"Distort" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 it ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... ennobles human nature, to recognise and duly appreciate whatever is beautiful and grand under the external accessories which were necessary to its embodying, even though occasionally they may seem to disguise and distort it. There is no monopoly of poetry for particular ages and nations; and consequently that despotism in taste, which would seek to invest with universal authority the rules which at first, perhaps, were ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... 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 with other deformities ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... this process much must be disfigured, although Buddha's doctrine of the migration of souls expresses the truth with almost perfect precision. The normal vulgarity of man and the license of general egoism further distort the image until it becomes a caricature. And I pity the poet who undertakes to restore the original image from this caricature. It seems to me that Dante, especially in the "Paradise," has not succeeded in this; and in ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... by 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
... 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. ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... 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 the face of ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... flattering compliments from his adherents, while opposition were not ashamed of exhibiting a glowing exultation at their triumph. So marked was this exultation in several of his opponents, that Burke, more generous, and more noble, exhorted them to guard against those passions which distort the human mind, and severely censured them for their ill-timed and misplaced joy. He also pointed out to them the great expectations which the nation had aright to expect from them after their manifold declarations, and set before them the difficulty ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... bunchy back * Faults which gar folk upon his front look black: Like branch distort and dried by length of days * With citrons hanging ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... 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
... shoots a thousand times at the center of a certain picket in a picket fence, and that there is no wind or any other source of constant error that would distort his aim. In the long run, the greatest number of his shots would be in the picket aimed at, and of his misses there would be just as many on one side as on the other, just as many above as below the center. Now if all the shots, as they struck the fence, ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... 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, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... state enlarged; Like warm fresh blood is their enlivened ken: They learn that thou art not of alien sort, Speaking the tongue by vipers hissed, Or of the frosty heights unsealed, Or of the vain who simple speech distort, Or of the vapours pointing on to nought Along cold skies; though sharp and high thy pitch; As when sole homeward the belated treads, And hears aloft a clamour wailed, That once had seemed the broomstick witch Horridly violating ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... oil. Both compounds are then mixed together. Copal 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, and ...
— Handbook on Japanning: 2nd Edition - For Ironware, Tinware, Wood, Etc. With Sections on Tinplating and - Galvanizing • William N. Brown
... Psychologists know this is possible, because your subconscious mind contains a complete record of everything that has happened to you since birth. Therefore, in moments of extreme distress your subconscious has the ability to distort and manipulate time. ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... refractions of the glass and water represent them, when moving, in a shifting and changeable variety of dimensions, shades, and colours; while the two mediums, assisted by the concavo-convex shape of the vessel, magnify and distort them vastly; not to mention that the introduction of another element and its inhabitants into our parlours engages the fancy in ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... flattering thought. And if the paper wants me to falsify or suppress or distort, I have to do it. Is that ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... encounter that which was on its way to meet him. He is a fool who stands and lets life move past him like a panorama. He also is a fool who would lay hands on its motion, and change its pictures. He can but distort and injure, if he does not ruin them, and come ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... shows how the 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 arrangement of the box type ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... 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 ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... 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 ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... submit their reason to be swathed by all the absurd bandages of custom. What, though they cripple or distort their minds; are not these deformities beauties in the eyes of fashion? and are not these people the favoured nurselings of the World, secure of her smiles, her caresses, her fostering praise, her partial ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... right 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 movement. ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... again that "a Brahman-killer enters the body of a dog, bear, ass, camel, goat, sheep, bird, &c.," bears no reference to the human Ego, but only to the atoms of his body, his lower triad and his fluidic emanations. It is all very well for the Brahmans to distort, in their own interest, the real meaning contained in these laws, but the words as quoted never meant what they were made to yield later on. The Brahmans applied them selfishly to themselves, whereas by "Brahman," man's seventh principle, his immortal monad ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... thine and thee, an image only 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 ...
— Sonnets from the Portuguese • Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
... greatest gift of love. We can not deny, however, that love is a mystery, inexplicable, profound. With all the chains, with all the pains, and I may even say, with all the disgust with which the world has surrounded it, buried as it is under a mountain of prejudices which distort and deprave it, in spite of all the ordure through which it has been dragged, love, eternal and fatal love, is none the less a celestial law as powerful and as incomprehensible as that which suspends the sun in ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... are strong enough to roam about, they should be given milk (5) for a whole year, along with what will form their staple diet in the future, but nothing else. A heavy diet will distort the legs of a young dog, engender disease in other limbs, and the internal mechanism will get out ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... 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 ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... neglect have embittered the existence and partially crippled the powers of its creator. And so, to our modern imagination, the neglected and misunderstood genius has become the very type of the great artist, and we have allowed our belief in him to color and distort our vision of the history of art. We have come to look upon the great artists of all times as an unhappy race struggling against the inappreciation of a stupid public, starving in garrets and waiting long ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... 'Lectures on Physiology,' p. 337.) The Chinese have by nature unusually small feet (72. This fact was ascertained in the 'Reise der Novara: Anthropolog. Theil.' Dr. Weisbach, 1867, s. 265.); and it is well known that the women of the upper classes distort their feet to make them still smaller. Lastly, Humboldt thinks that the American Indians prefer colouring their bodies with red paint in order to exaggerate their natural tint; and until recently European women added to their naturally bright colours by rouge and white cosmetics; but it may ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... 'Don't distort Holy Writ, if—you—please!' snapped Mrs Pansey, who still reserved the right of being disagreeable even at her own entertainment; 'but if you do call this the Garden of Eden, I daresay there are plenty of ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... 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 ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... and 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... "naif and horrible" production, in which one will find "a bizarre mixture of Druidic practice and Christian superstition." It describes Heloise as a sorceress of ferocious and sanguinary temper. Thus can legend magnify and distort human failing! As its presentation is important in the study of Breton folk-lore, I give a very free translation of this ballad, in which, at the same time, I have endeavoured to preserve the ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... than good, because they tend to arouse suspicions as to the questioner's motives. Such information is obtained more readily by cultivating the friendship of boys than by consulting the older folks. This tendency to disguise or to distort the truth, though it has its natural basis in a desire for self-protection, gives the Manbos a reputation for lack of that straightforwardness and frankness that is so noticeable among the Mandyas, even after very short acquaintance. This lack of frankness, coupled with ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... earliest youth, and he is assured that he may never have any doubts about them, under penalty of thereby forfeiting eternal salvation; propositions, I mean, which affect the foundation of all our other knowledge and accordingly determine for ever, and, if they are false, distort for ever, the point of view from which our knowledge starts; and as, further, the corollaries of these propositions touch the entire system of our intellectual attainments at every point, the whole of human knowledge is thoroughly ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... construction; abuse of terms; parody, travesty; falsification &c. (lying) 544. V. misinterpret, misapprehend, misunderstand, misconceive, misspell, mistranslate, misconstrue, misapply; mistake &c. 495. misrepresent, pervert; explain wrongly, misstate; garble &c. (falsify) 544; distort, detort|; travesty, play upon words; stretch the sense, strain the sense, stretch the meaning, strain the meaning, wrest the sense, wrest the meaning; explain away; put a bad construction on, put a false construction on; give a false coloring. be at cross purposes, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... men. But beware how you do this, saying in your heart, "I will help this young man, and when he succeeds I will reap my reward." Such a selfish thought will utterly poison your advice, deflect your moral vision, distort your intellectual perceptions. ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... now, there must be a fact," I said. "There is some bit of history concealed there. The common people never invent: they distort." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... could be explained to these writers? They can't WANT to distort the truth. It must ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... 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 take ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... have been unjust. If I had other friends like you, who dared to tell me the truth as it is, and not distort it out of all recognition—if there were others here who dared to defy me when defiance alone will make me see things in their right light, Russia would be the better for it. Go to Zara d'Echeveria. Tell her that ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... alone, to be oneself, not to be driven or violated into something which is not oneself, surely it is better than anything. He thought of Lottie, and knew how much more truly herself she was when she was alone, with no man to distort her. And he was thankful for the division between them. Such scenes as the last were too ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... speech" is a myth; the more we learn of the anthropoid apes the surer we may be of that. But, after all, the possibilities of progress dependent upon aural memory are sadly limited; not only because it is easy to forget, but because it is also conspicuously easy to distort, as a familiar round-game testifies. The greatest of all the epochs in human history was that which saw the genesis of written speech. I believe that hundreds of thousands, nay millions, of preceding years were substantially ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... upon our acts, perhaps upon our words, let us control our fancies and distinguish realities from fictions. There hangs over every great struggle, and especially over every civil war, a hot and hazy atmosphere of excited feeling which is too apt to distort all objects to the view. In the French Revolution, men were suspected of being objects of suspicion, and sent to the guillotine for that offence. The same feverish and delirious fancies prevailed as to the conduct of other nations. All the most natural ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... latter the ideal situation is, as stated before, an hour from house to office. That is the ideal but, in all honesty, we must admit that few attain it. The average country commuter is a born optimist on this point and will unblushingly distort facts in a manner to put the most ardent fisherman to shame. But figures don't lie. If the time table, say between Stamford, Connecticut, and the Grand Central, New York, gives its fastest running time as fifty minutes, it means exactly that. You may plan ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... meaning manifestly false, should be changed, rejected, or contradicted; because they distort language from its chief end, or only worthy use; which is, to state facts, and to tell the truth. CRITICAL NOTE ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... had been cut down and sloped into those beautiful hills and dales which now 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
... 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 ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... fall back, and her pale, commanding countenance, so well fitted to express fiery and terrible emotion, wore that aspect in which many a sentenced man had read his doom,—an aspect the more fearful, inasmuch as the passion that pervaded it did not distort the features, but left them locked, rigid, and marble-like in beauty, as the head of ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... obvious in the architecture and other things, seems to be underestimated, and where nature should dominate, I have been shocked on every road that I have travelled by the huge billboards and advertisements of the most flamboyant kind, which irritate the eye and distort the vision of what otherwise would be unforgettable and inspiring. It is much the same everywhere. In Chicago the Michigan Boulevard, with the lovely lake on one side and grand buildings on the other, ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... burden on the text to make full acknowledgments in footnotes. For the same reason, there has been almost no attempt made to show, by means of the conventional devices, the re-arrangements and abridgements that have been made. Every care has been taken not to distort in any way the meaning of the text. And that is all that is important in a volume ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... with her I am happy. But now I distort what is simple and drive myself crazy with false ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... and state archives of foreign lands for matter relating to Holland, it was impossible for a man of his temperament, convictions, and purpose to write a calm, dispassionate history. He is not the cool judge, but the earnest advocate, and yet he does not distort facts. He is just and can be coldly critical, even of his heroes, but he is always on one side, the side of liberty and justice, pleading their cause. His temperament gives warmth, eloquence, and dramatic passion ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... 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
... committed suicide in consequence, as was suggested, of ill-treatment by the authorities of the gaol. The governor had been tried and punished in consequence. Fitzjames gives the actual facts to show how Reade had allowed himself, as a writer of fiction, to exaggerate and distort them, and had at the same time taken the airs of an historian of facts and bragged of his resolution to brand all judges who should dare to follow the precedent which he denounced. This article, I may notice, included ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... modern 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
... however, is 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 of its people seem to have been scarcely suspected to the very eve of ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... 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 ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... by which John Adams was elected did not accurately reflect the existing state of party strength. The electoral college system, by its nature, was apt to distort the situation. Originally the electors voted for two persons without designating their preference for President. There was no inconvenience on that account while Washington was a candidate, since he was the first choice of all the electors; but in 1796, with Washington out of the field, both parties ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... with 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 of ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... they speak many things at an abrupt and incoherent rate, as if they were actuated by some possessing demon; they make an inarticulate noise, without any distinguishable sense or meaning; they sometimes screw and distort their faces to uncouth and antic looks; at one time beyond measure cheerful, then as immoderately sullen; now sobbing, then laughing, and soon after sighing, as if they were perfectly distracted, and out of their ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... fellow, and tried to run off with him. Of course not. Very well. Now, you see, my dear fellow, all I've got to say is this, that I'm not a novelist. I'm an historian, an autobiographer, or any thing else you choose. I've no imagination whatever. I rely on facts. I can't distort them. And, what's more, if I could do so, I wouldn't, no matter what the taste or fashion of the ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... in Mesopotamia does not so much hide as distort the truth. The enemy are seldom altogether hidden from view, the trouble is rather to tell whether one is observing a cavalry patrol or an infantry regiment, or if the object moving forward is not ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... 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 for me! ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... 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 them in ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... see, his limbs The pangs of death distort! 'Lay there and rot: no caitiff's death ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... 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 Greece, found there ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... Polynesians, and speak a dialect connected with the Maori of New Zealand. I think that the people of Indeni (the native name for Santa Cruz) are also more than half Polynesians; but I don't know a single sentence of their language properly. I can say nothing about it. They destroy and distort their organs of pronunciation by excessive use of the betel-nut and pepper leaf and lime, so that no word is articulately pronounced. It is very hard to catch the sounds they make amidst the hubbub on deck or the crowds on shore; yet I think ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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, it is ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... many 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 his ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... Juan Cereco de Salamanca. This order recognize the injury and injustice that they are doing to the creoles, and they know that I am not ignorant of any defects and imperfections, however serious. They have recognized in me that I shall not distort justice for anyone, and they have consequently composed themselves—quite early desisting from counseling the archbishop as the others did, and being reconciled, and returning to unite with the Order ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... deductions you may, distort and twist as you like the unimportant trivialities, the main facts related by O'Meara have never been really shaken. What is more, he is backed up by Napoleon himself in Lowe's personal interviews with him, and more ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... was extremely silly. Yet, as it progressed, Brother Copas was not alone in feeling his heart lift with the total effect of it. Here, after all, thousands of people were met in a common pride of England and her history. Distort it as the performers might, and vain, inadequate, as might be the words they declaimed, an idea lay behind it all. These thousands of people were met for a purpose in itself ennobling because unselfish. As often happens on such occasions, the rite took ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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 ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... 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 to literature and indication of interpolations may be found in Mirbt (Prot.), n. 52, ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... from such sartorial mistakes to a group of young girls sensibly clad in simple gowns, guiltless of pretence, of steels, or tournures. Gathered bodices and full plain skirts, confined by broad sashes, combined the elements of grace and utility, and exhibited no foolish attempt to distort ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... than any other tree on the Rockies. Though a slender and small-limbed tree in youth, after forty or fifty years it changes slowly and becomes stocky, strong-limbed, and rounded at the top. Lightning, wind, and snow break or distort its upper limbs so that most of these veteran pines show a picturesquely broken top, with a towering dead limb or two among the green ones. Its needles are in bundles of both twos and threes, and they vary from three to eight inches in length. The tree ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... 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 ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... specific expressions, its peculiar dialect, so to speak, by which one knows it. And, indeed, it is an admirable law of Supreme Wisdom, that every passion which is noble and generous beautifies the body, while those that are mean and hateful distort it into animal forms. The more the mind departs from the likeness of the Deity, the nearer does the outward form seem to approach the animal, and always that animal which has a kindred proclivity. Thus, the mild expression of the philanthropist attracts the needy, whom the insolent look ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... all the vessels ranged before him, one after another, to see what they 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
... have not distinguished themselves in anything, if we are not to take into consideration the fact that being thoroughly incapable of creating their own language, they have by their talent to distort languages given to the present English people a repulsive Judeo-Carthaginian imprint through their shameless self-satisfaction, arrogance and ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... be to encourage children to pray, to establish in them the habit of closing the day with quiet, grateful thoughts, to watch especially that the prayers learned in early life do not distort the child's thoughts of God, and to make the evening prayer an opportunity for the child to express his desires to God his Father and Friend. Having done this, as the children grow up it is best to leave them free to pray when and where they will. One may properly encourage ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... 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 ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... is ever used capable of inducing speedily such a change, is in the highest degree improbable; but that reiterated pressure of this kind, however slight, would in a weakly child have power to impress and distort the chest, ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... hateful before Bel. May she bring about the downfall of his country, the loss of his people, the efflux of his life like water, by the order of the Bel, the king. May Ea, the grand prince, whose destiny takes premier rank, the messenger of the gods, who knows all, who has prolonged my life, distort his understanding and intellect, curse him with forgetfulness, dam up his rivers at their source. In his land may Ashnan (the deity of wheat), the life of the people, not grow. May Shamash, great judge of heaven and earth, who governs the creatures of life, the lord of help, cut ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... a man 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 and hostility towards those who ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... between your room and mine, you will ask?" said Benassis. "Listen a moment. I have always blushed for those who put their guests in the attics, who furnish them with mirrors that distort everything to such a degree that any one beholding himself might think that he was smaller or larger than nature made him, or suffering from apoplectic stroke or some other bad complaint. Ought we not to do our utmost to make a room as pleasant as possible during the time that our friend can ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... of life's reflexes than of life's facts, perhaps. Here he appears greater than Voltaire or Rousseau and helped, perhaps, by the centrality of his conceptions, he could arouse the deeper spiritual and moral emotions, without causing his listeners to distort their physical ones. To prove that mind is over matter, he doesn't place matter over mind. He is not like the man who, because he couldn't afford both, gave up metaphysics for an automobile, and when he ran over a man blamed metaphysics. ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... 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 what has become ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... 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 who tried to corner ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... tribe 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 realities or might be dispelled by ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... religious books were found in almost every search made for weapons and bombs. The role of the priest or the Sadhu is most convenient, and rulers have bowed, and do bow, to religious preachers. These people generally distort the real import of religious precepts, and thereby vitiate the public mind. The founders are sly enough to flatter the Government by an occasional address breathing loyalty and friendship, but it is essential to ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... it conveys the impression which the object under the influence of passion makes on the mind. Let an object, for instance, be presented to the senses in a state of agitation or fear, and the imagination will distort or magnify the object, and convert it into the likeness of whatever is most proper to encourage the fear. "Our eyes are made the fools" of our other faculties. This is the ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... nothing to do but to comply with her strange whim; so, rumpling up his thick, shining black hair, he proceeded to distort his comely features into the most surprising contortions imaginable. But with the heavy ache in his heart and a growing lump in his throat at the pitifulness of her plight, he was not real successful in diverting her unhappy thoughts, and with ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... seems 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 ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... Ochiltree's story had given Clara food for thought. She was uneasily conscious, after all, that there might be a grain of truth in what had been said, enough, at least, to justify her in warning Tom to be careful, lest his enemies should distort some amiable ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... the abstract principle which flourishes there and fills it completely. Should actual experience through the eye or ear plant some unwelcome truth forcibly in his mind, it cannot subsist there; however noisy and relentless it may be, the abstract principle drives it out;[1116] if need be it will distort and strangle it, considering it a slanderer since it refutes a principle which is true and undeniable in itself. Obviously, a mind of this kind is not sound; of the two faculties which should pull together harmoniously, one is degenerated and the other overgrown; facts cannot turn ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... 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 you. The only thing to do is to ignore them. ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... But the unhappiness is, they do not study; and, until they do, they cannot rise by political action. A great amount of time, which, if well used, would form an enlightened population, is now wasted on newspapers and conversations, which inflame the passions, which unscrupulously distort the truth, which denounce moral independence as treachery to one's party, which agitate the country for no higher end than a triumph over opponents; and thus multitudes are degraded into men-worshippers or men-haters, into the dupes of the ambitious, or ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... art? You let your religion distort your view of Nature. You sacrifice truth to a dogma. Nature has no ethics. You profess to paint facts and paint them wrong. You are not a mystic; that we could understand and criticise accordingly. You try to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... Lord Bacon, 'think to govern words by their own reason: but it also happens that words throw back their force upon the understanding;' and thus, we may justly add, often distort our thoughts, and lead us to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... celestial music, these Are paranoics. And whether it be they rise Enough above the earth to look along A longer arc and see realities, Or see strange things through atmospheric strata Which build up or distort the things they see Remains the question. Let ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... sold more largely than the Imitation of Christ. But was it not often a blind struggle in the dark, an attempt to reach a goal never clearly seen. Wandering in a labyrinth of fanaticism, agonizing in the effort to distort nature, the biographical record of religious aspiration serves to show how nearly multitudes may approach the boundary line of insanity in their protracted periods of causeless mental agony and in their fierce hostility to heresy and to science. Alike in Brahmin, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... alternately to the quibbles of clowns and the songs of lovers. The drama even, in order to satisfy the prolixity of their nature, must take all tongues, pompous, inflated verse, loaded with imagery, and side by side with this vulgar prose; more than this, it must distort its natural style and limits, put songs, poetical devices in the discourse of courtiers and the speeches of statesmen; bring on the stage the fairy world of opera, as Middleton says, gnomes, nymphs of the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... exaggerate, you distort; you forget so many things—the sentiments, the affections, the thousand details that hallow that crude foundation which you see only ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... derived from them on combustion, may be harmful to health if inspired, injurious to the fittings and decorations of rooms, objectionable at the burner orifices by determining, or assisting in, the formation of solid growths which distort the flame and so reduce its illuminating power; they may give trouble in the pipes by condensing from the state of vapour in bends and dips, or by depositing, if they are already solid, in angles, &c., and so causing stoppages; or they may be merely harmful ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield |
