"Distort" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... himself in terms of somewhat exaggerated admiration when writing of a painter whom he appreciates, or a picture that he loves. To us this enthusiasm is an attractive characteristic. It has never been permitted to distort the vision or cloud the critical faculty; and we follow the teaching of the Master all the more closely because we feel his fervor, and know how completely he becomes possessed with a subject which appeals to his imagination or his heart. I have therefore not scrupled to revive the words ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... of that darling of our current law, the landlord, will stand second to that. This conception of the responsibility of the parents and the State to the child and the future runs quite counter to the general ideas of to-day. These general ideas distort grim realities. Under the most pious and amiable professions, all the Christian states of to-day are, as a matter of fact, engaged in slave-breeding. The chief result, though of course it is not the intention, of the activities of priest and ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... pale land, under a globose moon, homeward; or, on the back of one of her father's fleet horses, sweeping eastward over the grassy land, in the level light of the setting sun, watching the strange herald-shadow of herself and her horse rushing away before them, ever more distort as it fled:—like some ghastly monster, in horror at itself, it hurried to the infinite, seeking blessed annihilation, and ever gathering speed as the sun of its being sank, till at last it gained ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... Xapon, and other surrounding nations (acquired by having seen most of them several times and having visited and closely observed them), and inasmuch as there is no one else able to do it—considering also his detachment from outside considerations and interests, which, intermingling, distort all one's views: therefore this Audiencia, the city, the orders, the military captains, and all the other citizens, unanimously elected him for this purpose. As he made excuses for not going, and his superior declined to give him permission, we ordered the latter to give the father leave and to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... against our own experience, they are positively undoing the work which education was meant to do. When we receive them merely as an enlargement of what we know and make of the unseen things of which we read, things in the image of the seen, then they quite distort our appreciation of ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... seated herself on his knee and put an arm about his neck. Before she had spoken another word, Tarrant understood; the smile on his face lost its spontaneity; a bitter taste seemed to distort his lips. ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... expression is somewhat vague. In order to reconcile the facts with this hypothesis, Navarrete is compelled to reject, as a chirographical blunder, a passage in a letter of the admiral, placing his birth in 1456, and to distort another passage in his book of "Prophecies," which, if literally taken, would seem to establish his birth near the time assigned by Munoz. Incidental allusions in some other authorities, speaking of Columbus's old age at or near the ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... consigned her—when he found her overpowered by blow upon blow, and passing from fit to fit, from violence to torpor, in all the alternations of hysterical disease—he thought more of the loveliness which no frenzy could distort than of the woe which he had brought upon her. In that sanguine vanity common to men who through life have been invariably successful, whether in fortune or love, he flattered himself that when Glaucus had perished—when his name was solemnly blackened by the award of a legal judgment, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... that God himself was man's first teacher, or that he created Adam a full-grown man, with all his faculties developed, complete, and in full activity. Hence, too, the heathen mythologies, which always contain some elements of truth, however they may distort, mutilate, or travesty them, make the gods the first teachers of the human race, and ascribe to their instruction even the most simple and ordinary arts of every-day life. The gods teach men to plough, to plant, to reap, to work ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... as his will abide to the end, Do what you will, distort your ways you may wend, Hardships and knocks but insure him your friend Shown by the wag ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... steel is necessary to aid, by its stiffness, in preventing the very ductile iron from giving back to such an extent as to distort the steel face and thus tear or separate the parts of the plate. The ductile iron gives a very low resisting power, its duty being to hold the steel face up to its work. If now we substitute a soft steel plate in the place of the ductile iron, we will get greater resisting power, but ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... explain why this electoral system has not prevented the growth of Labour parties in Australia and in England, or why numerous parties and single-member constituencies go hand in hand both in France and Germany. Single-member constituencies may distort and falsify the representation of parties, but they cannot prevent the coming of a new party if that party is the outcome, the expression, of ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... passionate embraces will not seem out of place then. If you wish to make a man look noble, your best course is to kill him. What superiority he may have inherited from his race, what superiority nature may have personally gifted him with, comes out in death. The passions which agitate, distort, and change, are gone away forever, and the features settle back into a marble calm, which is the man's truest image. Then the most affected look sincere, the most volatile, serious—all noble, more or less. And nature will ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... princes. A few prejudiced writers have vainly endeavoured to exaggerate the racial or linguistic factor, and contended that, in the eyes of science, Belgian nationality could not exist. The duty of a scientist is not to distort the manifestations of natural phenomena in the light of some more or less popular idea. His duty is to explain facts. The development and permanence of Belgian nationality, in spite of the most adverse conditions, is one of these facts. The existence of the Swiss nation, far ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... contemporaries Lamb and Hazlitt, the founder of modern appreciation. It must be a curious reckoning which, in face of such a catena as this, stretching its links over the whole period, maintains that England wanted Germans to teach her how to admire the writer whom Germans have done more to mystify and distort ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... so much that it may extend up into the bladder and block the opening into the urethra; the side lobes may compress the urethra into a mere slit, or may lengthen it so that the prostatic portion measures three or four inches, or may twist and distort it so that the most flexible instrument can only be made to pass through it ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... medicinam, et vir prudens non abhorrebit illam. Thus," he added, "speaketh the Book of Ecclesiasticus, of Medicine, and good Physicians; but of the bad ones we may safely affirm the very contrary, since there are no people more injurious to the commonwealth than they are. The judge may distort or delay the justice which he should render us; the lawyer may support an unjust demand; the merchant may help us to squander our estate, and, in a word, all those with whom we have to deal in common life may do us more or less injury; but to kill us without fear and standing quietly at his ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... trying to distort the proper meaning of words, and, presenting a garbled statement of the views of an opponent, I take it as conclusive evidence that he has a bad cause; more when he is constantly at it, and manifests in all that he does a feeling of uneasiness ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... casual purpose. The acts of Csar speak also the same language; and as these are less susceptible of a false coloring than the features of a general character, we find this poet of liberty, in the midst of one continuous effort to distort the truth, and to dress up two scenical heroes, forced by the mere necessities of history into a reluctant homage to Csar's supremacy ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... contemporary opinion would be divided upon it; and he has given the divergent views it was certain to create, as constituting a part of its history. He reminds us that two sets of persons equally acquainted with the facts, equally free from any wish to distort them, might be led into opposite judgments through the mere action of some impalpable bias in one direction or the other, which third, more critical or more indifferent, would adopt a compromise between the two; and he closes his introductory chapter with a tribute to that mystery of human ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... this government on May 29 of a statement regarding the nationalist aspirations for freedom of the Czecho-Slovaks and Jugoslavs, German and Austrian officials have sought to misinterpret and distort its manifest interpretation. In order, therefore, that there may be no misunderstanding concerning the meaning of this statement, the Secretary of State to-day further announces the position of the United States Government to be that all branches of the Slav race should be completely ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... man marries a girl who has been earning her own living, the newspapers always distort it," he whispered aside to me a few minutes later. "Jameson, you're a newspaperman—I depend on you to get ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... thus! Give me no word which my folly can distort into a ray of hope, unless you wish to drive me mad. No! it is impossible; and, were it possible, what but ruin to my soul? I should live for you, and not for my work. I should become a schemer, ambitious, intriguing, in the vain hope of proving myself ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... assert that the mission of the poet is "to see life steadily and see it whole," a feat which is impossible if the worship of one figure out of the multitude is allowed to distort relative values, and to throw his view ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... That's a good deal for one short life. I've seen industry revolutionized—leaving the homes of the people, and herding into the great factories. I've seen steam revolutionize the daily habits of men, and distort their thoughts; one man can't run a steam engine; it takes more than one man to own one. So have I seen capital rise in the world until it is greater than kings, greater than courts, greater than governments—greater than God himself as ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... source or receiver. However, that relationship fails at velocities far below that of fifth-order rays. At only a very small fraction of that speed the tracers I am following are so badly distorted that they disappear altogether, and I have to distort them backwards. That wouldn't be too bad, but when I get up to about one per cent of the velocity I want to use, I can't calculate a force that will operate to distort them back into recognizable wave-forms. That's another problem for Rovol to chew ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... doggerel in music, and meter is hardly of value. Sonnets in music become abominable. I have made many experiments for finding the affinity of language and music. The two things are diametrically opposed, unless music is free to distort syllables. A poem may be of only four words, and yet those four words may contain enough suggestion for four pages of music; but to found a song on those four words would be impossible. For this reason the paramount value of the poem is that of its suggestion ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... delights in falsehood. We sometimes see persons who, without apparent intention of falsehood, seem incapable of speaking the truth. If they relate a circumstance that has passed under their own observation, or describe anything that they have seen, they add here and diminish there, distort this and give a new color to that, in such a manner that the hearer receives an impression of nothing as it really is. If there seem to be no malicious or evil design in all this, such persons are commonly called very imaginative; they should be called persons of unregulated, unprincipled ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... libraries; they instruct, they amuse, they edify. Passing from county to county, hawking news, composing satirical songs, they fill also the place of a daily gazette; they represent public opinion, sometimes create it, and often distort it; they are living newspapers; they furnish their auditors with information about the misdeeds of the Government, which, from time to time, seizes the most talkative, and imprisons them to keep them silent. The ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... is unadventurous, he seems to say, there is still the individual, who, perhaps all the more because of the rigid decorums forced upon him, may adventure with secret desires through pathless space. Only, the pressure of too many inhibitions can distort human spirits into grotesque forms. The inhabitants of Winesburg tend toward the grotesque, now this organ of the soul enlarged beyond all symmetry, now that wasted away in a desperate disuse. They see visions which in some wider world might become wholesome ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... spires and all manner of unnatural shapes, and when I saw the same thing being practiced in this great park I began to feel dissatisfied. But I soon saw the idea of the thing and the wisdom of it. They seek the general effect. We distort a dozen sickly trees into unaccustomed shapes in a little yard no bigger than a dining room, and then surely they look absurd enough. But here they take two hundred thousand tall forest trees and set them in a double row; allow no sign of leaf or branch to grow on the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... faith in such a bond of union. Interpreting freedom as the multiplication and rapid satisfaction of desires, men distort their own nature, for many senseless and foolish desires and habits and ridiculous fancies are fostered in them. They live only for mutual envy, for luxury and ostentation. To have dinners, visits, carriages, rank and slaves to wait on one is looked upon as a necessity, for which life, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... hilt, and he was now busy with a little brass box and a leaf. This leaf of one of the pepper plants he was smearing with a little creamy-looking mixed lime from the brass box, on which he placed a fragment of betel-nut, rolled it in the leaf, thrust it into his mouth, which it seemed to distort, and then began to expectorate a nasty red juice, with which he stained ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... to be gradually drifting the wrong way, and it won't get any better 'til all people put their belief—and I mean by that—simple faith, in the Bible. What they like of it they are in the habit of quoting, but they distort it and try to make it appear to mean whatever will suit their wicked convenience. They have got to take the whole Bible and live by it, and they must remember they cannot leave out those wise old laws of the Old Testament that God gave for men ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... the stage was 'peopled with either living actors or moving puppets,' and I pointed out briefly, of necessity, that the personality of the actor is often a source of danger in the perfect presentation of a work of art. It may distort. It may lead astray. It may be a discord in the tone or symphony. For anybody can act. Most people in England do nothing else. To be conventional is to be a comedian. To act a particular part, however, is a very different thing, and a very difficult thing ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... made. A writer in Camera Craft gives the secret, which proves to be easy of execution. The distortion is accomplished by the use of prisms, as follows: Secure from an optician or leaded-glass establishment, two glass prisms, slightly wider than the lens mount. The flatter they are the less they will distort. About 20. deg. is a satisfactory angle. Secure them as shown by the sectional sketch, using strawboard and black paper. Then make a ring to fit over the lens mount and connect it with the prisms in such a way as to exclude ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... when lovers' sentiments stray away from feeling, they are to be suspected of a disloyalty. Yet he admired the tone she took. He had got an 'ideal' of her which it was pleasanter to magnify than to distort. An 'ideal' is so arbitrary, that if you only doubt of its being perfection, it will vanish and never come again. Sir Purcell refused to doubt. He blamed himself for having thought it possible to doubt, and this, when all the time ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... possibility entered 'Lige Curtis's alcoholized consciousness, part of whose morbid phantasy it was to distort or exaggerate all natural phenomena. He had a vague idea that he could not go back to Harkutt's; already his visit seemed to have happened long, long ago, and could not be repeated. He would walk on, enwrapped in this uncompromising darkness which concealed everything, suggested ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... audience, felt it, as with antennae, and knew that for the most part it was composed of idle people who were there only for the sake of having something to do: and the role of official entertainer was not at all to his liking. Worst of all, speaking from a platform is almost bound to distort ideas: if the speaker does not take care there is a danger of his passing gradually from a certain theatricality in gesture, diction, attitude, and the form in which he presents his ideas—to mental trickery. A lecture ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... galling calumnies and false surmises with which, if you are faithful, that same Satanic working, which, if it could, would burn your body, will assuredly assail you daily through the pens and tongues of deceivers and deceived, who, under a semblance of a zeal for Christ, will evermore distort your words, misrepresent your motives, rejoice in your failings, exaggerate your errors, and seek by every poisoned breath of slander to destroy your powers ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... their berths. For a few seconds she is quiet; then, contorting her face into a deep scowl, she gives vent to the most violent bursts of passion,—holds her long black hair above her head, assumes a tragic attitude, threatens to distort it from the scalp. "That one's lost her mind-she's fitty; but I think the devil has something to do with her fits. And, though you wouldn't think it, she's just as harmless as can be," Mr. Praiseworthy coolly remarks, looking at Mrs. Rosebrook, hoping she will ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... of this is, that the AVERAGE given by the observations of the trimmer is the same, whether they are trimmed or untrimmed. His object is to gain a reputation for extreme accuracy in making observations; but from respect for truth, or from a prudent foresight, he does not distort the position of the fact he gets from nature, and it is usually difficult to detect him. He has more sense or less ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... has been due to defects of her own character, and limitations of her outlook. The same defects which corrupted her policy in the past distort her ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... disciples and friends, who knew as well how to give as to receive severe thrusts. As an illustration of the method of the discussion, we mention the title of a book written in favor of Cocceius: "Satan's Defense of himself, on being questioned why he had instigated some persons to distort and vilify the orthodox, wise, and edifying Writings of the Blessed Professor Cocceius, &c., &c." In this work Satan, on being questioned whom he fears most, replies that "no one has done more harm to the power of darkness than Cocceius,—not ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... wrathfully and irritably, crimson with confusion, "to distort my words in this way! Excuse me, allow me to assure you that the report which has reached you, or rather, let me say, has been conveyed to you, has no foundation in truth, and I... suspect who... in a word... this arrow... in a word, your mamma... She seemed to me in other things, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... equino-varus is comparatively rare. The plantar flexors and invertors distort the foot into the equino-varus attitude. The heel is drawn up, the anterior part of the foot is adducted and inverted at the mid-tarsal joint. The muscles are tense and rigid, and the reflexes exaggerated. The condition is frequently bilateral, and is often associated ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... worry about the newspapers, Hallie; they always make the worst of everything. The temptation to distort facts to make a good story is strong; I have seen it in my connection with the 'Courier.' It's lamentable, but you can't correct it in a day. I'm pretty well hardened to it myself, but I'm sorry you have let these attacks on me annoy ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... say that elementary education, as it is given in such a school, tends to arrest growth, is to under-estimate its capacity for mischief. In the act of arresting growth it must needs distort growth, and in doing this it must needs deaden and even destroy the life which is ever struggling to evolve itself. It is well that from time to time we should ask ourselves what compulsory education has done for the people of England. How much ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... of moral principles. How many are the crimes of which they have made virtues merely by dowering them with the word "national"? They distort even truth itself. For the truth which is eternally the same they substitute each their national truth. So many nations, so many truths; and thus they falsify and twist ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... well enough for married people, who, from the mere fact of being married, are always entitled to certain consideration, put—par exemple—into a bed-room, a little larger than a dog kennel, and accommodated with a looking-glass, that does not distort one's features like a paralytic stroke. But we single men suffer a plurality of evils and hard-ships, in entrusting ourselves to the casualties of rural hospitality. We are thrust up into any attic repository—exposed to ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a solemn compact, now, to never mention the great news to any one while the relative lived, lest some ignorant person carry the fact to the death-bed and distort it and make it appear that they were disobediently thankful for the bequest, and just the same as confessing it and publishing it, right in ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... in another, both appealed equally to his artistic and thoughtful mind. At one moment it would appear before him with an ideal loveliness such as had never blessed the eye of his fancy even; but while he yet looked the features would distort themselves into the vivid expression of some contemptible trait, so like what he had seen in reality, during the evening, that, in uncontrollable irritation, he would start up and pace ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... a perfectly original method of arriving at the truth, by intimate conversations with Mormon husbands and wives, as well as with the most intelligent of the "Gentiles." She discarded from her mind pre-conceptions and all prejudices which discolor and distort objects which should be rigidly investigated, and looked at the mass of facts before her in what Bacon calls "dry light." Cornelius Vanderbilt, the elder, was accustomed to account for the failures and ruin of the brilliant young brokers ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... had a landlord, generous, not to say prodigal—a warm-hearted, well-intentioned master, whose mere youth a career of sensuality had not yet hardened, nor a course of dissipation been prolonged enough to distort his feelings from the right. And Acton, moreover, was not the only man who wondered how, with such a landlord (ay, and the guardians before him were always well-spoken gentle-folks, kindly in their manners, and liberal in their looks), wages could be kept so low, and rents ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... you are right," I answered slowly, "they do just wring and distort them and deform them for life. But I intend to see that Nell's has no such torturous operation performed on it if I can appeal to ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... forme as his descendants call it now. To this great end all means were good: all that was not a means to this end was superfluous. To achieve it he was prepared to play the oddest tricks with natural forms—to distort. All great artists have distorted; Cezanne was peculiar only in doing so more consciously and thoroughly than most. What is important in his art is, of course, the beauty of his conceptions and his power in pursuit: indifference to verisimilitude is but the outward and visible sign ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... the society is too simple for him to escape — and when he is apprehended he restores more than he took away. There is no opportunity for a thief class to develop, consequently there is no chance for theft to distort the ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... first steps towards writing real history belonged to this period, to it belonged also the first attempts to record, and conventionally distort, the primitive history of Rome. The sources whence it was formed were of course the same as they are everywhere. Isolated names like those of the kings Numa, Ancus, Tullus, to whom the clan-names were ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... This is known as a solid back transmitter and is the standard commercial type used on all long distance Bell telephone lines. It articulates sharply and distinctly and there are no current variations to distort the wave form of the voice and it will not buzz or sizzle. It is shown in Fig. 84 and costs $2.00. Any other good microphone transmitter can be ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins
... is Mengino himself, and Sempronio, not recognizing the two, bids them sit down. He dictates the marriage contract, in which Grilletta is said to marry Sempronio by her own free will besides making over her whole fortune to him. This scene, in which the two false notaries distort every word of old Sempronio's, and put each his own name instead of the guardian's, is overwhelmingly comical. When the contract is written, Sempronio takes one copy, Grilletta the other and the whole fraud is discovered.—Volpino vanishes, ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... to reiterate too much, but I must say again, with new emphasis, to my younger Brother, resolve to be a preacher indeed, by the grace of God. Do not let secondary things, however good, distort your attention from that supremely sacred commission, "Preach the Word; be instant, in season, out of season[36] [2 Tim. iv. 2.]; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all long-suffering and doctrine. For," the Apostle significantly proceeds, "the time will come when ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... now that I am not going to distort or discolor the facts of this miserable trial. No, I will give them to you honestly, detail by detail, just as Manchon and I set them down daily in the official record of the court, and just as one may read ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... a privileged class that is encouraged (even paid) to distort the language, and they must not be ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford
... began to distort them. He had no knowledge of it. He never realized the change. He passed to the realms of sleep like a tired child, striving to follow the course of the flying sparks from the fire till his final memory was of a hundred pairs of blazing eyes peering ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... both privately and officially, urged the subject upon the attention of the Emperor, and had solicited his intercession with Philip. It was not an interposition to save the Prince from chastisement, however the artful pen of Granvelle might distort the facts. It was an address in behalf of religious liberty for the Netherlands, made by those who had achieved it in their own persons, and who were at last enjoying immunity from persecution. It was an appeal which they who made it were bound to make, for the Netherland commissioners had assisted ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and writings of many of its teachers and advocates, it has neither beauty, nor worth, nor credibility. Some teach only a very small portion of Christianity, and the portion they teach they often teach amiss. Some doctrines they exaggerate, and others they maim. Some they caricature, distort, or pervert. And many add to the Gospel inventions of their own, or foolish traditions received from their fathers; and the truth is hid under a mass of error. Many conceal and disfigure the truth by putting ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... the prisoner's features distort; I saw him suddenly dash himself down upon his knees despite his fetters, and beat his face into the dust, crying out the while in a passion of hoarse remorse that made ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... entitled On the Unity of the Catholic Church is the most famous of Cyprian's works. As the theory there developed is opposed to that which became dominant, and as Cyprian was regarded as the great upholder of the Church's constitution, interpolations were early made in the text which seriously distort the sense. These interpolations are to-day abandoned by all scholars. The best critical edition of the works of Cyprian is by W. von Hartel in the CSEL, but critical texts of the following passage with references ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... well as from the greed of exorbitant profits, they stand ready to give liberal bribes, or at least to back with money and moral support the party machine that promises to favor them. They control a large proportion of the newspapers and magazines, and are thus able to distort facts, protect themselves from attack, and even stir up a factitious distrust of would-be reformers. As every little contractor naturally favors the "ring" that awards contracts to him, so the great corporations publicly or secretly support it. The liquor trade and the vice caterers-the keepers ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... genial liquor all its power of stimulating the palate. Conversation would become dull and vapid, if negligence were not sometimes roused, and sluggishness quickened, by due severity of reprehension. But acids unmixed will distort the face and torture the palate; and he that has no other qualities than penetration and asperity, he whose constant employment is detection and censure, who looks only to find faults, and speaks only to punish them, will soon be dreaded, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... communicated with the enemy, who cut off his rear-guard, and otherwise roughly handled the Turkish troops. Upon this, Omer Pacha put him in chains, and would have shot him, as he richly deserved, had he not known that his enemies at Constantinople would not fail to distort the true features of the case. He therefore sent him to Constantinople, where he was shortly afterwards released, and employed his gold to such good purpose, that he was actually sent down as Civil Governor to Travnik, which he had so recently left a prisoner ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... eternal seas," then said the priest, solemnly extending his hands. "When for some holy and sublime purpose man may need you, God will in his wisdom draw you from the bosom of the waves. Meanwhile, there you will not work woe, you will not distort justice, you ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... distort my thought, Nicias, and change a beautiful young girl into a hideous Gorgon. I am sorry for you, if you are so ignorant of the nature of the gods, of justice, and of ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... Enoch looked and was desolate. On the other hand, no poet has so planted our literature with gorgeous gardens from which generations of lesser laborers will be enriched and prospered. The figures in which Tennyson uses Nature are not, moreover, strained or artificial; they do not distort or cover the inner meaning, but bloom from it, revealing its beauty and its sweetness. All bear the mark of loving thought,—now so delicate that its very faintness thrills and holds us, now strong ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... posture, long continued, will distort and disfigure the limbs; so the mind likewise is crippled and contracted by perpetual application to the same set of ideas. It is easy to guess the trade of an artizan by his knees, his fingers, or his shoulders: and there are few among men of the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... man, or if any powerful emotion seizes him, his brain under the irritation begins to disengage energy at a tremendous rate. He has to use all his available force of control in keeping the energy in. Some of it will leak away into the nerves of his face and distort his features, some may set his tear-glands at work, some may travel down his vagus nerve and inhibit his heart's action so that he faints, or upset the blood-vessels in his head and give him a stroke. Or if he pens it up, without its ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced." Can what Bacon says of the fallacies of the mind be also said of its proper cognitions? Does the mind, by its own action, in any way distort the appearance of the things presented to it; and if so, how far does the distortion extend, and in what manner is it to be rectified? To trace the course of this inquiry, from the day when Plato compared the objects perceived ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... ankle. These being her sole wealth, it was, perhaps, from economy of her charms that she hid the ankle in such flowing sables, that she bound the black locks straightly under a little widow's-cap, seldom parted the fine lips above the treasured pearls beneath, disdained to distort the classic features, and graved no wrinkles on the smooth, rich skin with any lavish smiling. She went about the house, a self-contained, silent, unpleasant little vial of wrath, and there was ever between her and Eloise a tacit feud, waiting, perhaps, only for occasion to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... merely mention one instance of many in reply to the injustice done to the memory of him who harmonised our poetical language. The attorneys clerks, and other self-educated genii, found it easier to distort themselves to the new models than to toil after the symmetry of him who had enchanted their fathers. They were besides smitten by being told that the new school were to revive the language of Queen Elizabeth, the true English; as every ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... ambition but that of avarice," replied Almamen; "and as the plant will crook and distort its trunk, to raise its head through every obstacle to the sun, so the mind of man twists and perverts itself, if legitimate openings are denied it, to find its natural element in the gale of power, or the sunshine of esteem. These Hebrews were not traffickers and ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book I. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... added to water containing soft creatures such as molluscs, generally will kill them gently by paralysis and leave them relaxed. Usually almost anything else one uses, short of illegal or expensive drugs, causes such specimens to distort or contract into useless lumps. Once the chromate has thoroughly killed and relaxed them, say after an hour or two, the specimens can be fixed, preserved, or manipulated as required. You may wish to compare this method with the method that I describe ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... hand, alone and by a single stroke, he completely reversed the judgment of the English nation about their greatest man. The whole weight of Church, monarchy, aristocracy, fashion, literature, and wit had for two centuries combined to falsify history and distort the character of the noblest of English statesmen. And a simple man of letters, by one book, at once and for ever reversed this sentence, silenced the allied forces of calumny and rancour, and placed Oliver for all future time as the greatest hero of the Protestant ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... contained. Say, good Mr. M'Choakumchild: when from thy store thou shalt fill each jar brim full by and by, dost thou think thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within, or sometimes only maim him and distort him!" ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... people call dull. It didn't take sides: it simply gave, in more detail than any other paper, the issues, and the account of the negotiations, and had expert articles on the different currents of influence on both sides. It didn't distort or conceal ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... By one simple sentence he opens the door of everlasting hope. He says He will draw all men to Himself; but He does not tell us how or when. Those are matters for faith, not for revelation. We can take no smaller meaning from this glorious promise, distort it as men will, to make it fit ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... the absolute subjection of the mind to God's written Word—making churches, creeds, ministers, books, religious opinion, all subordinate and subservient to this—"How readest thou?" rebuking the philosophy, falsely so called, that would distort the plain statements of Revelation, and bring them to the bar ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... would indicate that. Their own world was probably even larger—they were forced to wear pressure suits even on that large world, and could jump all over, you said. On so huge a sphere as their native world seems to be, the gravity would be so intense as to distort space. Geometry, such as yours seems to be, and such as ours was, could never be developed, for you assume the existence of a straight line, and of an absolute plane surface. These things cannot ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... your soul yourself, and it's yours. This young dispenser of oils, substances, and mysteries wishes only to help you scrape off the rough edges and gouge out the bad spots. He will not steal it, nor distort it with his supernatural chisels, nor make fun of it. He can take nothing away, but only cauterize and neutralize, he says, so why not let him try? Tell him the ...
— Death of a Spaceman • Walter M. Miller
... intently into my opponent's face, and measured him carefully with my eye, that I might have his height and figure explicit and exact; for I know how moonlight and fire distort, how the eye may be deceived. I looked for every button; for the spot in his lean, healthy body where I could disable him, spit him, and yet not kill him—for this was the thing furthest from my ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... from the grave to prove thine innocence, Francisco!' said a deep, hollow voice, which startled the whole court, and most of all Hawkhurst and the prisoners at the bar. Still more did fear and horror distort their countenances when into the witness-box stalked the giant form ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... writers of the Confutation were deficient not only in judgment, but also in candor. For whereas we, with a simple mind, desired, in passing, to recount those things which original sin embraces, these men, by framing an invidious interpretation, artfully distort a proposition that has in it nothing which of itself is wrong. Thus they say: "To be without the fear of God, to be without faith, is actual guilt"; and therefore they deny that it is ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... I. 2. 2. 14. The epiphyses, or ends of the bones, being naturally of a looser texture, are most liable to this disease, and perhaps the cartilages and capsular ligaments may also become inflamed and swelled along with the heads of the bones. This malady is liable to distort the fingers and knees, and is usually called gout or rheumatism; the former of which is liable to disable the fingers by chalk-stones, and thence to have somewhat a similar appearance. But the arthrocele, or swelling of the joints, affects ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... Distance interspaco. Distant malproksima. Distaste tedo, nauxzo. Distend plilargxigi, sxveli. [Error in book: sxvelo] Distil distili. Distinct (clear) klara. Distinct neta, klara. Distinctive distingiga. Distinguish distingi. Distort tordigi. Distortion (grimace) grimaco. Distract distri. Distraction distreco. Distress cxagrenigi. Distress mizerigo. Distribute (scatter) dissxuti. Distribute (to share) disdoni. District kvartalo. Distrust malfidi. Distrust malfido. Distrustful malfidema. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... simply that they become corrupt and fail to act: they become obstructions. Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive, that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror. Old creeds end in being dead formulas, which no longer aid but distort and arrest the general mind; while the State-churches administering them, come to be instruments for subsidising conservatism and repressing progress. Old schemes of education, incarnated in public schools and colleges, continue filling the heads of new generations with ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... from friendly human influences as Sergeant Moore was, his mind and his emotions are apt to take queer twists and turns, his judgment to become strangely warped, his vision and sense of proportion to assume the highly misleading characteristics of convex and concave mirrors, which distort outrageously everything ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... ages. Well, some took one type and some the other; and a few tried to combine the two, of course spoiling both. But, beyond this, their power of invention could not go. They were always trying to conceal the old idea, and could do no more than to distort it. We could see through their flimsy pretensions to originality much as a schoolmaster recognises the extracts from the encyclopaedia in ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... the law frequently form a hasty conviction as to the guilt of a suspected person, and then distort all subsequent discoveries to conform to their established theory. The deplorable antecedents of Victor Danegre, habitual criminal, drunkard and rake, influenced the judge, and despite the fact that nothing new was discovered in corroboration of the early clues, his official opinion ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... the uniform of a Lieutenant-Colonel, which showed how deeply he was in the toils. Though it emphasized the elegant proportions of his figure, it sat uncomfortably upon him. His vanity was not equal to his sense of guilt. The uniform was a livery of dishonor. He could not distort it into a virtue, try as he would. He lacked that cunning artifice which a man of the world possesses, that of winning over to ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... Buck's own laboratory. On the bench was the powerful, but small, little projector of the straight magnetic field, simply a specially designed accumulator, a super-condenser, and the peculiar apparatus Devin had designed to distort the electric field through ninety degrees to a magnetic field. Behind this was a curious, paraboloid projector made up of hundreds of tiny, carefully orientated coils. This was Buck's own contribution. They ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... point in the conversation Crayford allowed a faint smile to distort slightly one ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... and learn the secret. This he failed to do, owing, perhaps, to his love-making being wanting in conviction on account of her shaved head. At last Irala and his friends determined to send the Governor a prisoner to Spain, taking care, of course, to despatch a messenger beforehand to distort the facts and prejudice the King. The friends of Nunez, however, managed to secrete a box of papers, stating the true facts, on board the ship. At dead of night a band of harquebusiers dragged him from his bed (after a captivity of eleven months), as he says, 'almost with the ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... efficaciously and morally, there is no need of either of these two conflicting certainties, either that of faith or that of reason, and how still less is there any need—this never under any circumstances—to shirk the problem of the immortality of the soul, or to distort it idealistically—that is to say, hypocritically. The reader will see how this uncertainty, with the suffering that accompanies it, and the fruitless struggle to escape from it, may be and is a ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... nothing, so long as my motives in coming are known. But people talk so cruelly, and will distort the facts so gladly, and we have always held our heads so high. And now ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... leading to the picket line, no sapper was required to show them how to throw a suspension bridge above the flood from tree to cliff. It was characteristic of the Regiment that they carried out in war their peace training, never allowing the atmosphere of excitement to distort their actions. ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... his chair to regard her in a sort of incredulous horror, she did not fall at his feet as everyone expected her to, and as she herself had thought to do. Instead, she flung up her head with a spirit that sent the long locks flying. Even when anger began to distort his face,—anger headlong and terrible as Eric's,—her glance crossed ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... fast steamer running through the ice and the fog. No, it is mere theory, but I have an idea that the ultraviolet light—the actinic rays beyond the violet end of the spectrum, you know—will penetrate fog to a great distance, and in spite of its higher refractive power, which would distort and magnify an object, ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... one can't expect every one to understand on the spot the uselessness of intellect 'seething in vain activity' ... and so we get again one monster the more in the world, one more of those worthless creatures in whom habits of self-ccnsciousness distort the very striving for truth, and a ludicrous simplicity exists side by side with a pitiful duplicity ... one of those beings of impotent, restless thought who all their lives know neither the satisfaction of natural activity, nor ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... of earth had conquer'd, now vouchsafe To place us down beneath, where numbing cold Locks up Cocytus. Force not that we crave Or Tityus' help or Typhon's. Here is one Can give what in this realm ye covet. Stoop Therefore, nor scornfully distort thy lip. He in the upper world can yet bestow Renown on thee, for he doth live, and looks For life yet longer, if before the time Grace call him not unto herself." Thus spake The teacher. He in haste forth stretch'd his hands, And caught my guide. Alcides whilom felt That grapple straighten'd ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... these five frightened friends, familiar types to us all, reveal to us how easy it is to get lost in our preoccupations and to distort or diminish the ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... hypotheses which have been offered in explanation of the religious phenomena of the world may be summed up as follows: The first and second theories we have rejected as utterly false. Instead of being faithful to and adequately explaining the facts, they pervert, and maltreat, and distort the facts of religious history. The last three each contain a precious element of truth which must not be undervalued, and which can not be omitted in an explanation which can be pronounced complete. Each theory, taken by itself, is incomplete ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... connected with. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation, like Othello's, would be gone. The business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the foot of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. We are the tools or vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... this country. Other countries entered the war through necessities of various sorts. America committed herself to the conflict for a cause which even the cynical German propaganda, hard as it has tried, has been unable to distort into a selfish or commercial one. We are preparing to share in every way the sacrifices, both in blood and wealth, which our allies have been making these past three years. And as our reward we ask for no selfish ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... merely shrugged his shoulders and remained silent. When it finally appeared that he was not going to ask anything more, his wife added: "If you could listen, like any one else, and not interrupt with remarks that distort all one's ideas"—Then, as he persisted in his silence, she relented still further. "Why, of course, as you say, you will have to know it in the end. But I can tell you, to begin with, Owen, that it's nothing you can do anything about, ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... seldom felt where Flora reigns; The low'ring eye, the petulance, the frown, And sullen sadness, that o'ershade, distort, And mar the face of beauty, when no cause For such immeasurable woe appears; These Flora banishes, and gives the fair Sweet smiles and bloom, less transient than ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 3 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... a strain on the supporting surfaces and is liable to distort them, the French (to whom Bleriot is believed to have shown the way) introduced ailerons, that is, small subsidiary hinged planes attached to the extremities of the wings. By controlling these, one up and the other down, in conjunction with the rudder, the pilot can preserve his ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... power and extreme laxity of his ligaments, he simulated all the dislocations about the hip joint. Sometimes he produced actual dislocation, but usually he said he could so distort his muscles as to imitate in the closest degree the dislocations. He could imitate the various forms of talipes, in such a way as to deceive an expert. He dislocated nearly every joint in the body with great facility. It was said that he could contract at will both pillars of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... republican spirit of those unhappy times that scalped the head feebly protected by a mitre or a crown. But the private virtues and the rich genius of such a man are pure from the taint of party. We are now to see how far private hatred can distort, in its hideous vengeance, the resemblance it affects to give after nature. Who could imagine that Parker is describing Marvell in ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... do you continue to dissemble or to distort the truth? The shreds are become a cable for the faithful. That they were miraculously turned into one entire garment who shall gainsay? How many hath it already clothed with righteousness? Happy men, casting ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... iron sash cramps are used to apply pressure to the joint. As this method is in some cases apt to bend and distort thin boards it is wise practice to fix (as a temporary measure) a stout piece of straight wood on to the board to be joined by using two handscrews as shown at the left hand of the illustration. At the right hand of the sketch a wooden cramping ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... strength of this omission one or two of St. Clair's apologists have striven to represent the whole account of Washington's wrath as apocryphal; but the attempt is puerile; the relation comes from an eyewitness who had no possible motive to distort the facts. The Secretary of War, Knox, was certain to inform Washington of the disaster the very evening he heard of it; and whether he sent Denny, or another messenger, or went himself is unimportant. Lear might very well have been mistaken as to the messenger who brought ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... turn'd into a meer Devil, if it is not when he is fighting with his fellow Creatures and dipping his Hands in the Blood of his own Kind? Let his Picture be consider'd, the Fire of Hell flames or sparkles in his Eyes, a voracious Grin sits upon his Countenance; Rage and Fury distort the Muscles of his Face; his Passions agitate his whole Body, and he is metamorphos'd from a comely Beauteous angelic Creature into a Fury, a Satyr, a terrible and frightful Monster, nay, into a Devil; for Satan himself is describ'd by the same Word ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... gross and frightful deformity of fat or excrescence are seen laughing, joining freely and comfortably in the company of the unafflicted. In her affliction Susan at least saw only those affected like herself—and that helped not a little, helped the whiskey to confuse and distort ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... of identical appearance. If this were the case with the capital at the corner of a building, the result would be that on the side of the building all the capitals would present their bolsters instead of their volutes to the spectator. The only way to prevent this was to distort the corner capital into the form shown by Fig. 64; cf. also Figs. ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... that, as though, more or less, this or that were a matter of no moment, what certainty can we have concerning such a man that inaccuracy shall not elsewhere be found in him? None. He is a warped mirror which will distort every ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... mixed, be trampled to the full; The moisture, mark you, will ooze all away, In big drops issuing through the osier-withes, But plainly will its taste the secret tell, And with a harsh twang ruefully distort The mouths of them that try it. Rich soil again We learn on this wise: tossed from hand to hand Yet cracks it never, but pitch-like, as we hold, Clings to the fingers. A land with moisture rife Breeds lustier herbage, and is more than meet Prolific. Ah I may never such for me ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... so much pleased the eye; for there were none of those quartz dykes I had seen protruding through the same kink of aqueous formations in Usui and Karague; nor were there any other sorts of volcanic disturbance to distort the calm ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... of all the discussions which have arisen on the subject, but the most indisputable proof of the authenticity of the narrative; for it is clear that Nicolo Zeno, junior, could not himself have been the ingenious concocter of a story the straightforward truth of which he could thus ignorantly distort upon ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... may trust to well-directed native industry. The time is, I hope, at hand, when those who are most in earnest will feel that therefore they are most bound to be just—when they will confess the exceeding wickedness of the desire to distort or suppress a fact, or misrepresent a character—when they will ask as solemnly to be delivered from the temptation to this, as to any crime which is punished ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... present experience of what, in some at least of its modern forms, Christianity has been capable of becoming, that there is no doctrine in itself so pure, but what the poorer nature which is in us can disarm and distort it, and adapt it to its own littleness. The once living spirit dries up into formulae, and formula whether of mass-sacrifice or vicarious righteousness, or "reward and punishment," are contrived ever so as to escape making over high demands ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... so Formed of the sand, and fit to shift and break. It is that distant years which did not take Thy sovranty, recoiling with a blow, Have forced my swimming brain to undergo Their doubt and dread, and blindly to forsake Thy purity of likeness and distort Thy worthiest love to a worthless counterfeit: As if a shipwrecked Pagan, safe in port, His guardian sea-god to commemorate, Should set a sculptured porpoise, gills a-snort And vibrant tail, within ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... Dialog. cum Tryphonte, p. 143, 144. See Le Clerc, Hist. Eccles. p. 615. Bull and his editor Grabe (Judicium Eccles. Cathol. c. 7, and Appendix) attempt to distort either the sentiments or the words of Justin; but their violent correction of the text is rejected even by ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... the whole class of allegorical pastorals, is undoubtedly open to the charge of artificiality, since, in truth, the pastoral garb can never illustrate, but only distort and obscure subjects drawn from other orders of civilization. Yet none but a great master could, to produce a desired effect, have utilized every association which tradition afforded with the consummate skill observable in Milton's poem. He has been blamed for the introduction ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... Another officer told me that before I came the officers of the garrison assembled to consider whether or not they should recognize me. The unanimous vote was "yes." Was all this official? No. It is the white people, the disappointed tyrants of Georgia, who try to distort social courtesies in official ones. The "many white" people were some half-dozen newspaper reporters, whose articles doubtless were partly written when they came. "Old Si" in his spectacles was ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... certainty, of reasoning or inferring incorrectly. And logicians have generally felt that unless, in the very first stage, they removed this source of error; unless they taught their pupil to put away the glasses which distort the object, and to use those which are adapted to his purpose in such a manner as to assist, not perplex, his vision; he would not be in a condition to practice the remaining part of their discipline with any ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... huntsman! see, his limbs The pangs of death distort! 'Lay there and rot: no caitiff's death Shall mar our ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... regarding it. I dare not call it a "Mind." I refuse even to call it a "Cause." Its mystery overshadows me; but it remains a mystery, while the objective frames which my neighbours try to make it fit, simply distort and desecrate it.'—Dr. Tyndall, ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... federalism. And whether our efforts to save the principles and form of our constitution have not been salutary, let the present republican freedom, order, and prosperity of our country determine. History may distort truth, and will distort it for a time, by the superior efforts at justification of those who are conscious of needing it most. Nor will the opening scenes of our present government be seen in their true aspect, until the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... frightful complaint is not immediately dangerous; but I never can believe that the violent and sudden prostration of strength, the dreadfully convulsive movements which distort the limbs, the livid hue that spreads itself over the complexion, can take place without shaking the seat of health and life. Repeatedly we thought the malady cured, and for a few days the poor sufferer believed himself restored to health and strength; but again and again ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... removed (quite an easy matter to accomplish) and holes bored for a couple of screws put through from the inside. If the underside of the base is not quite correctly curved, take care not to force in the screws far enough to distort the barrel. It is advisable to do the fitting of the parts of the release after the base has been fixed, and before the works are replaced. The position of the hammer shaft can be gauged accurately enough from ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... stain, imbue, tint, tincture, variegate; falsify, pervert, garble, palliate, gloss, distort; blush, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... "liberal" congressmen and senators so ignorant that they do not know the whole Atlantic Union movement is built under the canopy of "implementing Article 2 of this NATO Treaty?" Or, are they too stupid to understand this? Or, are they so dishonest that they distort the facts, thinking that the public is too confused or ignorant to ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... understand his neighbor. Egotism, vanity, prejudice, pride of opinion, conceit of excellence, a mean delight in recognizing inferiority in others, a meaner delight in refusing to recognize the superiority of others, all the honest and all the base forms of self-assertion, cloud and distort the vision when one mind directs its glance at another. For one person who is mentally conscientious there are thousands who are morally honest. The result is a vast massacre of character, which would move the observer's compassion were it not that the victims are also ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... of burbot. This last is one of the most voracious of the finny tribe, and preys upon all others that it is able to swallow. It devours whole quantities of cray-fish, until its stomach becomes crammed to such a degree as to distort the shape of its whole body. When this kind was drawn out, it was treated very rudely by the boys—because its flesh was known to be extremely unsavoury, and none of them cared to eat it. Marengo, however, had no such scruples, and he was wont to ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... same time, though we have to recognize the presence of elements which color and distort in various ways the judgments of men regarding women, it must not be hastily assumed that these elements render discussion of the question altogether unprofitable. In most cases such prejudices lead chiefly to a one-sided solution of facts, against ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... find Reed's lost cattle. Almost every man in the train was out in the desert, searching in all directions. This task was attended with both difficulty and danger; for when the sun shone, the atmosphere appeared to distort and magnify objects so that at the distance of a mile every stone or bush would appear the size of an ox. Several of the men came near dying for want of water during this search. The desert mirage disclosed against the horizon, clear, distinct, and perfectly outlined rocks, mountain peaks, ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... judged thus? Is not a full indulgence of its natural tendencies essential to a people's greatness? Force the manners, dress, language, and constitution of Russia, or Italy, or Norway, or America, and you instantly stunt and distort the ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... sacrifice as represented by the Spanish chroniclers, also by the letters and despatches of Cortez, we do not credit, though undoubtedly they had some foundation in truth. It is the characteristic of all these records to persistently distort facts so as to further the purposes of the writers, and as to correctness where figures are concerned, they are scarcely ever to be relied upon. Though forced to admit this want of veracity, Prescott has relied almost entirely ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... to one earlier still. For the N.T. Greek, even in the writings of Luke, contains a large number of Hebrew idioms; and a literal rendering into English cannot but partially veil, and in some degree distort, the true sense, even if it does not totally obscure it (and that too where perfect clearness should be attained, if possible), by this admixture of Hebrew as well ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth
... the objective existence of matter per se—matter minus perception. Now, matter per se, or minus perception, is a thing which no belief will countenance. Reid, however, could not admit this. Having appealed to the belief, he was compelled to distort its evidence in his own favour, and to force it, in spite of itself, to bear testimony to the fact which he wished it to establish. Thus Dr Reid's appeal not only came to naught, but being premature, it drove him, as has been said and shown, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... civilization was preeminently the ferment of African blood. Take all the archeological facts of the last fifty years and read them up or down, across or diagonally, inside and out, and this fact rises into your mind like a Banquo that will not down. Historians may distort truth and rob the African race of its historical position, but facts are everywhere throwing open the secret closets of nations and exposing ethnic skeletons that laugh and jest at our racial vanities. The Aryan savages of Europe came down upon ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... bless me: Say thou didst not drink it! Say Inis did not—While I speak, the blood Fades from thy cheek! Thine eyes close! Dying pangs Distort thy features; pangs like those which shortened His life, whose angry ghost, grim, fierce, and ghastly, Comes gliding yonder. See his livid finger Points to the poisoned cup! He frowns and threatens. Pray for me, angel! Pray ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... and again he gives us little pictures of bird-life, which are pleasant proofs that he is, like M. Fabre, a master of the new science that will not select the facts or distort them to suit ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... she broke out impatiently, "who cares one grain of dust what their remarks may be? Men are my natural-born companions. Always have been. Always will be. And it's no use asking me to cramp and distort my whole nature because bourgeois people take a low ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... or sceptic that ever lived: though, to tell the truth, such men are generally very shallow and weak, as well as wicked; generally know only a little, pervert what they know, assume false principles, and distort or suppress facts: but were they as accomplished as the very author of evil, the humblest Christian, armed with sling and stone, and supported by God's unseen might, is, as far as his own faith is concerned, a ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... sleete, Lyke thunder rattling at the noon of daie, Onne Algars sheelde the arrowe dyd assaie, 285 There throghe dyd peerse, and stycke into his groine; In grypynge torments on the feelde he laie, Tille welcome dethe came in and clos'd his eyne; Distort with peyne he laie upon the borne, Lyke sturdie elms by stormes in ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... (this was a religiously-patriotic, philanthropic institution) "was going splendidly, but with these gentlemen it's impossible to do anything," added Countess Lidia Ivanovna in a tone of ironical submission to destiny. "They pounce on the idea, and distort it, and then work it out so pettily and unworthily. Two or three people, your husband among them, understand all the importance of the thing, but the others simply drag it down. Yesterday Pravdin ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... performed; My sinking spirits now supplies With cordials in her hands and eyes, Now with a soft and silent tread Unheard she moves about my bed. I see her taste each nauseous draught And so obligingly am caught, I bless the hand from whence they came, Nor dare distort my face ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... expressed in bad French what all scientific minds had seen for the last two hundred years as clearly as he had done. The scientific spirit was the fundamental principle in my disposition. M. Pinault would have been the master for me if he had not in some strange way striven to disguise and distort the best traits in his talent. I understood him better than he would have wished, and, in spite of himself. I had received a rather advanced education in mathematics from my first teachers in Brittany. Mathematics and ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... royal master simply and exactly?" asked Catharine. "Did you keep within them with respect to Anne Askew? No! I say; for the king had not ordered you to torture her; he had not bidden you to lacerate in blasphemous wrath a noble human form, and distort that likeness of God into a horrible caricature. And that, my lord, you did! Before God and your king, I accuse you of it—I, the queen! For you know, my lord and husband, I was there when Anne Askew was racked. I saw her agony, and John ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... try to write like my father; for that would be to go against what he always made a great point of,—that nobody whatever should imitate any other person whatever, but in modesty and humility allow the seed that God had sown in her to grow. He said all imitation tended to dwarf and distort the plant, if it even allowed the seed to germinate at all. So, if I do write like him, it will be ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... knowledge and the excitement of discovery. The joy to him is to see things as they are and to judge them normally. He is not bored by the sight of normal, healthy muscles in a healthy, well-shaped body; he is delighted. If you distort the muscles for emotional effect, he would say with disappointment: 'But that is ugly!' or 'But a man's muscles do not go like that!' He will have noted that tears are salt and rather warm; but if you say like a modern poet that your heroine's tears ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... view. It is the old road you have so often traversed with perfect equanimity, but its cheerful associations are overlooked and the commonest objects tinged with the colour of your subjective states. Autosuggestion cannot change a post into a spectre, but if you are very impressionable it will so distort your sensory impressions that common sounds seem charged with supernatural significance and every-day objects ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... resin may be substituted for the amber, but it is not so durable. Oil varnish made from amber is highly elastic. If it is used to protect tin-plate printing, when the plates after stoving have been subsequently rolled so as to distort the letters, the varnish has in no way suffered, ...
— Handbook on Japanning: 2nd Edition - For Ironware, Tinware, Wood, Etc. With Sections on Tinplating and - Galvanizing • William N. Brown
... one of the very few instances in history, of a nation whose political representation was so grossly defective as not merely to distort but absolutely to conceal its opinions. It was habitually looked upon as the most servile and corrupt portion of the British Empire; and the eminent liberalism and the very superior political qualities ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... slip or apron which will entirely cover the dress, and can be removed when the child is taken in the arms. A child should not be allowed, when quite young, to bear its weight on its feet very long at a time, as this tends to weaken and distort the limbs. ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... only to bring out the internal secretion make-up of the girl, or to suppress and distort and so spoil her. Adolescence will be peaceful, calm, semi-conscious, or disturbing, revolutionary and obsessive according to the reaction of the other endocrines to the rise of the ovaries. Harmony, and so continued happiness of the mind and body, means that they have been ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D. |
