparent vastness and complexity of this enterprise of forming the literary taste. It is not so vast nor so complex as it looks. There is no need whatever for the inexperienced enthusiast to confuse and frighten himself with thoughts of "literature in all its branches." Experts and pedagogues (chiefly pedagogues) have, for the purpose of convenience, split literature up into divisions and sub-divisions— such as prose and poetry; or imaginative, ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... said I, with a hurried and contented laugh, "that you were formerly an Argive queen. I mean I will not be obstinate about it, because that, I confess, was a paraphrase of my verses. But Helen has always been to me the symbol of perfect loveliness, and so it was not unnatural that I should confuse you with her." ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... manner; God knows what weakness, what instability of feeling, lay beneath. CE QUE C'EST QUE DE NOUS! poor human nature; that at past forty I must adjust this hateful mask for the first time, and rejoice to find it effective; that the effort of maintaining an external smile should confuse ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heart; that there." As June said this, she laughed again; looked in different directions, as if unwilling to confuse the other, and laid her hand on ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... gets stuck on a hill, as will occasionally happen, so that all the oxen are discouraged at once, we would see one of the Kikuyus leading the team back and forth, back and forth, on the side hill just ahead of the wagon. This is to confuse their minds, cause them to forget their failure, and thus to ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... hand sought mine and closed over it with an appealing, seducing touch. It went through my nerves and frame like flame. It seemed to confuse and scatter speech, sweep it from me as some useless trifle, and wake one ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... divine answers! How they confuse us! It is their perfection that bewilders us; it is their completeness that ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... Christian, in Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," is so conceived. He is entirely representative of seventeenth-century Christianity; in a sense he is all men of Bunyan's time and Bunyan's religion; but he is also one man and one only, and we could never in our thought confuse him with any other character in or ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... taken out at once, the rush from all the hives is so much like a swarm, that it appears to confuse them. Some of the stocks by this means will get more bees than actually belong to them, while others are proportionably short, which is unprofitable, and to equalize them is some trouble; yet it may be done. Being ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... of woman is weak and unsteady," said he, "perhaps they may question and confuse her, and thus may death come ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... use of capitals varies greatly in different languages. Attention will be mainly confined in this book to the usages followed in the printing of English. Attempts to point out the various differences to be found in German, French, etc. would only confuse the young apprentice. ...
— Capitals - A Primer of Information about Capitalization with some - Practical Typographic Hints as to the Use of Capitals • Frederick W. Hamilton
... on their own account. Many translate, into languages fit for the multitude, messages which they receive from human voices: some listen, like Kubla Khan, far down in caverns or hanging over subterranean rivers, for secret whispers that mingle and confuse themselves with the general uproar of torrents, but which can be detected and kept apart by the obstinate prophetic ear, which spells into words and ominous sentences the distracted syllables of rial voices. Dr. Nichol is one of those who pass to and fro ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... every-day life. When we observe how disaster follows crime, how ruin at last overtakes ill-gotten prosperity; when we witness the miserable end of the debauchee, the short-lived triumph of iniquity, it is our constant habit to confuse the physical effect with the moral cause; and however little we may believe in the existence of a Judge, we nearly all of us end by a more or less complete submission to a strange, vague faith in the justice of things. And although our ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... and, noting the slowly growing radiance of her expression, Campbell was stricken dumb with fright at the possible consequences of temerity. The knowledge of his shortcomings robbed him of confidence and helped to confuse him. ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... sing, a grievous thing. So some food is bitter, and sharp, and biting to the taste, yet by an admixture with it of sweet and agreeable food we take away its unpleasantness. There are also some colours unpleasant to look at, that quite confuse and dazzle us by their intensity and excessive force. If then we can relieve this by a mixture of shadow, or by diverting the eye to green or some agreeable colour, so too can we deal with misfortunes, mixing up with them the advantages and pleasant things we still enjoy, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... the plan on which He builds my life; For oft the sound of hammers, blow on blow, The noise of strife, Confuse me till I quite forget he knows And oversees, And that in all details with his good plan My ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... of applause for the picador, hisses for the bull. Some shout 'Cow!' at the bull, and call him offensive names. But he is not listening to them, he is there for business; he is not minding the cloak-bearers that come fluttering around to confuse him; he chases this way, he chases that way, and hither and yon, scattering the nimble banderillos in every direction like a spray, and receiving their maddening darts in his neck as they dodge ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Bengali or Hindostani, and when Charles Grant went to him for information as to the way of a sinner's salvation this happened—"My anxious inquiries as to what I should do to be saved appeared to embarrass and confuse him exceedingly. He could not answer my questions, but he gave me some good instructive books." On Kiernander's bankruptcy, caused by his son when the father was blind, the "Mission Church" was bought by Grant, who wrote that its labours "have been confined to the descendants ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... defending himself. All depended, as they knew and told Sir Edmund Nutley, on the judge and jury. Now Mr. Baron Hatsel had shown himself a well- meaning but weak and vacillating judge, whose summing up was apt rather to confuse than to elucidate the evidence; and as to the jury, Mr. Lee scanned their stolid countenances somewhat ruefully when they were marshalled before the prisoner, to be challenged if desirable. A few words passed, into ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... natures, some saying 'this is so,' others denying it, and this condition of uncertainty is called the state of darkness. Then there are those who say that outward things are one with soul, who say that the objective is the same as mind, who confuse intelligence with instruments, who say that number is the soul. Thus not distinguishing aright, these are called excessive quibbles, marks of folly, nature changes, and so on. To worship and recite religious books, to slaughter ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... "Nivose" the season of snows, of "Ventose" season of winds, and "Floreal, Prairial, and Fructidor." He said the ideas of men in those times were more closely allied to God's, while July, September, and October meant nothing, and were only invented to confuse and obscure everything. Once on this subject it was plain that he could not exhaust it. Unfortunately I have not the learning that that good man had, otherwise it would give me real pleasure to recount his sayings to you. We were just here when Mother Gredel, ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... of politeness and gallantry is frequently brought by the silly acquaintance of young people to confuse their simple morality and clear good sense. A new and unintelligible system is presented to them, in a language foreign to their understanding, and contradictory to their feelings. They hesitate between new motives and old principles. From the fear of being thought ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... enabled with difficulty to carry out his plan, which was, not to return the enemy's fire, but to proceed steadily on till he could suddenly take advantage of some protecting ledge of rock or orchard wall behind which he could form his men and confuse the enemy by pouring in a few volleys. He would then form quarter distance columns of subdivisions again, and proceed in his retreat as before. He had no misgivings as to the courage and firmness of his men, for the Goorkhas have ever been noted for ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... history went into the welter of religious wars which gradually merge into dynastic wars and confuse the record of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century. At the end of the last of these divisions of time came ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... "You confuse me," replied Athos, with his gentlemanly air; "let us talk of something else, if you please. Ah, s'blood, how you have hurt ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... We confuse in our minds the two separate essences—that of the soul and that of the human spirit (heart, intelligence, and will), which are widely different; the soul acting for us as the wings of the creature. And above and superior to the ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... of Simon Magus, and the many sects of the Gnostics, confuse us with their Eons, Emanations, Powers, Wisdom Superior and Inferior, Ialdabaoth, Adam-Kadmon, even to the three hundred and sixty-five thousand ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... It was sepia from the cuttlefish's ink sacs—the weapon with which these monsters of the underseas blind and confuse their victims. ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... said that the presence of mind and heroic self-sacrifice of an officer saved the ship from the fate that subsequently overwhelmed two of her consorts. By this time the range had decreased to 16,000 yards (British reckoning) and Beatty shifted his course more to the south to confuse the enemy's fire control. Apparently this move did not succeed in its purpose for at 4.06 a salvo struck the Indefatigable on a line with her after turret, and exploded a magazine. As she staggered out of column and began sinking, another salvo smashed ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... you, madam," said the stranger. "I am certainly John McAllister; but I am no captain, neither have I been at sea. Good God! is it my grandfather whom you confuse me with?" cried he. "He was Jack McAllister, and was lost at sea more than seventy years ago, while my own father was a baby. I am told that I am wonderfully like his portrait; but he was a younger man than I when he died. This ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... frightful herd was now circling rapidly and with bewildering speed about the little knot of victims. Their prodigious bounds and the shrill, screeching purr of their uncanny mouths were well calculated to confuse and terrorize their prey, so that as two of them leaped simultaneously from either side, the mighty sweep of those awful tails met with no resistance and two more green Martians went down ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... asserted existence of adoptive lodges. We shall find during the first period that Masonry was freely described as a diabolical and Satanic institution, and it is necessary to insist on this point because it is liable to confuse the issues. Before the year 1891 the diabolism identified with Masonry was almost exclusively intellectual. That is to say, its alleged atheism, from the standpoint of the Catholic Church, was a diabolical opinion in matters of religion; ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... do you come here to disturb my thoughts so for? Oh, Cloudy! every time you come to see me, you do so upset and confuse my mind! You have no idea how many aves and paters, and psalms and litanies I have to say before I can quiet my mind down again! And now this is worse than all. Dear, dear Cloudy!—St. Mary, forgive me, I never meant that—I meant plain Cloudy—see how you make me sin in ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... should not prize you, you elude me in a thousand ways. Lest I should confuse you with the crowd, you stand aside. I know, I know your art, You never ...
— The Gardener • Rabindranath Tagore
... condition may be such that, for a time at least, retrospective accounts are difficult to obtain. It must also be remembered that not infrequently the more marked stupors may be followed by milder states, and it is important, if we wish to determine how much is remembered, not to confuse the two states or not to let the patient confuse them. For example, Mary D. (Case 4), who showed two separate phases, while she claimed not to know of many external facts, also added that she could not understand the questions ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... of them, that they could take their own case theoretically without becoming personal, without lovers' protestations to confuse the ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... 109. Borrow a stethoscope, and listen to the respiration over the chest on the right side. This is known as auscultation. Note the difference of the sounds in inspiration and in expiration. Do not confuse the heart sounds with those of respiration. The respiratory murmurs may be heard fairly well by applying the ear flat to the chest, with only ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... what to recommend," the settler said. "They have no doubt done it to confuse us, in case we should follow so far, and avoid being thrown off the scent the other side of the hill. The band may really have scattered, and gone off in small parties to different parts of the bush; or again, they may have scattered with the understanding that they will meet again, ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... it the ovary. I am not going to confuse you by giving you too many hard words at first, words like corolla, carpel, style, stigma, and the like. I shall name only two parts of the flower for you to remember just now, because only two are really necessary to be named at this point. So the ...
— Every Girl's Book • George F. Butler
... impossible for it. Suppose he were to select some one, some weak and irritable and sentimental and disappointed man, some one whose every foible and weakness he knew, suppose he were to place himself near him and so irritate and confuse and madden him that at last one day, in a fury of rage and despair, that man were to do for him what he is too proud to do for himself! Think of the excitement, the interest, the food for his cynicism, the ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... right with Rosanna," Mr. Franklin said to me, when we were alone. "I seem to be fated to say or do something awkward, before that unlucky girl. You must have seen yourself that Sergeant Cuff laid a trap for both of us. If he could confuse ME, or irritate HER into breaking out, either she or I might have said something which would answer his purpose. On the spur of the moment, I saw no better way out of it than the way I took. It stopped the girl from saying anything, and it showed the Sergeant ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... better evidence is needed of the importance of establishing a uniform and demonstrably sound basis, than the fact that it is common for companies to refute one another's claims to superior economy, and totally confuse the public, by opposing ratios found in one way by ratios found in another—that one of two companies which appears the most economical according to one test being apparently the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... other diminutive article that may be concealed in the closed hand. This is passed backward and forward among the party "in hand," while the party "out of hand" guess where it is concealed. To heighten the excitement and confuse the guessers, a number of dry poles are laid before each platoon, upon which the members of the party "in hand" beat furiously with short staves, keeping time to the choral chant already mentioned, which waxes fast and furious as the ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... DEIRDRE—You confuse my mind, dear fostermother, with your speech of joy and sorrow. It is not your wont. Indeed, I think my ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... the object of the festival that it would have been difficult to recognize in it the anniversary of the taking of the Bastile and of the First Federation. I do not think that there was one word in allusion to these two events in the whole ceremony; and to confuse still further the recollections of the Republicans, the Emperor ordered that the festival should be celebrated on the 15th, because that was Sunday, and thus there would result no loss of time ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... the door, the new coat is thrust under his arm, and he is seized by the proprietor and his assistants, who shout "stop thief!" and charge him with stealing the coat. Their noise, and the dread of being arrested upon a charge of theft, will frequently so confuse and frighten the victim that he will comply with their demand, which is that he shall buy the coat. This done, he is suffered to depart. A refusal to yield would not injure him, for the scoundrels would seldom ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... built up; the Prussian nobles were, he maintained, not, as so often was said, unpopular; a third of the House belonged to them; they were not necessarily opposed to freedom; they were, at least, the truest defenders of the State. Let people not confuse patriotism and Liberalism. Who had done more for the true political independence of the State, that independence without which all freedom was impossible, than the Prussian nobles? At the end of the Seven Years' War boys ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... buildings round, as if it belonged to another world. Nothing about it has the least resemblance to anything else: its heaps of encrusted figures, arches within arches, niches, turrets covered with rugged scales, round towers with countless pillars, ornaments, saints, canopies, and medallions, confuse the mind and the eye. All polish is worn from the surface, and so crumbling does it look, that it would seem impossible that the rough and disjointed mass of stones, piled one on the other, could keep together; yet, when you examine it closely, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... than the children of sentimental people who are always anxious and miserable about their duty to their children, and who end by neither making their children happy nor having a tolerable life for themselves. A selfish tyrant you know where to have, and he (or she) at least does not confuse your affections; but a conscientious and kindly meddler may literally worry you out of your senses. It is fortunate that only very few parents are capable of doing what they conceive their duty continuously or even at all, and that still ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... hears spoken about him is at once a puzzle and a surprise. It is his own, yet not his own. It seems to him a caricature of English, a phantom speech, ghostly but familiar, such as he might hear in a land of dreams. He recognises its broad lineaments; its lesser details evade, or confuse, him. He acknowledges that the two tongues have a common basis. Their grammatical framework is identical. The small change of language—the adverbs and prepositions,—though sometimes strangely ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... how about it? Aren't you going to make me that brief little sketch of the length plan and cross-section of the Tube? I remember your sketch of it in college, and it tends to confuse me with the real changes that were made necessary when ...
— The Undersea Tube • L. Taylor Hansen
... reached the Grange and departed Foyle was satisfied, although she had had ample time to travel from Liverpool. As Green phrased it, "she might almost have walked it." But the exigencies of the pursuit might have brought about delay if she attempted to confuse her track. If Foyle had been able to get in touch with Blake he would have called him off in order to let her proceed unfettered. That could ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... he said. "A well-directed blow on the head would confuse a man's thoughts. It is time to depart. When thou art free, Philip, as, if possessing courage, thou art sure soon to be, forget not the friend who helped thee ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... this naturally tended to confuse me, and it was only by determined effort that I maintained any degree of coolness. Of course they did not intend to confuse me. Nothing was, I dare say, further from their thoughts. But they were women; and it never occurs to a woman to ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... indeed, from the perspicuity of the Author, very few were found necessary. In a very small number of places, the liberty has been taken of throwing to the bottom of the page, in notes, some parenthetical expressions, only relative to the subject, which, in their original place, tended to confuse the sense. These, and the original notes of the Author, are distinguished by the letter A, and to the few which the Translator has ventured to add, ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... grants not all the rest: For, were a bard a bard because he's smart, Laberius' mimes were products of high art. 'Tis not enough to make your reader's face Wear a broad grin, though that too has its place: Terseness there wants, to make the thought ring clear, Nor with a crowd of words confuse the ear: There wants a plastic style, now grave, now light, Now such as bard or orator would write, And now the language of a well-bred man, Who masks his strength, and says not all he can: And pleasantry will often cut clean through Hard knots that gravity would scarce undo. ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... danger. To one who loves his native language, who would delight to keep our rich and harmonious English undefiled by foreign accent, foreign intonation, and those foreign tinctures of verbal meaning which tend to confuse all writing and discourse, it is an affliction as harassing as the climate, that on our stage, in our studios, at our public and private gatherings, in our offices, warehouses, and workshops, we must expect to hear our beloved English with ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... to play, although they had wished to make her; personally, she preferred to go to sleep, or to listen to Mary's music. Yes, Mary was more fortunate: they had a very good piano, and an organ. Mary's music was a great success, although her admirers were apt to confuse Offenbach with Chopin; and some of the women appeared to think it was not quite ladylike to play so well, with such a professional manner. Still, Mary's music was a success, and that was more than could be said of her own conversation. That had been a distinct failure! They seemed ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... complicated. Even if we knew the original power and derivation of every form of every pronoun in a language, it would be far from an easy matter to determine therefrom the paradigm that they should take in grammar. To place a word according to its power in a late stage of language might confuse the study of an early stage. To say that because a word was once in a given class, it should always be so, would be to deny that in the present English they, these, and she are ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... banquet, an anniversary, or other entertainment, unless he has an experienced friend to give him a few hints or advice, is apt to be dismayed. He does not even know how to make a start in the work of preparation, and his sense of inability and fear of blundering go far to confuse and paralyze whatever native faculty he may have. A book like this comes to him at such a time as reinforcements to a sorely pressed army in the very crisis of a battle. As he reads, some ideas which seem practical, flash upon ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... words "good" and "evil" we include the most varying ideas, and we confuse them especially in our practical dealings with ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... as she was, lent herself to the fashion of the day, and delighted in practical jokes and tricks. At the splendid masquerade given by the queen she continued to plague her cousin, Lady Muskerry; to confuse and expose a stupid court beauty, a Miss Blaque; and at the same time to produce on the Count de Grammont a still more powerful effect than even her charms had done. Her success in hoaxing—which we should now think both perilous and indelicate—seems to have only ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... yes. But you must remember that the system on this planet is anything but uncomplicated. It was set up to confuse, to keep one always off balance. Just try to keep one thing in mind—the Skins are far more of an impediment to Man than they are a help. Also, that if the Skins don't come off the Amphibs will soon be cutting our ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... it is time to leave behind us. We no longer divide languages into synthetical and analytical, or suppose similarity of structure to be the safe or only guide to the affinities of them. We do not confuse the parts of speech with the categories of Logic. Nor do we conceive languages any more than civilisations to be in a state of dissolution; they do not easily pass away, but are far more tenacious of life than the tribes by whom they are spoken. 'Where two or three are gathered together,' they survive. ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... would be a mistake to confuse aims with methods: however little we may agree with the proposal to force the millennium on a reluctant community by starvation, we may yet agree that much of what the Syndicalists ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... may be used for composition purposes— a. Provided we form complete and accurate images and do not confuse the image with the language that suggested it (Section 28). b. Provided we make the main thoughts so thoroughly our own that we can furnish details and instances, originate comparisons, or state causes and effects, and thus become able to describe ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... reckoning without God not only led him to confuse possession and ownership. It also robbed him of his gratitude. Crops were abundant. The farmer has prospered wonderfully. But leaving God out of his thinking there is no one for this farmer to thank ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... for that would bring his machine to a stop so suddenly as to turn it over; or one of rough surface likely to break the under-carriage. Now is perfect eyesight and a cool head indispensable. He sees and decides upon a field and, knowing his job, he sticks to that field with no change of mind to confuse him. It is none too large, and gliding just over the trees and head on to the wind he skilfully "stalls" his machine; that is, the speed having decreased sufficiently to avoid such a manoeuvre resulting ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... use these terms in somewhat of a popular sense, for to attempt in a little book like this to define everything with strict scientific accuracy would simply confuse and mislead. ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... union of the two natures,"—"Christ as man;" or, "as God." These expressions militate against the unity of his divine nature and personality; and are calculated,—we do not say intended, to mislead or confuse the mind of his disciples. "In him personally, not in the Father or the Holy Ghost, "dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." (Col. ii. 9.)—By John the descent of Christ's human nature is traced through ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... will remain where it lies, that is to say in shadows and folly, as long as it has no exact nomenclature, so long as it is allowed to use the same expression to signify the most diverse ideas. When they confuse categories, adieu, morale! ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... combination—without lifting the pen. It will help if the small letters are all connected with each other and with the capitals. Select a style of capital letters and always use them; study out a plain combination of them; practice writing until it can be written easily and rapidly and stick to it. Don't confuse your banker by changing the form of a letter or adding flourishes. Countless repetitions will give a facility in writing it that will lend a grace and charm and will stamp it with your peculiar characteristics in such a way ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... care not to confuse the footprints by obliterating them with his own, Leslie examined the marks with the most anxious care; and presently his most dreadful fears were realised, for plainly to be distinguished here and there among the imprints of bare feet were the ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... plants grafted on seedlings of the Corylus avellana will not produce as many suckers, as plants grafted on layers of the avellana type, but they will produce enough to confuse the average person, as the foliage of some varieties are so nearly alike, that it actually requires an expert to tell the difference. I, therefore, under the existing circumstances, should advise the propagating of hazel plants by layers only, until our ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... tramp brought us to the bush-veld where I feared that our troubles might begin, since if the Amahagger were cunning, they would take advantage of it to confuse or hide their spoor. As it chanced, however, they had done nothing of the sort and a child could have followed their march. Just before nightfall we came to their first halting-place where they had made ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... mentioned by the Master is pride: "Hold back your mind from pride," He says, "for pride comes only from ignorance." We must not confuse pride with the happiness felt when a piece of work is well done; pride grows out of the feeling of separateness: "I have done better than others." Happiness in good work should grow out of the feeling of unity: "I am glad to have done this to help us all." Pride separates ...
— Education as Service • J. Krishnamurti |
