"Misrepresent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his tools; supported only by the weak arm of distant royalty; maintaining his intercourse with the nation, which he had to gain, only by means of faithless instruments, all of whom made it their highest object to falsify his actions and misrepresent his motives; lastly, with a woman for his coadjutor who could not share with him the burden of the general execration—thus he stood exposed to the wantonness, the ingratitude, the faction, the envy, and all the evil passions of a licentious, insubordinate people. It ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... were true. History is ill occupied with discussing probabilities on a priori grounds, when the scale of likelihood is graduated by antecedent prejudice. It is enough that the report was drawn up by men who had the means of knowing the truth, and who were apparently under no temptation to misrepresent what they had seen; that the description coincides with the authentic letters of the visitors; and that the account was generally accepted as ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... himself to maintain the monopoly, and always referred to it as the corner-stone of the independence. Dr. Leyds had chosen to associate himself with the defence of the concessionaires upon all occasions, and had even gone so far, as evidence given at the Industrial Commission showed, as to misrepresent the facts in their defence. The difficulty was how to explain the association of the State Attorney and State Secretary, in whose good intentions and integrity there was a general belief. The solution was to be found in the illusory promises ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... sympathy. Those who went to scoff when the Great Preacher spoke, remained to pray. No man could speak as eloquently to empty seats, or to a dummy audience, as to a hall filled with intelligent people, yet Thoreau's ropes and hogsheads and pulling and pushing truckmen absurdly misrepresent the true relation that exists between a speaker and his hearers. Of course a speaker finds it uphill work if his audience is not with him, but that it is not with him is ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... Possibly I applied the lash too severely, and instead of rousing him up I killed all the hope in his heart, and made him indifferent to his future. Possibly, too, this story may not be true. The feeling in Sardis against him is strong, and they are hardly willing to do him justice. No doubt they misrepresent him in this, as they are apt to do ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... enforcing the decisions of some international tribunal, they would thereby constitute that tribunal the organ of a universal government and render war impossible between responsible states. But on account of their irrational basis all governments largely misrepresent the true interests of those who live under them. They pursue conventional and captious ends to which alone public energies can ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... heart was in the work of his chair, and that with a dual position of pastor and professor, he had the widest scope for the exercise of his best powers, and the fullest opportunity for the realization of his highest ambitions. I think I do not misrepresent him when I say it. But when the pulpit of this church became vacant, the eyes of the congregation turned to him. Occupying a foremost place in the denomination to which it belongs, it called for a strong man who could administer with great ability ...
— Joy in Service; Forgetting, and Pressing Onward; Until the Day Dawn • George Tybout Purves
... find careless and injudicious, and many write under the bias of party prejudice, which strangely perverts the judgment. By this, James Basnage could, in his History of the Jews, (b. 6,) notoriously mistake and misrepresent, by wholesale, the clearest authorities, to gratify his prepossession against an incontestable miracle, as the most learned Mr. Warburton hath demonstrated in his Julian, (b. 2, ch. 4.) Some write history as they would a tragedy ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... bad one. They are represented by the animated, learned, eloquent, ingenious, and entirely futile and impertinent arguments of Juris Doctor Bottinius and Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis. These two men brilliantly misrepresent, not merely each other's cause, but their own cause. The introduction of them is one of the finest and most artistic strokes in The Ring ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... I think in Europe, been any society of men upon so unhappy a foot, as the clergy of England, nor more hardly treated, by those very persons from whom they deserved much better quarter, and in whose power they chiefly had put it to use them so ill. I would not willingly misrepresent facts; but I think it generally allowed by enemies and friends, that the bold and brave defences made before the Revolution against those many invasions of our rights, proceeded principally from the clergy; who are likewise known to have rejected all advances made them to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... this dialogue, is allowed to plead its own cause. "Listen" (says the Epicurean) "to the voice of nature that bids you pursue pleasure, and do not be misled by that vulgar conception of pleasure as mere sensual enjoyment; our opponents misrepresent us when they say that we advocate this as the highest good; we hold, on the contrary, that men often obtain the greatest pleasure by neglecting this baser kind. Your highest instances of martyrdom—of ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... mankind. Since his reading lasted more than one hour, I asked after its close, that it should be decided, whether those who open the meeting, should be bound by the adopted rule of twenty minutes, or be permitted to speak or read as long as they would be pleased also when they misrepresent the history in such an absurd manner as the speaker did. No regard was taken of what I said, and they proceeded in singing ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... words of his own such as may fairly be supposed likely to prepossess the reader in his favor. We could multiply our extracts indefinitely in a like unexceptionable vein of writing. But to do so, and to stop with these, would misrepresent Montaigne. Montaigne is very far from being an innocent writer. His moral tone generally is low, and often it is execrable. He is coarse, but coarseness is not the worst of him. Indeed, he is cleanliness ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... him badly and may be partly thrown in joke. But it is pretty certain that if a man not in politics takes them seriously, he will have more or less mud, not to say stones, thrown at him. He might burlesque or caricature them, or misrepresent them, with safety; but if he spoke of public questions with heart and conscience, he could not do it with impunity, unless he were authorized to do so by some practical relation to them. I do not ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... any better, or whether even man will ever be higher and better than he now is? Would it not be contrary to the whole course of past history, if you can properly call such a record a history, if he could advance at all? Now I have no wish to misrepresent this or any honestly accepted theory, but it appears to me essentially hopeless, a record not of the progress of life on the globe, but of a succession of stagnations, of deaths. I can never understand why some very good ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... such experience, by ridding ourselves of such abstractions as are but the ghosts of bygone impressions—to be rid of the notions we have made for ourselves, and that so often only misrepresent the experience of which they profess to be the representation—idola, idols, false appearances, as Bacon calls them later—to neutralise the distorting influence of metaphysical system by an all-accomplished metaphysic skill: it is this bold, hard, sober ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... stated indifferent to the author, so that he had no temptation to misrepresent it? This is the case with facts of a general kind, usages, institutions, objects, persons, which the author mentions incidentally. A narrative, even a false one, cannot be composed exclusively of falsehoods; the author must localise his facts, and needs to surround ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... martial pride with which it was so largely mixed, we should probably have had a much greater standing-army in bronze and marble than would have been needed for the suppression of any future rebellion. An excitement, a tumult, not a tendency of our civilization, would thus have been perpetuated, to misrepresent us and our age to posterity; for we are not a military people, (though we certainly know how to fight upon occasion,) and the pride which we felt in our army as a body, and in the men merely as soldiers, was an exultation which has already in a great part subsided. Indeed, the brave fellows ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... individuality, carried into the medium, the expression, is a feature in all men of genius, as Buffon teaches ... 'Le style, c'est l'homme.' But if the whole man were style, if all Carlyleism were manner—why there would be no man, no Carlyle worth talking of. I wonder that Mr. Kenyon should misrepresent me so. Euphuisms there may be to the end of the world—affected parlances—just as a fop at heart may go without shoestrings to mimic the distractions of some great wandering soul—although that is a bad comparison, seeing that what ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... refutes the notion that the doctrine of justification by faith encourages Antinomianism. Liberty does not mean licence. St. Paul was quite alive to the fact that skilful opponents and brainless admirers would misrepresent his doctrine, which was also Christ's. He therefore takes great pains to show that the connection between the righteousness of Christ and the righteousness of a Christian is not arbitrary or fictitious. His argument throughout implies that man actually receives "the righteousness of God," ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... excessively humble and wished for reinforcements, offered to send five men to Shooa, provided that Kamrasi would allow some natives to accompany them. This did not suit the ideas of the suspicious M'Gambi, who suspected that he intended to misrepresent Kamrasi's conduct to prejudice Ibrahim against him. Accordingly, he declined his offer, but agreed to give porters and guides, should I wish to send any of my men with a letter. This suited my views exactly; I ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... do nothing to defend herself. The very improvement in Henry's circumstances held her back. She could not write to him and say, "Now I know you are Mr. Raby's nephew, that makes all the difference." That would only give him fresh offense, and misrepresent herself; for in truth she had repented her letter long before ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... these are for the most part silent, or confess themselves modestly uncertain. The professional theologians alone are loud and confident; but they speak in the old angry tone which rarely accompanies deep and wise convictions. They do not meet the real difficulties; they mistake them, misrepresent them, claim victories over adversaries with whom they have never even crossed swords, and leap to conclusions with a precipitancy at which we can only smile. It has been the unhappy manner of their class from immemorial time; they call it zeal for the Lord, as if it were beyond ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... tendency of man to make ridiculous miss-estimates of the importance of the transactions of his own age, and to imagine that posterity will have nothing to do but to recount them. He is much mistaken; they forget or care not a doit for nine tenths of what he does; and misrepresent the tenth," ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... the false tendency of which was originally based on passion, gradually assume the subjective character of certainty. Cool-headed people, or those whose affective state directs them to contrary conceptions, then see in such individuals a deliberate intention to misrepresent the facts. This is the reason why people so often hurl mutual insults at each others heads, calling each other liars and calumniators, owing to the affective ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... disobedient, and as wicked, as himself. He taught, both, by precept and example, that towards masters neither honor was to be recognized, nor respect to be considered due. To cheat them, to lie to them, to annoy them in every possible way—to misrepresent their motives, mimic their defects, and calumniate their actions—was the conduct which he inaugurated towards them; and for the time that he continued at Roslyn the whole lower school was a Pandemonium of evil ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... 'yielded by ([Greek: en]) thirty, and by ([Greek: en]) sixty, and by ([Greek: en]) an hundred.' Tischendorf notes that besides all the uncials which are furnished with accents and breathings (viz. EFGHKMUV[Symbol: Pi]) 'nearly 100 cursives' exhibit [Greek: en] here and in ver. 20. But this is to misrepresent the case. All the cursives may be declared to exhibit [Greek: en], e.g. all Matthaei's and all Scrivener's. I have myself with this object examined a large number of Evangelia, and found [Greek: en] in all. The Basle ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... most profitable, most pernicious, most strong, and most easy. Did he resolve and answer every one of these questions? He did, quoth Niloxenus, and do you judge of his answers and the soundness thereof: and it is my Prince's purpose not to misrepresent his responses and condemn unjustly what he saith well, so, where he finds him under a mistake, not to suffer that to pass without correction. His answers to the foresaid questions I will read to you.—What is most ancient? Time. What is greatest? The World. What is wisest? Truth. What ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... beyond report, thought, or belief! See how he lies at random, carelessly diffus'd, With languish't head unpropt, As one past hope, abandon'd 120 And by himself given over; In slavish habit, ill-fitted weeds O're worn and soild; Or do my eyes misrepresent? Can this be hee, That Heroic, that Renown'd, Irresistible Samson? whom unarm'd No strength of man, or fiercest wild beast could withstand; Who tore the Lion, as the Lion tears the Kid, Ran on embattelld Armies clad in Iron, And weaponless himself, 130 Made Arms ridiculous, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... versatile woman. This talk has done me much good. I know the affection that exists between you and John, and I am confident that you would not misrepresent anything. I shall sleep ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... to a brother and sister your own authority over your child—to a brother and sister, who treat me with unkindness and reproach; and, as I have too much reason to apprehend, misrepresent my words and behaviour; or, greatly favoured as I used to be, it is impossible I should be sunk so low in your opinions, as ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... that some advantages which were withheld from a man accused of felony might reasonably be allowed to a man accused of treason. What probability was there that any sheriff would pack a jury, that any barrister would employ all the arts of sophistry and rhetoric, that any judge would strain law and misrepresent evidence, in order to convict an innocent person of burglary or sheep stealing? But on a trial for high treason a verdict of acquittal must always be considered as a defeat of the government; and there was but too much reason to fear ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of which he himself has given no intimation? Can we safely base our action upon any such vague inference? Now, as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas's position, question his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive to him. Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle, so that our cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle. But, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... the boyishness—for the turn-down-shirt-collar-ness of their tone:—but, as it is, you will pardon me, Mr. Editor, that I have been compelled to expose a 'critic' who courageously preserving his own anonymosity, takes advantage of my absence from the city to misrepresent, and thus vilify me, by ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... brought by the Portuguese, as compared with those realized on the goods of the Sangley traders. The Portuguese are making enormous profits, and this is ruining the citizens of the islands; moreover, they buy their goods from the Chinese at sufficient prices to satisfy the latter, and they misrepresent the condition and actions of the Spaniards, so that the Chinese are prevented from coming to Manila. The Portuguese will make no fair agreement as to prices, and some of them remain in Manila to sell their left-over goods; and these even ship goods ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... clung to his protector too much like a girl, but walked gracefully and kept step, and every now and then looked up at Alfred with a loving adoration, that was sweet, yet sad to see. Alfred marched him to Mrs. Archbold, and told his tale; for he knew Hayes would misrepresent it, and get him into trouble. She smiled on the pair; gently deplored her favourite's impetuosity, entreated him not to go fighting with that great monster Rooke, and charmed him by saying, "Well, and Frank is a gentleman, when he is ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... hairiness, show no such special development of hair in this region. We thus see that all the external and more conspicuous portions of the sexual sphere in woman—the mons veneris, the labia majora, and the hair—represent not so much an animal inheritance, such as we commonly misrepresent them to be, but a higher and genuinely human development. As none of these structures subserve any clear practical use, it would appear that they must have developed by sexual selection to satisfy the aesthetic demands of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... i.e., by substituting God for something which Hamilton defines as contradictory to the nature of God. Can the force of confusion go further? Is it possible for perverse criticism more utterly, we do not say to misrepresent, but literally to ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... of reason he renewed his execrations on a person, whose name, in his tranquil moments, never passed his lips. She loved the son of this man; this villain; for so she must think him, as her father, even in his most eccentric moments, never so confounded the distinctions of honour and guilt as to misrepresent characters. Nor could his rooted aversion proceed from the difference in their political principles, for it was in her early years, before the troubles commenced, that he mentioned Bellingham as the infernal ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... finite mind ignorant of God's method? This makes it doubly unfair to impugn and misrepresent the facts, although, without this cross-bearing, 343:9 one might not be able to say with the apostle, "None of these things move me." The sick, the halt, and the blind look up to Christian Science with blessings, 343:12 and Truth will not be forever hidden by unjust parody ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... around and outside it. It finds that those who have stayed, or fallen, behind its audacious but justified advance in self-knowledge, still cherish a view of what is external to this (the true or real self so now made patent), thoughts or fancies which misconceive and misrepresent it—thoughts persisted in against the feebler protesting voices of Art and Religion and so held precariously and unstably though apparently grounded upon the authority of Science. To the unphilosophic or not yet philosophic ...
— Progress and History • Various
... began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over them, in one department and another, who were perhaps the deputies of deputies to some members of this House, sent to spy out their liberties, to misrepresent their actions, and to prey upon them; men whose behaviour, on many occasions, has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them; men promoted to the highest seats of justice—some who, to my knowledge, were glad, by going to ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... the squire. He had two hundred dollars in his desk at that moment waiting for profitable investment; but then he didn't call it exactly a lie to misrepresent for a purpose. "So ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... that Deronda was romantic would be to misrepresent him; but under his calm and somewhat self-repressed exterior there was a fervor which made him easily find poetry and romance among the events of every-day life. And perhaps poetry and romance are as plentiful as ever in the world except for those ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... not, because of their false modesty, give proper instruction to their children. Yes, parents fearfully misrepresent conditions to their boys and girls, even resorting to absolute falsehood. Of course the children soon learn the facts, and instead of the parents and children making confidants of each other, both practise deception. ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... or the advancement of the working people? Can you point to one single act in your career that was ever based on any other motive than absolute egotism and selfishness; to one single utterance, act, word, or deed of yourself that was not based on selfishness and a desire to rob or misrepresent or, in some other manner, attach the earnings of the people to your coffers without effort ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... spirit, yet not a real, thinking, self-conscious, willing spirit. He is not a personality or individuality. "A person," these men appear to say, "must have a place to stand upon, and surely we would not say this of God? The fact is, we grossly misrepresent the great All-Father. We picture him in our sensuous forms, and almost imagine him to ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... task, we are happy to be able to rely upon native witness and confession.[4] The foreigner may easily misrepresent, even when sincerely inclined to utter only the truth. Each religion, in its theory at least, must be judged by its ideals, and not by its failures. Its truth must be stated by its own professors. In the "History of The Twelve Japanese Sects," by Bunyiu Nanjio, M.A. ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... reproof and correction." It contains no doctrine very pleasant to men's natural humours, but it is indeed most pleasant to a right and ordered taste. You know, the distemper of the eye, or the perverting of the taste, will misrepresent pleasant things, and sweet things to the senses, and make them appear ill savoured and bitter. But, I say, to a discerning spirit there is nothing so sweet, so comely. "I have seen an end of all perfection," but none of thy law. "Thy word ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... Spaniards, should have had power to alienate them from the Spanish cause—could never have been looked for; except indeed by those who saw, in the party spirit on this question, a promise that more than ordinary pains would be taken to misrepresent their contents and to abuse the public judgment. But however it was at any rate to have been expected—both from the place which Sir J. Moore held in the Nation's esteem previously to his Spanish campaign, and also especially from that which (by his death in battle) he had so lately ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... sight—one that in Kashmir should be incredible, but I put wonder aside for I knew now that I was moving in the sphere where the incredible may well be the actual. His expression was of the most unbroken calm. If I compare it to the passionless gaze of the Sphinx I misrepresent, for the Riddle of the Sphinx still awaits solution, but in this face was a noble acquiescence and a content that had it vibrated ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... happens to get the better of his opponent, who chances to be younger. He helps him carefully into the carriage. He explains upon the spot as well as he can, and to-day he comes to explain further; and you will not believe him; you misunderstand and misrepresent him. It ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... judges, barristers, officers for the crown, bailiffs, attorneys, clerks of the court, procurators, solicitors, and agents of various kinds, represent or misrepresent Justice. The "lawyer" and the bailiff's men (commonly called "the brokers") are the two lowest rungs of the ladder. Now, the bailiff's man is an outsider, an adventitious minister of justice, appearing to see that judgment is executed; he is, in ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... have one page, at least, within thy covers, which Malice will not blacken, and which Ignorance cannot misrepresent. ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... early history of the Loyalists of America has never been written, except to blacken their character and misrepresent their actions; they were represented as a set of idle office-seekers—an imputation which has been amply refuted by their braving the forests of northern countries, and converting them into fruitful fields, developing trade and commerce, and establishing ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... assuredly possessed others, which are not usual among the poets of our nation, and which, whencesoever they had come to him personally, had not, before they made their appearance in him, seemed indigenous to the English soil. It would indeed be easy to misrepresent the history of English poetry, during the period which Chaucer's advent may be said to have closed, by ascribing to it a uniformly solemn and serious, or even dark and gloomy, character. Such a description would not apply to the poetry of the period before the Norman Conquest, though, in truth, ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... perversity is the best become the most abused,—either as a quality or as an entity? Mortals misrepresent and miscall affection; they make it what [5] it is not, and doubt what it is. The so-called affection pursuing its victim is a butcher fattening the lamb to slay it. What the lower propensities express, should be repressed by the sentiments. ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... his part there was no desire of concealment; nor did he ever express to me a wish to suppress an account of any act of his whole life. So far as I could judge, his only apprehensions were that "kind friends," as he sometimes termed them, by attempts at explanation, might unintentionally misrepresent acts which ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... lesson that he must, if possible, keep out of Palmerston's reach. The rule was not secret or merely diplomatic. The Queen herself had emphatically expressed the same opinion officially. If Palmerston had an object to gain, he would go down to the House of Commons and betray or misrepresent a foreign Minister, without concern for his victim. No one got back on him with a blow equally mischievous — not even the Queen — for, as old Baron Brunnow described him: "C'est une peau de rhinocere!" Having gained his point, he laughed, and his ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... the verses may tend to misrepresent your character as a gay and rapturous one, when it ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... [Footnote: Professor Ward has commented upon an example of this kind from the preface to the Vth volume of the Spectator:—"You have acted in so much consistency with yourself, and promoted the interests of your country in so uniform a manner; that even those, who would misrepresent your generous designs for the public good, cannot but approve the steadiness and intredipity, with which you pursue them." I think, says the Doctor, this may be justly esteemed an handsome period. ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the enemies of TRUTH and LIBERTY, would spare no pains to misrepresent their conduct and asperse their characters ; and therefore, that they might always have it in their power to vindicate themselves, they have constantly kept regular books, containing records of the whole of their proceedings; which books, as the Committee advertised the public some months ago, ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... faith, take as a given; assume (supposition) 514. pervert, quibble; equivocate, mystify, evade, elude; gloss over, varnish; misteach &c 538 [Obs.]; mislead &c (error) 495; cavil, refine, subtilize^, split hairs; misrepresent &c (lie) 544. beg the question, reason in a circle, reason in circles, assume the conclusion. cut blocks with a razor, beat about the bush, play fast and loose, play fast and loose with the facts, blow hot ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... its ideals are inseparable, and one's writings on ethics, and demonstration of Truth, are not, cannot be, understood or taught by those who persistently misunderstand or misrepresent the author. Jesus said, "For there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... remembered that they resisted all attempts at enforcing it in the past and that it was the main cause of the War of Peasants (1798) against the "Sans Culottes." To a people which, by tradition, was strongly adverse to militarism and centralization, it was only too easy to misrepresent measures of self-defence, urgently required by the European situation, as the first step towards autocracy and oppression. The partisans of military safeguards found themselves, therefore, in a minority, and their only support was the personal influence of the ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... look on the advance and the growth of scientific abstaining principles—which they cannot avoid recognizing—with positive dread. The extremists on this side are indeed extreme in their fanaticism. They shut their eyes to the most obvious facts, and do not hesitate in their blindness to misrepresent the most obvious truths. They affirm that under the influence of total abstinence and, by inference, because of total abstinence, the yearly decreasing death-rate of the population is accompanied by reduction of vitality; ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... these same unprincipled agents, with their hired accomplices and subsidised press, in order to hide the enormity of their crimes, and to divert attention from themselves and their crookedness, systematically and incessantly misrepresent and vilify ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... sight can be more obvious, than that in all religious matters, none could make over the right of judging for himself, since that would cause his religion to be absolutely at the disposal of another." At his rate of arguing (I think I do not misrepresent him, and I believe he will not deny the consequence) a man may profess Heathenism, Mahometism, &c. and gain as many proselytes as he can; and they may have their assemblies, and the magistrate ought to protect them, provided they do not disturb ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... justify himself. The marquis expressed the utmost astonishment, and vowed by all that was sacred, that he was innocent of the most important part of the charge. He told me, that it was his ill fortune, and he supposed he was not singular, to have enemies, that made it their business to misrepresent every circumstance of his conduct. He had been calumniated, cruelly calumniated, and could he discover the author of the aspersion, he would vindicate his honour with his sword. In fine, he explained the whole business ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... distinctions, and as much a war- cry, as English and French, Roman and Punic. Now, however, all this is altered. As regards the relations between the two Whigs whom Schlosser so steadfastly delighteth to misrepresent, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... particular circumstances and under as merciless a cross-examination as was ever given a witness in an American court unless the witness thus testifying was speaking truthfully and without any attempt either to misrepresent or conceal.... It is my opinion, after a careful examination of this case in all its details, that this defendant and the crimes which he committed were only the natural product and outcome of the system which he represented and the doctrines taught by its ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... specimen had been kept by force of bayonets for four years upon the necks of an unwilling people, had no title to a seat in the Senate, and was notoriously despised by every inhabitant of the State which he was seated to misrepresent. The Senators composing the majority by which this was done acted under solemn oaths to do the right; but the Jove of party laughs at vows of politicians. Twelve years of triumph have not served ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... conquer the unconquerable Armada of King Philip. I was therefore not to be denied, and Sir John was sent home as empty-handed as he went to Court. D'ye marvel that he hates me? Knowing him for what he is, d'ye marvel that he dubs me pirate and worse? 'Tis natural enough so to misrepresent my doings upon the sea, since it is those doings have afforded me the power to hurt his profit. He has chosen the weapons of calumny for this combat, but those weapons are not mine, as I shall show him this very day. If you do not credit what I say, come ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... were feared. Since you have represented the working classes, they are not even respected. Just when there was a hope of Democracy, you have revived the notion that the demagogue was only the sycophant. Just when there had begun to be an English people to represent, you have been paid to misrepresent them. Get out of our ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... experiences of Protestant Germany as regards Sunday occupation. I have, however, said nothing of museums or picture galleries. I should be sorry to misrepresent the kindred commercial cities of Hamburg and Leipsic; but I think they may shake hands on this question, seeing that, at the period of my visit, they possessed neither the one nor the other. I do not say that there ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... despicable faction is distinguished by plebeian grossness, and savage indecency. To misrepresent the actions and the principles of their enemies is common to all parties; but the insolence of invective, and brutality of reproach, which have lately prevailed, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... narrow as his theology was, is always human. His genius remains fresh and vigorous under the least promising conditions. All mankind being under sin together, he has no favourites to flatter, no opponents to misrepresent. There is a kindliness in his descriptions, even of the Evil One's attacks ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... not to interfere with the condition of any Person held to domestic service; and, in order that there may be no ground for mistake or pretext for misrepresent action, Commanders of Regiments and Corps have been instructed not to permit any such Persons to come within ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... it, when received, in doing good to others. I had seldom any difficulty in understanding them; and it never entered my mind that they would have much difficulty in understanding me. And I never felt myself even tempted, much less disposed, to misrepresent the words or sentiments of my friends, or to take advantage of the freedom with which they spoke, to injure them in the estimation of their friends. I had no intolerance myself, so far as I can recollect, and I had no disposition to cause intolerance in ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... man of plain sense, whose spirit has not been broken to this creed by education or terror, will think that it is not necessary for us to travel to heathen countries, to learn how mournfully the human mind may misrepresent ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... astonished. He was silent a moment, and then he said, "Here in Sky Island we prize truthfulness very highly. Our Boolooroo is not very truthful, I admit, for he is trying to misrepresent the length of his reign, but our people as a rule speak only ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... order to deceive—she committed a sin in so doing, and her sin was none the less a sin because it resulted in apparent good to her husband. An illustration does not overturn a principle, but it may misrepresent it. ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... and southern—Atlantic and western, whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the expedients of party to acquire influence, within particular districts, is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heart burnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... spirit, everywhere recognises the principle. But One, greater than the constitution of America, in divine ordinances, everywhere denies the right of a man to profess one thing and to mean another. There is an implied pledge given by every public agent that he will not misrepresent what he knows to be the popular sentiment at home, and which popular sentiment, directly or indirectly, has clothed his language with the authority it carries in foreign countries; and there is every obligation of faith, fidelity, delicacy, and discretion, ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... that our charitable divines caricature and misrepresent the opponents of their supremacy, and describe them as dangerous brigands, whom society, for its own interest, ought to proscribe and destroy. It results from these imputations that those who renounce prejudices and consult ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... '08. DEAR MR. JACOBS,—It has a delightful look. I will not venture to say how delightful, because the words would sound extravagant, and would thereby lose some of their strength and to that degree misrepresent me. It is my conviction that Dialstone Lane holds the supremacy over all purely humorous books in our language, but I feel about Salthaven as the Cape Cod ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the expressions, "extremely slight modifications," "every variation even the slightest," "every grade of constitutional difference," occur, and these have led to errors such as Mivart's, I say all this because I feel sure that Mivart would be the last to intentionally misrepresent you, and he has told me that he was sorry the word "infinitesimal," as applied to variations used by Natural Selection, got into his book, and that he would alter it, as no doubt he has done, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... of the "wickedness of those who oppose Calvinism" in still stronger terms: "If, then, the doctrines of grace [Calvinism] are plainly taught in the Scriptures, if they accord with the experience of Christians, and enter largely into their prayers, then it must be exceedingly sinful to oppose and misrepresent them. Those who do this will eventually be found fighting against God. We have recently heard of persons praying publicly against the election of grace, and we wonder that their tongues did not cleave to the roof of their mouth in giving utterance to the horrid imprecation." (p. ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... emoluments he curtailed, naturally became hostile; and the inconvenience always created by a change, and which it was the direct interest of so many to aggravate, afforded too favourable opportunities for the prejudiced to misrepresent, and the candid to misunderstand him. In abolishing the practice of building line-of-battle ships in private yards, he took a step of which all subsequent experience has proved the wisdom; but it united against him an extensive ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... not with a view to revenue, but to benefit another? and I must be permitted to say that after a long and deep agitation of this controversy, it is with surprise that I perceive so strong a disposition to misrepresent its real character. To correct the impression which those misrepresentations are calculated to make, I will dwell on the point under consideration a few ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... to blame for giving The Unreliable an opportunity to misrepresent us, and therefore refrain from repining to any great extent at the result. We simply claim the right to deny the truth of every statement made by him in yesterday's paper, to annul all apologies he coined ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... before the Senate Committee on Corporations, when the Railroad Regulation bill was under consideration, to present the railroad's side. Mr. Dunne appeared openly and aboveboard, and although he sought deliberately to misrepresent the situation to the Committee, nevertheless to object to his visiting Sacramento, or even to the work which he did while there, would ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... expressions to make up any thing rightly characteristic of him. In painting, for instance, the portrait of an actual person, if the artist undertakes to represent him merely as he is at a given instant of time, he will of course be sure to misrepresent him. In such cases literal truth is essential untruth. Because the person cannot fairly deliver himself in any one instant of expression; and the business of Art is to distil the sense and efficacy of many ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... cannot combat against fate; man under sudden calamity ought to be patient, and place his hopes in the bounty of God. He is merciful, and does not hold any one's difficulties to be irremovables; weeping and lamentations are improper. God forbid that our enemies should misrepresent [the motive of our tears] to the king, and the teller of tales calumniate us, for that would be the cause of farther displeasure. On the contrary, let us offer up our prayers for the king's welfare; we are his born slaves, and he is our master; ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... more news than much else that is printed in a paper, and it is no more pardonable to misrepresent other facts than to distort the opinions of the victim of an interview. Yet it has been possible at times to read in the newspapers of the same day accounts of the same proceedings of—of—let us say, as this is election time—of a political ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... be seen that mine are no new-fangled notions. His remarks refer to the young of every age, but chiefly to early infancy and childhood. It will be found necessary, in some instances, to abridge, but I shall endeavor not to misrepresent the Doctor's views. ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... me. "You mean nobody shall successfully misrepresent you to me? No, Count" (and here the Regent spoke with the earnestness and dignity, which, when he did assume, few wore with a nobler grace)—"no, Count, I make a distinction between those who minister ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... knows at least that Mr. Gorting and other Independents have broached a milder form of the same heresy. In his Notes (pp. 144,145) he quotes sentences to the amount of a page from Milton's Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce to prove that he does not misrepresent him.—The "Gorting" here mentioned by Baillie is the "Samuel Gorton" who had been such a sore trouble to the New Englanders, and even to Roger Williams at Providence, by his anarchical opinions and conduct (Vol. II. 601). He ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... who misrepresent a nation so calm and loyal, and we, who with a deep conviction deposit in your bosom the complaints of an entire people, jealous of the esteem and confidence of their King, let the exalted wisdom of your Majesty decide! Your ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Chopin found his rooms in the Rue Tronchet cold and damp, and felt sorely the separation from her. The consequence of this was that the saintly woman, the sister of mercy, took, after some time, pity upon her suffering worshipper, and once more sacrificed herself. Not to misrepresent her account, the only one we have, of this change in the domestic arrangements of the two friends, I shall ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... legislatures and the hypocrisy of the dominant parties were all that politics had to offer. The Lawrence strike touched the most impervious: story after story came to our ears of hardened reporters who suddenly refused to misrepresent the strikers, of politicians aroused to action, of social workers become revolutionary. Daily conversation was shocked into some contact with realities—the newspapers actually printed facts about the situation of a ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... it produces just the results that might be feared, the whole tone of European literature proves. Foreigners, no doubt, do habitual injustice to the morality of French households; but it is impossible that fiction can utterly misrepresent the community which produces and reads it. When one thinks of the utter lightness of tone with which breaches, both of truth and chastity, are treated even in the better class of French novels and plays, it seems absurd to deny the correctness of the ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... their ideas about Christian theology and practice may be, they expect to receive from a Christian teacher instruction in their own religion, and that religion is a religion common to him and to them. Consequently to omit them from the Christian constituency is to do an injustice to them, and to misrepresent the true facts of ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... to the end of inforcing the eternal Law of Reason or Nature; which evidently needed this inforcement. From whence it is manifest, that whoso directly or indirectly teaches Men to look upon Christianity as separable from Morality, does the most that is possible misrepresent it; and therein (as effectually as they can do so) undermine both Natural and Reveal'd Religion; the latter of which dispences not with any breach of the former; and exempts us only from the burthen ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... is in reality, except with the few rich, the ever-present question—as ever-present as the necessity of breathing—and it is not, like breathing, a matter settled automatically. It dominates thought; it determines action. To leave it out of account ever, in writing a human history, is to misrepresent and distort as utterly as would a portrait painter who neglected to give his subject eyes, or a head, even. With the overwhelming mass of us, money is at all times all our lives long the paramount question—for to be without it is destruction worse ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... kontrauxsenco. Misgiving dubo. Mishap malfelicxo. Misinform malsciigi. Mislay erarigi, negxustmeti, trompi. Mislead erarigi. Mislead (deceive) trompi. Misplaced negxustloka. Misprint preseraro. Misrepresent falsreprezenti. Miss manki. Miss Frauxlino. Missile jxetarmilo. Missing manka. Mission misio. Missionary misiisto. Mist nebuleto. Mistake eraro. Mistaken, to be trompigxi. Mistletoe ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... sure to interpret indecision as cowardice, if not as an unwilling tribute to that superiority of which men who really possess it are the last to boast. They have learned nothing from the war but to hate the men who subdued them, and to misinterpret and misrepresent the causes of their subduing; and even now, when a feeling has been steadily growing in the rest of the country for the last nine months deeper and more intense than any during the war, because mixed with an angry sense of unexpected and treacherous ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... such a man for a friend," said Allan Roscoe, who would himself have liked to become acquainted with a man whose social position was so high. "I hope you will not misrepresent me to him. Should any opportunity occur, I will try to ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... is dead, those papers and politicians that were wont to abuse and misrepresent him most brutally are fairly falling over each other to do him honor. The post-mortem gush is sickening because of its insincerity. If Henry George was not a great man living he is not a great man dead. If his economic views were fatuous while he was among us they are folly forevermore. ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... concurrence, that the nation undoubtedly was on his side —but as he could not deprive his nephews, on that foundation, without bastardizing their sisters too, no wonder, the historians, who wrote under the Lancastrian domination, have used all their art and industry to misrepresent the fact. If the marriage of Edward the Fourth with the widow Grey was bigamy, and consequently null, what became of the title of Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry the Seventh? What became of it? Why a bastard branch of Lancaster, matched with ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... Christianity are more appreciated. I have been careful to guard the reader upon this subject, lest it should be thought that Bunyan had in any degree manifested the spirit of those, who even to the present day misrepresent the opinions of the Quakers. This may be occasioned by their distinguishing tenet—That the work of the ministry is purely a labour of love, and ought not to be performed for hire—derived from the command of Christ to his disciples, "Freely ye have received, freely ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... fact neither matter nor memory have independent existence. This is where Berg-son disagrees with the philosophers who regard the facts as signs of an independent material world, or as phenomena which misrepresent some "thing" in "itself" which is what really exists but which is not known directly but only inferred from the phenomena. For Bergson it is the fact directly known that really exists, and matter and ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen |
