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More "Misconception" Quotes from Famous Books



... appearing before men in behalf of that which is finally the truth. He is the spokesman of the most considerate and comprehensive reflection possible at any stage in the development of human thought. Owing to a radical misconception of function, the man of science has in these later days begun to regard himself as the wise man, and to teach the people. Popular materialism is the logical outcome of this determination of belief by natural ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... political support of Francis were requisite. Wolsey played upon the guilelessness of Fisher of Rochester, till he persuaded the saintly bishop that the confirmation of the marriage was the one thing desired—that the Queen's opposition was due to an unfortunate misconception, and entirely opposed to her own interests. The same course was pursued with Warham of Canterbury. [Footnote: Brewer, ii., pp. 193 ff.] The necessity for the enquiry was fathered upon the Bishop of ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... having had a definite relation to his culture—will remain perhaps, but only as an external foreign ornament, only as a parasitic growth which weakens the force of his real nature. But we must distinguish from these little affectations which arise from a misconception of the limits of individuality that effort of imitation which children and young people often exhibit in trying to copy in their own actions those peculiarities which they observe and admire in perfectly-developed ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz

... the nation's land and capital; finally, to suppose that such a fortuitous agglomeration of undisciplined human atoms offers 'the most suitable and hopeful way of ushering in a Socialist State'—all this argues such a complete misconception of the actual facts of industrial and social life, such an entire misunderstanding of the process by which a democratic society passes from one stage of its development to another, that I feel warranted in quoting it as an ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... probably survive in the Transvaal even when that State has passed from a Boer into an Anglo-Dutch Republic, is capable of being greatly modified by a better comprehension of the ample freedom which the self-governing Colonies of Britain enjoy. The non-British world is under some misconception in this matter, and does not understand that these Colonies are practically democratic Republics, though under the protection and dignified by the traditions of an ancient and famous monarchy. Nor has it been fully realized that the Colonies derive even greater ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... Don in college rooms, interested in Greek particles, grumbling over his port wine, is a figure beloved by writers of fiction as a contrast to all that is brave, and bright, and wholesome in life. Could there be a more hopeless misconception? I do not know a single extant example of the species at the University. Personally, I have no love for Greek particles, and only a very moderate taste for port wine. But I do love, with all my heart, the grace of antiquity that mellows our crumbling courts, the old tradition ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... tournament still [40] remains; its subject is the dignity of human nature, the greatness of man. In common with nearly all medieval speculation, much of Pico's writing has this for its drift; and in common also with it, Pico's theory of that dignity is founded on a misconception of the place in nature both of the earth and of man. For Pico the earth is the centre of the universe: and around it, as a fixed and motionless point, the sun and moon and stars revolve, like diligent servants or ministers. And ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater

... himself open to much misconception, and has given to his opponents a powerful weapon against himself, by his continual use of metaphor in describing the wonderful ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... white,—but that is at intervals only,— Black, from a burning house, we suppose, by the Cavalleggieri; And we believe we discern some lines of men descending Down through the vineyard-slopes, and catch a bayonet gleaming. Every ten minutes, however,—in this there is no misconception,— Comes a great white puff from behind Michel Angelo's dome, and After a space the report of a real big gun,—not the Frenchman's!— That must be doing some work. And so we watch and conjecture. Shortly, an Englishman comes, who says he has been to St. Peter's, ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough

... Author desires me to add, that the misconception of some of his critics on this matter has induced him to insert in his dialogue with the Sphere, certain remarks which have a bearing on the point in question, and which he had previously omitted as being ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott

... matter, but mortal mind, whose touch called 86:6 for aid. Repeating his inquiry, he was answered by the faith of a sick woman. His quick apprehension of this mental call illustrated his spirituality. The disciples' 86:9 misconception of it uncovered their materiality. Jesus possessed more spiritual susceptibility than the disciples. Opposites come from contrary directions, and ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... question of the authorship of Henry VIII., I am anxious to remove a misconception under which MR. SPEDDING appears to labour relative to the purport of a remark I made in my last communication to you (Vol. ii., p. 198.) on this subject. As we appear to be perfectly agreed as to the reasons for assigning a considerable portion of this play to Fletcher, and as upon ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various

... their establishment, and diminish its funds; and with every deference to the benevolent undertakers, whose motives merit the highest approbation of every enlightened mind, I would observe, they have likewise to regret their misconception of the eligible grounds upon which so beneficent a plan is to be productive of operative influence; but as at a future stage of my narrative, I shall be enabled from more minute investigation to enter at large upon this interesting ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry

... took this extraordinary form of her humbugging, as she had called it, to the end. It was only a question of not, by a hair's breadth, deflecting into the truth. So, supremely, was she braced. "You must take it from me that your anxiety rests quite on a misconception. You must take it from me that I've never at any moment fancied I could suffer by you." And, marvellously, she kept it up—not only kept it up, but improved on it. "You must take it from me that I've never thought of you but as beautiful, wonderful and good. Which is all, I think, that you can ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... language could not have been formed in Plato's age, than that which he attributes to Socrates. Yet many persons have thought that the mind of Plato is more truly seen in the vague realism of Cratylus. This misconception has probably arisen from two causes: first, the desire to bring Plato's theory of language into accordance with the received doctrine of the Platonic ideas; secondly, the impression created by Socrates himself, that he ...
— Cratylus • Plato

... even the slight knowledge of the history of Biology, which may be obtained from a perusal of this little book, will show that, so far from such being the case, this branch of science is of venerable antiquity. And, further, if in the place of this misconception a desire is aroused in the reader for a fuller acquaintance with the writings of the early anatomists the chief aim of the author will have ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae

... been so much misconception and misrepresentation about this payment of twenty millions that the following exact summary of the ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid

... themselves time to do justice even to their scanty knowledge. Journalists are open to charges of this kind; but to think of them as a shameless body, thirsting for the blood of better men than themselves, or ready to act as an editor's instrument for money, involves a thoroughly unjust misconception." ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... "Creation" wished, by highly artificial verse, to inculcate what he supposed to be moral truth-the poet of the "Ancient Mariner" to infuse the Poetic Sentiment through channels suggested by analysis. The one finished by complete failure what he commenced in the grossest misconception; the other, by a path which could not possibly lead him astray, arrived at a triumph which is not the less glorious because hidden from the profane eyes of the multitude. But in this view even the "metaphysical verse" of Cowley is but evidence of the simplicity and single-heartedness of the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... condition of Arabia and the Arabs. What one does the other undoes; what this creates, that destroys. Professor Palmer tells us, "Another misconception is that all Arabs are habitual thieves and murderers."[EN118] Fear of the terrible vendetta, the blood feud and the blut-geld, amounting to about eight hundred dollars, prevents the Bedawin, here as elsewhere, slaying any but strangers. The traveller's experience, however, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... misconception of his meaning, Mainwaring tried to recall the historical dress of the great Cardinal and fit it to the masquerader—if such he were—before him. But Richelieu relieved ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte

... be regulated. The political economist justly deems this his proper business: and, as an abstract or hypothetical science, political economy can not be required to do, and indeed can not do, anything more. But it would be a great misconception of the actual course of human affairs to suppose that competition exercises in fact this unlimited sway. I am not speaking of monopolies, either natural or artificial, or of any interferences of authority with the liberty of production or exchange. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... doubtless through a misconception of this principle that the first schism in the Sulphitic Theory arises. Already the cult has become so important that a newer heretic sect threatens it. These protestants cannot believe that there is a definite line ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess

... leisure, and find out places for herself, because Hector Garret was always hurrying her, and she was trying so hard to be clever, active, and amiable. Ah, that slight strain already perceptible, that growth of ignorance, misconception, and extravagant reverence—what fruit would ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... right, a staircase (and not a ladder) being, in my judgment, meant in each case, and Sir Richard Burton's translation of sullem min thelathin derejeh as "a ladder of thirty rungs" (see ante p. 82, note {see FN231}) seems to me founded on a misconception, he being misled by the word "fihi" (see my note ante, p. 83 {see FN235}). He adds, "sullem in modern Egyptian is used for a flight of steps;" but it signifies both "ladder" and "flight of steps" in the ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne

... minister. But the positive proofs at the other side are numerous and incontestable. I select a few. On the 13th of July Mr. O'Gorman, in presence of Mr. O'Connell, said: "In order that there shall be no misconception on the subject, as far as I am concerned, I say, at once, I am no advocate for physical force. As a member of the Association I am bound by its laws. One of these is, that its object is not to be attained by the use of physical force, but by moral means only." Mr. Mitchel, ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... titles of the ancient Sees which were held by the established church. It is impossible to mention anything connected with the establishment of the hierarchy which can at all explain the violence of the bishops and clergy generally of the establishment. The popular commotion arose from misconception and the absurd falsehoods that were industriously disseminated. The masses were still raging, when Dr. Wiseman, who had just been raised to the dignity of Cardinal, published an appeal to the people of England, in which he showed that ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... trunnions of oscillating engines. Plummer blocks for receiving thrust of screw propeller. Plunger of feed pump. Portable engine, Hoadley's. Porter's patent governor. Ports of the cylinder, area of. Pot-lid valves of air pump. Powers, mechanical, misconception respecting. Power, horses, definition of, nominal and actual power; power of high pressure engines. Power necessary for thrashing and grinding corn, working sugar mills, spinning cotton, sawing timber, grossing cotton, blowing furnaces, driving piles, and dredging earth ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... a tinge of displeasure in the voice in which the last sentence was spoken, and Agatha, the tenderhearted, was quick to note it, and to explain away the misconception. ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... purpose. This opinion was stimulated and developed for political ends by many whose intelligence should have led them to more enlightened views. False charges being constantly repeated and plied with incessant zeal, the most radical misconception became fixed in the Southern mind. It was idle for the Republican party to declare that their aim was only to prevent the extension of slavery to free territory, and that they were pledged not to interfere with its existence in the States. Such distinctions ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... aid of this handsome Frenchman, who cared so little for life that in his first words he had staked it in making a proposition to a queen, which was worthy of death, if she did her duty. Instead of this, however, she pressed his foot with her own, in a manner that admitted no misconception, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac

... race. He gives many illustrations of falsehood supposed to be necessary (where, in fact, they would seem to the keen-minded reader to be quite superfluous[1]) and having affirmed the duty of false speaking in these cases, he takes it for granted (in a strange misconception of the moral sense of mankind) that the deceived parties would, if appealed to in their better senses, justify the falsehoods spoken by mothers in the nursery, by physicians in the sick-room, and by the ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull

... of standing and walking, "not to speak of trying to climb." Such a short and easy method of dealing with Roman Catholic dogma and ritual cannot be commended for its intelligence; it is quite possible to be on the same side as Browning without being as crude as he in misconception. He does not seriously consider the Catholic idea which regards things of sense as made luminous by the spirit of which they are the envoys and the ministers. It is enough for him to declare his own creed which treats any intermediary between the human soul and the Divine ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... ideas which are associated in the popular imagination with the first thought of the Isle of Man. The one is that Manxmen have three legs, and the other that Manx cats have no tails. But whatever the popular conception, or misconception, of Man and its people, I shall assume that what you ask from me is that simple knowledge of simple things which has come to me by the accident of my parentage. I must confess to you at the outset that I am not much of a hand at ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine

... their sons on these matters than for the mothers to do so, would not have existed if they themselves as children and youth had been educated to a complete knowledge of the sex-life by one or both parents. The cause of this shyness is in many cases ignorance of how to present the facts, and a misconception of the difficulties of speaking to a pure-minded child about them. Nothing surprises the parent more than the way difficulties vanish when once the course of instruction to the youth has been ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley

... on. Hence it is not so, i.e. it must not be thought that the hands and the rest are not organs. Buddhi, ahankra and kitta, on the other hand, are (not independent organs but) mere designations of the manas, according as the latter is engaged in the functions of deciding (adhyavasya), or misconception (abhimna), or thinking (kint). The organs therefore are eleven. From this it follows that in the passage 'Ten are these prnas in man, and tman is the eleventh' (Bri. Up. II, 4, ii), the word tman denotes the manas. The number eleven is confirmed by scriptural and Smriti passages, cp. 'the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... of her being attacked. It is perfectly true that this is an ancient and reciprocal obligation. It is perfectly true that Portugal has often been in jeopardy; and equally true that England has never failed to fly to her assistance. But much misconception has been exhibited during the last two nights, with respect to the real nature of the engagements between Portugal and this country: a misconception which has undoubtedly been, in part, created by the publication of some ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... been pointed out as a scholar in embryo, failed to live up to the expectations of his world? It happened as it happened that his hair curled over his high forehead: he was made that way. If people were disappointed, it was because they had based their expectations on a misconception of his character, for my father had never had any aspirations for extreme piety. Piety was imputed to him by his mother, by his rebbe, by his neighbors, when they saw that he rendered the sacred word more intelligently than his fellow students. It was not his fault that his people confused ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... the judgement of God came on William for the beheading of Waltheof, it came on him also for the making of the New Forest. As to that forest there is a good deal of ancient exaggeration and a good deal of modern misconception. The word forest is often misunderstood. In its older meaning, a meaning which it still keeps in some parts, a forest has nothing to do with trees. It is a tract of land put outside the common law and subject to a stricter law of its own, and that commonly, probably always, to secure ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman

... attained its highest ascendency, an ascendency which it soon lost, and which it never regained.' This sentence forms the theme for Lord Macaulay's survey of the Catholic Revival. Dazzling and fascinating as that survey is, it fails through misconception of one all-important point. Lord Macaulay takes for granted that conflict in Europe, since the publication of Luther's manifesto against Rome, has been between Catholicism and Protestantism. Even after describing ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... prevalent that there is ill will between the Norwegian and Swedish peoples. This is a popular misconception. The Norwegian and Swedish peoples are racially very similar in character and habits, and mutually respect each other. King Oscar was as beloved and honored in Norway as he was in Sweden, and deservedly ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough

... finished the Bigelow blood was at a boiling pitch, and for a polished lady, Mrs. Dr. Van Buren, of Boston, raised her voice pretty high as she asked: "Did you presume, sir, to think that my son—mine—a married man—would make an appointment with Ethie, a married woman? You must have a strange misconception of the manner in which he was brought up! But it is all of a piece with the rest of your abominable treatment of Ethelyn. I wonder the poor girl stayed with you as long as she did. Think of it, Barbara! Accused her of going to meet Frank by appointment, ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... the famous phrase which has been since so often repeated: "In vain a Nero triumphs: Tacitus is already born in his Empire." This quotation leads me to repeat an observation, which, I believe, I have already made, viz. that it is a manifest misconception to compare Bonaparte to Nero. Napoleon's ambition might blind his vision to political crimes, but in private life no man could evince less disposition to cruelty or bloodshed. A proof that he bore little resemblance ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... terms on which, unless they were married, ladies and gentlemen might, as Miss Overmore expressed it, knock about together, were the terms on which she and Mr. Farange had exposed themselves to possible misconception. She had indeed, as has been noted, often explained this before, often said to Maisie: "I don't know what in the world, darling, your father and I should do without you, for you just make the difference, as I've told you, of keeping us ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James

... at once to the Admiralty, and in the interview which ensued, as shown by the minutes endorsed on his own letter, his misconception as to the quarter in which Howe was to act afforded standing ground for a compromise. Hawke having committed himself officially, and upon a mistaken premise, the Admiralty had him technically at their mercy; but such a triumph as they could win by disciplining ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... said Father Coleman, "that is a fertile subject of misconception. The house of Israel was raised up to destroy idolatry because idolatry thou meant dark images of Moloch opening their arms by machinery, and flinging the beauteous first-born of the land into their huge forms, which were furnaces of fire; or Ashtaroth, throned ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... an unusual misconception that this organic change in the government involved the simultaneous extinction of the tribunitial office and title. But the truth is that the tribunes continued to exercise municipal and subordinate functions many generations after the revolution of 697; each ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... be reached by them, until their own spirit was corrected by another, the spirit exemplified in the Hebrews. You will, I am sure, allow me to say whatever I feel to be just. And that there may be no misconception, let me add that, whenever I speak of the Hebraic spirit, I shall mean, not the spirit which an individual contemporary Hebrew may happen to display, but the spirit which was characteristic of Israel as a nation before the dispersion. In the same way the Hellenic spirit will mean ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... be seen, the first access of churchlike ideas to my mind by no means sufficed to expel my inherited and bigoted misconception, though in the event they did it as I hope effectively. But I long retained in my recollection an observation made to me in (I think) the year 1829, by Mrs. Benjamin Gaskell of Thornes, near Wakefield, a seed which was destined long to remain ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... useless. I will not have him.' And she was shutting the door. Her misconception, wilful or not, scattered all Sugarman's prepared diplomacies. 'He does not want you, he wants the ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... in excellence. From Lessing, and chiefly, from his Dramaturgie, Coleridge was also aware, on the other hand, upon what erroneous grounds that imaginary pre-eminence was built. He knew that it was a total misconception of the Greek unities (excepting only as regards the unity of fable, or, as Coleridge otherwise calls it, the unity of interest) which had misled the French. It was a huge blunder. The case was this: ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... "if I interrupt you, Prince, to prevent any misconception. It is not with a view to profit that I have carefully avoided giving any clue whatever to my secret. Tour munificence would render it most ungrateful and unjust in me to haggle over the price of any service I could render you; and I should be ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... our country is founded on a misconception, I mean on the confusion between knowledge and competence. We search conscientiously for competence or efficiency, and we believe that we have found it when we find knowledge, but that is an error. An examination requires ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... There is a misconception involved, again, in M. Chasles' picture of an abrupt transition from Shakspere's fantastic youthful method to that of HAMLET and the Roman plays. He overlooks the intermediate stages represented by such ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson

... — N. misjudgment, obliquity of judgment; miscalculation, miscomputation, misconception &c (error) 495; hasty conclusion. [causes of misjudgment. 1] prejudgment, prejudication^, prejudice; foregone conclusion; prenotion^, prevention, preconception, predilection, prepossession, preapprehension^, presumption, assumption, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... requested to turn the cannon of the fort against Verplank's, and the vessels in the river. The last orders were executed, and a heavy cannonade was opened on fort Fayette, and on the vessels, which compelled them to fall down the river. Through some misconception, never explained, the messenger despatched by General Wayne did not call on M'Dougal, but proceeded directly to head quarters. Thus, every advantage expected from the first impression made by the capture of Stony Point was lost; and the garrison ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall

... that those atrociously leveling sentiments were received by the young ladies with that feminine scorn which is only qualified by misconception. Rose, who, under the influence of her hostess, had a vague impression that they sounded something like the French Revolution, and that Adele must feel like the Princess Elizabeth, rushed to her relief like a good girl. "But, major, ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte

... brightness, that America never stood in more eminent need of the wise, patriotic, and spirited exertions of her sons than at this period, and if it is not a sufficient cause for general lamentation my misconception of the matter impresses it too strongly upon me that the States, separately, are too much engaged in their local concerns and have too many of their ablest men withdrawn from the general council for the good of the commonweal. In a word I think our political system may be compared ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... fiercely and strongly, sometimes to such an extent that it fairly scorches the mentality of the less advanced pupil. But, notwithstanding this awakened "I" consciousness, the teacher is handicapped by his intellectual misconception and befogging metaphysics, and is unable to impart the "I" consciousness to his pupils, and, instead of raising them up to shine with equal splendor with himself, he really forces them into a shadow by reason of ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... The misconception which often exists even among those who profess the deepest scholarship and the most certainty of opinion as to the development of men of great wealth was instanced by a misstatement of Dr. Felix Adler, leader of the New York Society for Ethical Culture. ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... despair, which are sometimes manifested in bitter irony, sometimes in intolerant hauteur. These dark apostrophes of his muse have attracted less attention, have been less fully understood, than his poems of more tender coloring. The personal character of Chopin had something to do with this general misconception. Kind, courteous, and affable, of tranquil and almost joyous manners, he would not suffer the secret convulsions which agitated him to ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... still not clear upon many points. "But so many orphans," he said perplexed, reverting to a first misconception, and learnt again ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... I am too familiar with the hydra of error to expect that by lopping off one of the monster's heads I can prevent another, or even the same, from sprouting again. I can only trust to the candour and intelligence of my readers to rectify this serious misconception of my views by a comparison ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... the 30th of November 1782, were followed by a definitive treaty concluded on the 3rd of September 1783. Charleston, S.C., was evacuated late in 1782; New York on the 25th of November 1783. The reasons of Great Britain's misfortunes and failure may be summarized as follows:—Misconception by the home government of the temper and reserve strength of her colonists, a population mainly of good English blood and instincts; disbelief at the outset in the probability of a protracted struggle ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... uses the Halberstadt and not the Boehme method in presenting this embodiment of his subject. The supposition of certain commentators that Browning is here picturing his own artistic method as transcendental is a misconception of his characteristic theory of poetic art, as ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning

... thirty-six-gun frigate. Mr. Jefferson answered on the 27th of January, 1804, after he knew of the insult to Morris and of the expulsion of Eaton. Beginning with watery generalities about "mutual friendships and the interests arising out of them," he regretted that there should be any misconception of his motives on the part of the Bey. "Such being our regard for you, it is with peculiar concern I learn from your letter that Mr. Cathcart, whom I had chosen from a confidence in his integrity, experience, and good dispositions, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... important fact, however, connected with the question of spiritual appearances, which is worthy of some consideration. It is a fixed rule in the history of opinions that beliefs founded on imagination or misconception have declined with the advance of enlightenment, and many conceptions, once strongly entertained, have faded and vanished in the light of new thought, or where retained have been so only by the ignorant and unreasoning. It is of interest to find that this has not been the case with ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... know how to think," he insisted—getting along the planks; "and they will not realize that they do not know how to think. Nine-tenths of the wars in the world have arisen out of misconceptions.... Misconception is the sin and dishonour of the mind, and muddled thinking as ignoble as dirty ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... annihilated speedily, and all the tyrants be cut off, hurled down and reduced speedily; humble Thou them quickly in our days. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who destroyest enemies and humblest tyrants." There has been much misconception with regard to this collect against heretics. There is every reason to believe it was composed without any reference whatever to the Christians. One point of interest, however, in connection with it is worth ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... a popular prejudice against metaphysics as something at once difficult and fruitless, as an idle system of enquiries remote from any human interest. I suppose this odd misconception arose from the vulgar pretensions of the learned, from their appeal to ancient names and their quotations in unfamiliar tongues, and from the easy fall into technicality of men struggling to be explicit where a high degree ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... popular misconception that peace and quietness and respect for law and order can be developed in the foreigner by suddenly and violently disturbing his mental life. Changing a man's language, upsetting his moral and social conventions, altering ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... aiming at, in the thing seen as a whole. As to the exaggeration of making accidental streaks in the glass do duty for folds of drapery, and manufacturing glass (as has been done) to meet this purpose, I hold the thing to be a gross degradation and an entire misconception of the relation of materials to art. You may also lay this to mind, as a thing worthy of consideration, that all old glass was painted, and that no school of stained-glass has ever existed which made a principle of refusing this aid. I would never argue from this ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall

... at this idea. He did not intend to be an incumbrance on any one, and became offended in his turn at the mute reproach which he imagined he could read in his cousin's troubled countenance. This misconception, confirmed by the obstinate silence of both parties, and aggravated by its own continuance, at last produced ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet

... but he must get it: if it has to be at the expense of others—well, so much the worse for them. If it has to be fought for, then naturally the stronger wins: the "survival of the fittest" he will say. Thus, quite logically, from the primary misconception a superstructure of error is raised. As each body has diverse whims, the pursuit of these must lead to the widest range and conflict of aims, and thus materialism results in disorder, cross-purposes and confusion. On all sides this diversity of aim, with its corresponding confusion, ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt

... Washington toward them because one hears it constantly said and sees it as constantly written down, that Washington belonged to no party, which is perhaps a natural, but is certainly a complete misconception. Washington came to the presidency by a unanimous vote. He had in his mind very strongly the idea of the framers of the Constitution that the President, by the method of his election and by his independence of the other departments of government, was to be above ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge

... Beecher or Brother Noyes, with their provincialism [xxxiv] and want of centrality, make mere Hebraisers in religion, and not perfect men, so the university of Mr. Ezra Cornell, a really noble monument of his munificence, yet seems to rest on a provincial misconception of what culture truly is, and to be calculated to produce miners, or engineers, or architects, ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold

... letters, from their bearing on general university questions, are not out of place here. Though occasioned by a slight misconception, they are so characteristic of the writers, and of their relation to each other, that it would be a pity ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... Mexicans distinctly affirmed the existence of such a God. To form such conceptions implies a power of reasoning on abstract topics that is vain to expect of a people in their state of development. We think, therefore, that the idea that they had such a belief, arises from a misconception. Let us see if we can discover ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... in mind this distinction, this opposition between poetry and myth, for ignoring it has led to not a little misconception as to the occurrence of myth in Scripture, especially in connection with the names associated with the crocodile. Thus it has been broadly asserted that "the original mythical signification of the monsters tehom, ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... no audacious fabrication on the occasion—there is no mystery in the case! (No. 24. p. 386.) So, to stop the current of misconception, and economise space on future occasions, I venture to repeat a few words in suggesting as a canon of criticism:—Before we censure an author or editor we should ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various

... however flattering to my vanity, have no power to touch my heart. Mr. Minge, I have twice declined the offer you have done me the honor to make; and while proud of your preference, my Saxon is not so ambiguous or redundant as to leave any margin for misconception of my meaning." ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... how incapable, inexperienced, and unripe the foreign contingent of his orchestra was. The energy with which he threw himself into the task of trying to repair his blunders won the sympathy of the members of the critical guild, though it did not wholly atone for his conscious or unconscious misconception of American conditions. It was not pleasant to think that he had so poor an opinion of American knowledge and taste in music that before coming he thought that anything would be good enough for this ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... which might have been expected from the ignorance of Byron or the incompetence of Hallam. And the particular note of merit observed, the special point of the praise conferred, by the great German poet should be no less sufficient to dispose of the vulgar misconception yet lingering among sciolists and pretenders to criticism, which regards a writer than whom no man was ever born with a finer or a stronger instinct for perfection of excellence in execution as a mere noble savage of letters, a rough self-taught sketcher or scribbler of crude ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... be a misconception of the oracles to imagine that they proceed by induction and analysis; and precisely because the political problem was a condition or corollary of the demonstrations asked for, the Academy could not offer it for competition. Such a conclusion would have opened ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... average European knew something about the universe of sun, moon, planets, and stars, but it was scarcely more than the ancient Greeks had known, and its chief use was to foretell the future. This practical aspect of astronomy was a curious ancient misconception, which now passes under the name of astrology. It was popularly believed prior to the sixteenth century that every heavenly body exerted a direct and arbitrary influence upon human character and events, [Footnote: Disease was attributed to planetary influence. This connection between medicine ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... you leave no room for misconception. By all means let him live with us—if he can get on with my father," ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard

... that the reference was to an individual college, known by the name of University College, one of twenty-five such establishments in Oxford, had regularly corrected it into "gates of the University," &c. Here is the first misconception of all strangers. And this feature of Oxford it is which has drawn such exclamations of astonishment from foreigners. Lipsius, for example, protested with fervor, on first seeing this vast establishment of Oxford, that one college of this university was greater in its power and splendor, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... property in the soil except the exclusive right of cultivation," he only, in deference to the Bavarian policy of the time, which wished to copy Mohammed Ali's administration in Egypt, caricatured a misconception of the right of property equally strong in every Greek, whether he be the oppressor or the oppressed. Even the late National Assembly has not thought it necessary to correct any of the invasions of private ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... on an examination of this theory, we wish to guard ourselves against one misconception. It is possible that some persons who have read Mr. Gladstone's book carelessly, and others who have merely heard in conversation, or seen in a newspaper, that the member for Newark has written in defence of the Church of England against the supporters of the voluntary system, may imagine that ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... to you that by cabling these proposals to Europe, we could not possibly conceive that we were acting under a misconception, as the day on which they were made to us, the 12th of March, being a Sunday, the Telegraph Office was specially kept open for the purpose of dispatching the cables, which were duly received and forwarded upon production of an order from ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... apprehension that if the unexpected sale and transfer of the share property, under terms and conditions in every sense unique, were not frankly and explicitly explained, and under authority, alarm and misconception would arise; while the news of the transfer would find its way to distant regions in a distorted fashion, and through unfriendly sources, long before the explanation and answer could arrive. My fear, owing to bad management in London, was somewhat realized, ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... of Carlisle, a scholarly and cultured ecclesiastic, who, in addition to providing her with spiritual consolation, also gave her much valuable advice as to the disposition of the books and manuscripts. In order to guard against any misconception, however, I should like to add that Canon Waterton did not come to Trieste until some time after The Scented Garden had been burned. That act, in spite of all that has been said to the contrary, was entirely Lady Burton's own act, influenced by no priest, layman, or any person whatever. ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... rather," said Mrs. Krill, bluntly; "it will prevent your misconception of anything you may hear about us. My husband's real name was Lemuel Krill, and he married me thirty years ago. I will be frank with you and admit that neither of us were gentlefolks. We kept a public-house on the outskirts of Christchurch in Hants, called 'The Red ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume

... the idea of beauty could become incarnate for him in any earthly form: while the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" recognizes the truth that such realization of the ideal is impossible. The very last letter written by Shelley sets the misconception in its proper light: "I think one is always in love with something or other; the error, and I confess it is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal." But this ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... first place, "understanded of the people." It must be supported by sustained, deliberate explanation, and by teaching in school and church and press of the whole mass of all the peoples concerned. I underline the adjective "Free" here to set aside, once for all, any possible misconception that this modern idea of a League of Nations has any affinity to that Holy Alliance of the diplomatists, which set out to keep the peace of Europe ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells

... Christ,—because the extraordinary keenness, fineness, and breadth of his masterly mind enabled him to conceive with unusual definiteness the limits of civil and spiritual authority, and to ascribe the overgrowth of error upon the Church he loved to the misconception and weakness of human nature. He did not place Venice, the superb,—with her pride and pomp and power and intellectual astuteness, with her faults and worldliness and her magnificent statesmanship,—against the spiritual kingdom of Christ's Church on earth and declare ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... France; as Nanty Ewart would have said, "A d——d bad religion"; while we, at home, keep most of our bitterness for little differences about a hymn-book, or a Hebrew word which perhaps neither of the parties can translate. And perhaps the misconception is typical of many others that may never be cleared up: not only between people of different race, but between those of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... systematically robbed of a large quantity of land, which, Lord Durham estimated, was worth about L280,000 at the time he wrote. He acknowledges, however, that the clergy had no part in "this great misappropriation of the public property," but that it had arisen "entirely from heedless misconception, or some other error of the civil government of the province." All this, however, goes to show the maladministration of the public lands, and is one of the many reasons the people of the Canadas had for considering these reserves ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot

... the late sun slanted upon her husband, as with declamatory hands and intense brows he chanted emotional poetry, ready himself on the slope of opportunity to roll into verses from his own resources. He criticised, with agile misconception, the inner meaning, the involved, hard-hidden heart of the poet; and the serpent sat before him and nodded. She smiled enchantments at him, and allurements, and subtle, subtle disagreements. On the grass ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... the one that so long underwent the singular obloquy of being a bull of excommunication against all who objected to the poem! a misconception on the part of some ignorant man, or misrepresentation by some malignant one, which affords a remarkable warning against taking things on trust from one writer after another. Even Bayle (see the article "Leo X." in his Dictionary) ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... kind of shot the town-guard commanded by Porteous had loaded their muskets, received the unexpected reply, "Ou, juist sic as ane shutes dukes and sic like fules wi'." The answer was considered as a contempt of the House of Lords, and the poor provost would have suffered from misconception of his patois, had not the Duke of Argyle (who must have been exceedingly amused) explained that the worthy magistrate's expression, when rendered into English, did not apply to Peers and Idiots but to ducks and water-fowl. The circumstance is ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... from two sources. Either the mind is preoccupied with a conception of the world which, whether men are conscious of it or not, forecloses all the questions which are raised by any doctrine of atonement, and makes them unmeaning; or it labours under some misconception as to what the New Testament actually teaches. Broadly speaking, the first of these conditions is considered in the first two chapters, and the second in the last. The title—The Atonement and the Modern Mind—might seem to promise a treatise, or even an ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney

... labyrinth into which this method leads; there is a much simpler and clearer way of studying such questions, which is to challenge and analyze the assertion before us and seek its basis in human nature. Before this is done, we should run the risk of expanding a natural misconception or inaccuracy of thought into an inveterate and pernicious prejudice by making it the centre of ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... or L6 15s. 6d. But if the customer's contention is that he ought to get the coat for nothing, and that he does not in justice owe the tailor anything at all, he is making a demand that no law court could satisfy, and by a gratuitous misconception of his rights is doing all he can to preclude himself from any chance of obtaining them. The mood which socialism foments among the labouring classes is precisely analogous to the mood of such a man as this, and its results are analogous likewise. Its origin, however, being artificial ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... said to disabuse the reader's mind of the common misconception of Buffon, namely, that he was more or less of an elegant trifler with science, who cared rather about the language in which his ideas were clothed than about the ideas themselves, and that he did not hold the ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... that the life of a man of letters is necessarily deficient in incident, appears to have originated in a misconception of the essential nature of human action. The life of every man is full of incidents, but the incidents are insignificant, because they do not affect his species; and in general the importance of every ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... great experience of the Admiralty in handling problems of production and of the past success of Admiralty methods in this respect gave rise to a good deal of misconception. The fact that it had been necessary to form a separate Ministry (that of Munitions) to deal with the production of war material for the Army probably fostered the idea that matters at the Admiralty should be altered in a ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe

... between them accordingly.[A] On this idea, among other points of fancied resemblance, he founded his family of Nootka-Columbians,—one which has been adopted by Drs. Pritchard and Latham, and has caused very great misconception. Not only are those languages entirely distinct, but the Nootkans differ greatly in physical and mental characteristics from the latter. The analogies between the Chinook and the other native contributors to ...
— Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon, or, Trade Language of Oregon • George Gibbs

... oppressed and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States. In entering upon the great work before us we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... quickness of sensation which of all others require revisal, and the more particularly so when applied to the living characters of nations or individuals in a state of war. The least misinformation or misconception leads to some wrong conclusion and an error believed becomes the progenitor of others. And as the Abbe has suffered some inconveniences in France, by mistating certain circumstances of the war and the characters of the parties therein, it becomes some ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine

... against the propriety of giving most thanks to him who had, from misconception or misrepresentation, been induced rather to prevent than promote those operations by which thanks were obtained; and not particularly directing the smallest attention, otherwise than by indemnifying his law expences, to the individual who had, at all hazards, effectually performed ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison

... masses leads to a misconception in two ways; the little that a scientist can do, they do not understand,—they suppose him to be godlike in his capacity, and they do not see results; they overrate him and they underrate ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell

... information in the possession of the British Government regarding the Russian situation, by referring to the matter which had been exposed recently in L'Humanite. He stated that he wished to point out that there had been a serious misconception on the part of the French Government as to the character of the proposal of the British Government. The British proposal did not contemplate in any sense whatever, a recognition of the Bolsheviki Government, ...
— The Bullitt Mission to Russia • William C. Bullitt

... guard strictly, at this point, against a possible misconception. It is not to be understood that these one hundred thousand citizens are simply "office-seekers," using the ordinary and offensive sense of the term. The activity in affairs which we describe is distinct ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... been progressive in the past forty years. First, he was denied the right to vote, and we were told if he would only hold that right in abeyance that he might enjoy other rights in fuller measure. Many, under a misconception of the facts, accepted this view, but since the denial of the right to vote other rights have been impaired. The right to education in its broadest and most comprehensive sense is now practically denied him everywhere, and if not denied the wisdom of his receiving it is seriously ...
— Peonage - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 15 • Lafayette M. Hershaw

... generous temper mellowed the somewhat too cold and languid negligence of one of the fairest and haughtiest women that ever adorned a court. She was too generous not to rescue anyone who suffered through her the slightest injustice, not to interfere when through her any misconception lighted on another; she saw, with her rapid perception and sympathy, that the man whom Chateauroy addressed with the brutal insolence of a bully to his disobedient dog, had once been a gentlemen, though he now held but the rank of a sous-officier in the Algerian Cavalry, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... on the words grew cold and calm again with very scorn. "I thank God it is beyond your power to hurt me. And I thank you for correcting my foolish misconception of you, my belief in your pitiful pretence that it was your aim to save me. I would not accept salvation at your murderer's hands. Though, indeed, I shall not be put to it. Rather," she pursued, a little wildly now in her deep mortification, "are ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... the life, and developed the misconception that the secret of John Barleycorn lay in going on mad drunks, rising through the successive stages that only an iron constitution could endure to final stupefaction and swinish unconsciousness. I did not like the taste, so ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London

... the misconception of a Brunel and a Faraday operated to retard the practical success of this beautiful invention. The high temperature which it was necessary to keep up in the circulating medium of the engine, and the consequent oxidation, soon destroyed the pistons, valves, and other working parts. These ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... from the armament which they sent out that they did; for however incompetent that armament has been to the end, nobody could admit a doubt that it was intended to oppose men in arms, and to compel by force, the incompetence for its purposes proceeding merely from that blind ignorance and total misconception of American affairs which had operated upon the Ministers in every ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... A misconception appears to exist as to the state of society at Manilla, people at a distance for the most part labouring under the erroneous impression that it remains stationary, and is today as much behind the rest of the world as it was thirty years ago; and that it can support no newspaper or other ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... on the Secretary's misconception of the situation that Jackson's request for relief was based. Nor was it the slur on his judgment that led him to resign. The injury that had been inflicted by Mr. Benjamin's unfortunate letter was not personal to himself. It affected the whole army. It was ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... around which the sun moved? Why, there was no old, flat and anchored, stationary earth to take away. There never had been. All Magellan did was to demonstrate a new, higher, grander truth. He took away a misconception from the minds of ignorant and uneducated people, and helped put one of God's grand, luminous truths in the place of it. That is all ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... with the same line of thought, imperfect states, although called perversions, are regarded by Aristotle as the result rather of misconception and ignorance than of perverse will. They all represent, he says, some kind of justice. Oligarchs and democrats go wrong in their conception of the good. They have come short of the perfect state through misunderstanding of the end or through ignorance of the proper means to ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle

... for not having chosen to reign when the opportunity was offered me, and for having perhaps lost that opportunity forever. This is a misconception. Tell it abroad boldly. I am the depositary of Legitimate Monarchy. I will guard my birthright till my last sigh. I desire royalty as my heritage, as my duty, but never by chance or by intrigue. In ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... French by inheritance, Catholic in religion, with a political experience derived from dealing with the feelings, ambitions and prejudices of a province which was to them an unknown world. Part of the doubt arose from misconception of the qualities of Laurier. As a hard-bitten, time-worn party fighter, with an experience going back to pre-confederation days, said to the writer: "Laurier will never make a leader; he has not enough of the devil in him." This ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe

... declaration of the evils that dog disobedience is as loving as a bright vision of the good that attends on submission. The sternest threatenings of Scripture are spoken that they may never need to be executed. There is no more foolish misconception of Christianity than that which calls it harsh because it reveals that 'the wages of sin is death.' Note that the threatenings come second, not first. God's heart is averse to smite. To lavish blessing is His ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Lavender, bending laboriously over the Psalms, nevertheless kept her dull gray eyes in movement. She saw the misconception, and fearing that Martha did not, ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... Quixote" a sad book, preaching a pessimist view of life, argues a total misconception of its drift. It would be so if its moral were that, in this world, true enthusiasm naturally leads to ridicule and discomfiture. But it preaches nothing of the sort; its moral, so far as it can be said to have one, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... heart once embraced with the greatest enthusiasm, now began to be the objects of his ridicule. He revenged himself on the great truths of religion for the oppression which he had so long suffered from misconception. But, since from too true a voice his heart combated the intoxication of his head, there was more of acrimony than of humor in his jests. His disposition began to alter, and caprice to exhibit itself. The most beautiful ornament of his character, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... the billiard-table upon the scene was to illustrate, by example, design and necessity, as different and independent sources from which results, it might indeed be identical results, may be derived All the conclusions, therefore, that you have arrived at through this misconception or misapplication of my illustration, I cannot take as an answer to the matter stated or intended to be stated by me. Again, following this misconception, you suppose the skeptic (instanced by me as revealing ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... under the madronas from the unsparing early sun, is indeed connected in my mind with some nightmare encounters over Euclid, and the Latin Grammar. These were known as Sam's lessons. He was supposed to be the victim and the sufferer; but here there must have been some misconception, for whereas I generally retired to bed after one of these engagements, he was no sooner set free than he dashed up to the Chinaman's house, where he had installed a printing press, that great element of civilization, and the sound ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... reality of which it is impossible to dispute, are daily occurring to startle and perplex the most learned, impartial, and truth-loving of mankind. Enough, however, has been stated to shew, that if there be some truth in magnetism, there has been much error, misconception, and exaggeration. Taking its history from the commencement, it can hardly be said to have been without its uses. To quote the words of Bailly, in 1784, "Magnetism has not been altogether unavailing to the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... else will give that relish on the lips, that gusto, which communicates its joy to the audience and makes it receptive to every impression. I used to say to teachers, "Tell your story with all your might," but I found that this by a natural misconception was often interpreted to mean "laboriously." And of course nothing is more injurious to the enjoyment of an audience than obvious effort on the part of the entertainer. True zest can be—often is—extremely quiet, but it gives a savour nothing else ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant

... to charge Cicero with a want of originality as a philosopher, and on that score to depreciate his works. The charge is true, but still absurd, for it rests on a misconception, not merely of Cicero's purpose in writing, but of the whole spirit of the later Greek speculation. The conclusion drawn from the charge is also quite unwarranted. If the later philosophy of the Greeks is of any value, Cicero's works are of equal value, for it ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... in the family, though it could scarce be pretended they went well. There was now at least no misconception; there was kindness upon all sides; and I believe my patron and his wife might again have drawn together if he could but have pocketed his pride, and she forgot (what was the ground of all) her brooding on another ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the gentleman, with natural misconception. "I was not aware that he was a friend of yours." And taking a lady on ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... nature, nothing of "the inner God" that is verily himself—imagines that to be from without which is really from within, and, unconscious of his own Divinity, thinks only of Divinities in the world external to himself. And this misconception is the more easy, because the final touch, the vibration that breaks the imprisoning shell, is often the answer from the Divinity within another man, or within some superhuman being, responding to the insistent cry from the imprisoned Divinity within himself; he oft-times recognises ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... in easy circumstances. Insofar as private interests alone are held by their anxious or timid possessors to be in danger, they can safely be ignored, for the concerns of the poor and oppressed are of greater importance than theirs. But I wish from the outset to prevent any misconception from arising, particularly the mistaken notion that my project, if realized, would in the least degree injure property now held by Jews. I shall therefore explain everything connected with rights of property very fully. Whereas, if my plan never becomes anything more ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl

... delicate and responsible situation in which I stood as a public officer, but more especially from a misconception of the manner in which your son had left France, till explained to me in a personal interview with himself, he did not come immediately into my family on his arrival in America, though he was assured, in the first moments of it, of my protection and support. His conduct, since he first set his feet ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... is that the mistrust of theory arises from a misconception of what it is that theory claims to do. It does not pretend to give the power of conduct in the field; it claims no more than to increase the effective power of conduct. Its main practical value is that it can assist a capable man to acquire a broad outlook whereby he may be the surer ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... these things of beauty and skill embody and preserve; and this false idea has helped to spread abroad the feeling that culture is accomplishment rather than force, and that it is for the idle rather than for the active and creative. There never was a more radical misconception of a fundamental process, for culture in the true sense involves, as a process, the highest and truest development of a race, and, as a product, the most enduring spiritual expression of race genius and experience. The culture ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... time an impressive gathering had drawn around, and from its manner of behaving conveyed the suspicion that an entertainment or manifestation of some kind was confidently awaited. To disperse so outrageous a misconception this person was on the point of withdrawing himself when he chanced to see, over the principal door of the Temple, a solid gold figure of colossal magnitude, represented as crowned with leaves and ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... private use is a simple question of construction; but, as a matter of taste, too vehement a protest cannot be entered against the common misconception as to what is desirable in the way of public fountains. An instance in point is furnished by the public drinking-fountain in Newport. Some years ago there stood at the foot of the Parade a grand old stone ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring

... rebuke the personal ambition of the sons of Zebedee (Mark x. 35-45). As for Jesus himself, the popular enthusiasm had not deceived him, nor the obdurate unbelief of Jerusalem daunted him, nor his disciples' misconception of his kingdom disheartened him; he still steadfastly set his face ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees

... copied in creating the office of president was not the real English executive or prime minister, but the fictitious English executive, the sovereign. And this was associated in their minds with another profound misconception, which influenced all this part of their work. They thought that to keep the legislative and executive offices distinct and separate was the very palladium of liberty; and they all took it for granted, without a moment's question, that the British Constitution did ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... delay, to anticipate misconception, that her little scheme of independence did not definitely involve the assistance of another person, of the opposite sex; she was not saving up virtue to cover the expenses of a flirtation. For this there were various ...
— The American • Henry James

... I will not have him.' And she was shutting the door. Her misconception, wilful or not, scattered all Sugarman's prepared diplomacies. 'He does not want you, he wants the ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... that "big business" had any share in influencing our Government's decision to enter the war is an insult to the President and Congress, a libel on American citizenship, and a malicious perversion or ignorant misconception of the facts. Those who continue to circulate that insinuation lay themselves open to just suspicion of their motives and should receive neither ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn

... perhaps, but only as an external foreign ornament, only as a parasitic growth which weakens the force of his real nature. But we must distinguish from these little affectations which arise from a misconception of the limits of individuality that effort of imitation which children and young people often exhibit in trying to copy in their own actions those peculiarities which they observe and admire in perfectly-developed persons with whom they may come in contact. They ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz

... as I indignantly asked myself this question, I saw a great light, and recognized that the trouble was neither with Regnier's fatuity nor with his daughter's lack of charms, but with myself, and a most unworthy misconception into which I had fallen as to the whole object and purport of this interview. What had the beauty or the lack of beauty of this girl to do with the present occasion? I was not here to render homage ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... away with the faintest sigh. The habitual look of abstraction returned to her eyes as if she had once more taken refuge in her own ideal world. Unfortunately the change did not escape either the sensitive observation or the fatuous misconception of the sagacious parent. "Ye'll be mountin' a few furbelows and fixins, Rosey, I reckon, ez only natural. Mabbee ye'll have to prink up a little now that we've got a gentleman contractor in the ship. I'll see what I kin pick up in Montgomery ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte

... Hooker's alleged lack of heart of his subordinate officers. And this reason is only to be found in Hooker's inability to handle so many men. All the resolutions in the world, passed under a furore of misstatement and misconception, even by such a noble body of men as Third-Corps veterans, will not re-habilitate Joseph Hooker's military character during these five days, nor make him other than a morally and intellectually impotent man from May ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... however, be no misconception on this subject. The question now is not whether Lloyd was right in wishing to add a fourth rank, armed with pikes, to the infantry formation, with the expectation of producing more effect by the shock when attacking, or opposing a greater resistance when attacked. Every officer of experience ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... before you clearly and plainly what Theosophy means, and what is the function of the Theosophical Society. For we notice very often, especially with regard to the Society, that there is a good deal of misconception touching it, and that people do not realise the object with which it exists, the work that it is intended to perform. It is very often looked upon as the expression of some new religion, as though people in becoming Theosophists must leave the religious community to which he or she may happen ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant

... equanimity whatever should be offered by the Emperor, either in civility or in the way of jest, and not again to disturb an understanding which might be of advantage to Christendom, by a quarrel founded upon misconception of terms or misapprehension of manners. To this prudent resolution the Count of Paris adhered during the whole evening; with some difficulty, however, since it was somewhat inconsistent with his own fiery and inquisitive temper, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... in intolerant hauteur. These dark apostrophes of his muse have attracted less attention, have been less fully understood, than his poems of more tender coloring. The personal character of Chopin had something to do with this general misconception. Kind, courteous, and affable, of tranquil and almost joyous manners, he would not suffer the secret convulsions which agitated him to ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... within the borders of the Great American Desert. But settlers has swarmed upon the plains of Nebraska, and the waving fields of grain and the innumerable herds of cattle browsing on her rich pasture-land soon dispelled that misconception, and gave promise of the prosperous development which the State has since attained. Earlier than the farmer or the grazier could reach its soil, Colorado was settled by an intelligent mining population, whose industry ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... in Canada are, no doubt, very numerous; and, owing to misconception and other causes, with which the public are now acquainted, were once desirous of hoisting a new flag; but time and reflection have been at work since, and the term reformer in Canada is no longer one with which a word ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... more honour to MACAULAY'S memory," if I had omitted passages in the letters or diaries which may be said to bear the trace of intellectual narrowness, or political and religious intolerance. I cannot but think that strictures, of this nature imply a serious misconception of the biographer's duty. It was my business to show my Uncle as he was, and not as I, or any one else, would have had him. If a faithful picture of MACAULAY could not have been produced without injury to his memory, I should have ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... taken of old must be carefully examined, and if untenable, abandoned. Arguments which proved too much, which availed against any Church at all, must be given up. Popular objections, arising from ignorance or misconception, must be reduced to their true limits or laid aside. The controversy was sure to be a real one, and nothing but what was real and would stand scrutiny was ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... 'at the mild and benevolent tone in which, under the common misconception, a little anecdote, simple and harmless in itself, was uttered. Indeed, we smiled—but we trust the smile was that of a Christian—on hearing our respected and respectable contemporary doling out the mistake ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... I find the same misconception insisted on in a document much later than Lowell's essay: a leaflet by the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, contributed to a Good Citizenship Series especially designed for the enlightenment of the more ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... closely connected with the countries and nations which surrounded it that its history cannot be properly understood apart from theirs. Isolated and alone, its history is in large measure unintelligible or open to misconception. The keenest criticism is powerless to discover the principles which underlie it, to detect the motives of the policy it describes, or to estimate the credibility of the narratives in which it is contained, ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce

... Barrows on an archaeological expedition. And as the very name of archaeology, owing to a serious misconception incidental to human nature, is enough to deter most people from taking any further interest in our proceedings when once we got there, I may as well begin by explaining, for the benefit of those who have never been to one, the method and ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... brother-in-law of Lancaster, January 25th, 1393. This was her last recorded act, for on the third of February she was dead. (Rot. Ex. Michs, 14 R. II; Compotus Soberti de Whitteby, 1392-3, folio 19; Rot. Pat. 16 R. II, Part 3.)—Much misconception exists as to the terms of her will. She is represented by some writers as having been driven to provide for her son Richard by the purchase of the King's favour, having bequeathed all her goods to his Majesty on a species of compulsion. ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... private interests alone are held by their anxious or timid possessors to be in danger, they can safely be ignored, for the concerns of the poor and oppressed are of greater importance than theirs. But I wish from the outset to prevent any misconception from arising, particularly the mistaken notion that my project, if realized, would in the least degree injure property now held by Jews. I shall therefore explain everything connected with rights ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl

... poet of the "Creation" wished, by highly artificial verse, to inculcate what he supposed to be moral truth—the poet of the "Ancient Mariner" to infuse the Poetic Sentiment through channels suggested by analysis. The one finished by complete failure what he commenced in the grossest misconception; the other, by a path which could not possibly lead him astray, arrived at a triumph which is not the less glorious because hidden from the profane eyes of the multitude. But in this view even the "metaphysical ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... their training, such as it is, under forms of government and amid a social order very unlike ours. Disgust at the general dirtiness and corruption of our politics, we are told, keeps all our leading men out of public life. This appears to us, we confess, a rather shallow misconception. Our politics are no dirtier or more corrupt than those of our neighbors. The famous Quam parva sapientia regitur mundus was not said in scorn by the minister of a republic, but in sober sadness by one whose dealings had been lifelong with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... commerce, and the unrestricted intercourse of men and nations with each other. If they are right, then this Bridge is a colossal blunder, and the doctrine which bids us to love our neighbors as ourselves is founded upon a misconception of ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley

... not know how to think," he insisted—getting along the planks; "and they will not realize that they do not know how to think. Nine-tenths of the wars in the world have arisen out of misconceptions.... Misconception is the sin and dishonour of the mind, and muddled thinking as ignoble as dirty ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... confidence in our Church. We have proved this by endeavoring to get our views fully known. And we feel grateful for the spirit of kindness towards us manifested in the action of Synod, and also in the letters received from fathers and brethren in the ministry, notwithstanding their misconception of our views. But, we have also learned, how easily our views may be mistaken. In our paper, addressed to General Synod, when discussing the difficulties in the way of the Synod's jurisdiction over churches so far removed in time, distance, and circumstances, we remarked:—'Will written correspondence ...
— History and Ecclesiastical Relations of the Churches of the Presbyterial Order at Amoy, China • J. V. N. Talmage

... capital letter, and actions which are commonly called sinful: with murder, theft, adultery, and so forth. Much the same connexion that there is between the A, B, C and fine literature. But I believe that the misconception—it is all but universal—arises in great measure from our looking at the matter through social spectacles. We think that a man who does evil to us and to his neighbours must be very evil. So he ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... now. She felt that the Furies were pursuing her. Ah, but the end had come—come with such hideous misconception—every word spoken—and there had been so few in comparison with the immensity of the occasion—a hopeless blunder. It had been the tussle of two opposing temperaments, it was like the rasping steel ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... audacious fabrication on the occasion—there is no mystery in the case! (No. 24. p. 386.) So, to stop the current of misconception, and economise space on future occasions, I venture to repeat a few words in suggesting as a canon of criticism:—Before we censure an author or editor we should consult his ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various

... regret of the past, nor fear of the future, I believe. Strong in his prejudices, haughty and independent in his spirit, cruel in his anger,—even when unprovoked; vindictive to excess, if he through misconception supposed himself even slightly injured, pertinacious in his attacks, invincible in his aversions: the description of Menelaus in 'Homer's Iliad,' as rendered by Pope, exactly suits ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... against misconception, an explanatory document was drawn up by the government at the time of the passing of the act, which is highly curious and significant. "The King's Grace," says this paper, "hath no new authority given hereby ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... full meaning, it may be well first to meet the most common misconception about play. It is not surprising that those who have given the subject no special consideration should regard play from the ordinary adult standpoint, and think of it as entirely opposed to work, as relaxation of effort. But the play ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... been working up in England during the last few years towards this misconception in the schools. On the one hand there was the great impetus given to physical research and experimental science in recent years, so that its discoveries absorbed more and more attention, and this filtered down ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart

... for it in the abnormal, the chaotic, the lawless, or that which defies all reduction to order that may be depended on. This notion underlies the traditional debate between naturalism and supernaturalism.... This unhappy misconception of the relation of the natural to the supernatural has practically led the great body of uncritical thinkers into the grotesque inversion of all reason—the more law and order, the less God."—Zion's Herald, ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton

... naturally direct our attention elsewhere. But without a desire to effect some change in or through the problem being attended to, the mind would not voluntarily make it an object of attention. The misconception as to the relation of voluntary attention to interest is seen in an illustration often given as an example of non-voluntary attention. It is said, rightly enough, that if a child is reading an interesting story, and is just at the point where the ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education

... A curious misconception, this. Some of the founders of Marietta acquired in 1788 a large tract west and north of their own, and as a private speculation organized the Scioto Company. Joel Barlow, the poet, was sent to ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... sacred elements imparted to the material frame of the believer the germ of immortality. [489:1] Irenaeus declares that "our bodies, receiving the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, but possessed of the hope of eternal life." [489:2] This misconception of the ordinance was the fruitful source of superstition. The mere elements began to be regarded with awful reverence; the loss of a particle of the bread, or of a drop of the wine, was considered a tremendous desecration; and it was probably the growth of such feelings which initiated ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... the Christians' conceptions of demons. The Pagans, in fact, ascribed to their gods not only demoniac (diabolical) but also divine qualities, which the Christians absolutely denied them. Consequently they had to recognise that pagan worship to a great extent rested on a delusion, on a misconception of the essential character of the gods which were worshipped. This view was corroborated by the dogma of the fallen angels, which was altogether alien to paganism. By identifying them with the evil spirits of the Bible, demon-names were even obtained which differed ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann

... to find that our friend Colonel Grogg has behaved with a very undue degree of vehemence in a dispute with you last night, occasioned by what I am convinced was a gross misconception of your expressions. As the Colonel, though a military man, is not too haughty to acknowledge an error, he has commissioned me to make his apology as a mutual friend, which I am convinced you will accept from ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... at the reflection that his attitude was distinctly liable to misconception, straightened himself with perhaps too great a suddenness, while the faint amusement in his companion's face heightened his displeasure. Millicent had managed to obtain a survey of the intruders, and when sure ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... may mark as an epoch in the Girondin destinies; the rage so exasperated itself, the misconception so darkened itself. Many desert the sittings; many come to them armed. (Meillan, Memoires, pp. 85, 24.) An honourable Deputy, setting out after breakfast, must now, besides taking his Notes, see whether his Priming is ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... that spell preceded prayer in the evolution of religion proceeds upon a misconception of the process of evolution. At one time it was assumed and accepted without question that the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and all their various species, were successive stages of one process of evolution; and that the process proceeded ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons

... studies of the University Commission making an effort to meet this need. Judged from the value of the monographs hitherto produced, however, one must express the regret that these works do not measure up to the desired standard. The chief difficulty lies in the misconception that the whole matter of readjustment may be effected by using the white man only. He is to do the thinking, outline the method of attack, and direct the movement. The Negro, the other half of the equation, has not been invited to share this work and the writers making these ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... verdict, in spite of the knowledge that they would be put to death for finding it, there would have been some force in Paley's argument. But then they had not. To assume such an origin for any religion implied a total misconception of the facts. Paley assumed that the apostles resembled twelve respectable deans of Carlisle solemnly declaring, in spite of the most appalling threats, that John Wesley had been proved to have risen from the dead. Paley might plausibly ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... honour, whereas my idea had been that that was the only possible way in which I, a political outlaw, could venture to visit Karlsruhe, though my object was a purely professional one. I could not help smiling at this strange misconception, but I was also startled at this proof of shallowness in my old friend, and began to wonder what he might ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... his tell-tale countenance before Olivia, and as he remained in an unaccustomed seclusion for the remainder of the day, she naturally believed him cold, though a woman with a fuller experience of his sex might have come to a different conclusion. Her misconception, so far from being dispelled when he joined her and her father in the evening, was confirmed, for his natural gaiety was gone, and an emotional constraint, made up of love, dubiety, and hope, kept him silent even in the precious moments when Doom retired to his reflections ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... of thought; for, that one thing is one,—that an object is one object,—every child knows by intuition, and not by "consideration." Lastly, to consider "an object as more" than one, is impossible; unless this admirable definition lead us into a misconception in so plain a case! So much for the art ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... and wise belief. The philosopher is the true prophet, appearing before men in behalf of that which is finally the truth. He is the spokesman of the most considerate and comprehensive reflection possible at any stage in the development of human thought. Owing to a radical misconception of function, the man of science has in these later days begun to regard himself as the wise man, and to teach the people. Popular materialism is the logical outcome of this determination of belief by natural ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... as I have said, gained him many admirers. In them he for the first time touched somewhat upon the tendencies of the current epoch, and took an entirely independent stand among the philosophers of New England. Yet, for a while, there was the oddest misconception of his attitude by those at a distance. A Whig magazine, pleased by his manly and open conservatism, felt convinced that he must be a Whig, though he was, at the moment of the announcement, taking ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... different in type. It behoveth thee not to slay Dundubhas who are serpents only in name. Subject like other serpents to the same calamities but not sharing their good fortune, in woe the same but in joy different, the Dundubhas should not be slain by thee under any misconception.' ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... retaliation—readily complied with Blake's summons; but was astounded, on entering the admiral's cabin, at being told he was a prisoner, and requested to give up his sword. No! was the surprised but resolute Frenchman's reply. Blake felt that an advantage had been gained by a misconception, and scorning to make a brave officer its victim, he told his guest he might go back to his ship, if he wished, and fight it out as long as he was able. The captain, we are told, thanked him for ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various

... only the child who has become master of his mother's or his nurse's responses, and can produce at will the effect he desires. The idea that the child possesses a strong will, which can and must be broken by persistent opposition, is based upon this tendency of the child. It is an entire misconception of the situation: Strength of will and fixity of purpose are among the last powers which the human mind develops. In little children they are conspicuously absent. What appears to us as a fixed and persistent desire to perform a definite action in spite of all we can say or do, is often no more ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron

... of God is so strongly figurative an expression that its metaphorical character cannot but be obvious to the most cursory reader. The very frankness, and, we may say, the grossness of the image, saves it from all misconception, and as with other similar expressions in the Old Testament, at once suggests its meaning. We read, for example, of the 'arm,' the 'hand,' the 'finger' of God, and everybody feels that these mean His power. We read of the 'eye' of God, and everybody knows that that means His omniscience. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Christian faith; to the Catholic, it seemed to be a fatal revolt against the only organization by which Christianity could be realized. Really it partook of both characters. It involved at once a dangerous misconception of the social conditions, under which alone the religious life can be realized and developed, and a deeper and truer apprehension of that religion, which first recognized the latent divinity or universal capacity of every spiritual being as such, and which, therefore, seemed to impose ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... had been the constant image without which Christendom could not be; St. Gregory VII. at every point made that unity tangible and visible. The Protestant historians who, for the most part, see in the man a sporadic phenomenon, by such a misconception betray the source of their anmia and prove their intellectual nourishment to be unfed from the fountain of European life. St. Gregory VII. was not an inventor, but a renovator. He worked not upon, but in, his material; and his material was the nature ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc

... My misconception was short-lived, for at this moment Ruffin—the bandaged and bloody Ruffin—came close up to me; and, after scowling upon me with his fierce, bloodshot eyes, bent forward until his lips almost touched my ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... caused by physical or by psychic forces. A "nervous" disorder is not a physical but a psychic disease. It is caused not by lack of energy but by misdirected energy; not by overwork or nerve-depletion, but by misconception, emotional conflict, repressed instincts, and buried memories. Seventy-five per cent. of all cases of ill-health are due to psychic causes, to disjointed thinking rather than to a disjointed spine. Wherefore, let us learn ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... ignorance that people have a misconception of these truths. The development of the human mind is no less important than the development of the physical condition of man. His education, therefore, is a paramount duty of the state, and his protection against the weakening of his physical condition is equally important. That legislation has ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis

... were men unspeakably too far above and beyond their time, to take its bone and muscle with them. There was no language in which their doctrines could have been openly conveyed to an English public at that time without fatal misconception. The truth, which was to them arrayed with the force of a universal obligation,—the truth, which was to them religion, would have been, of course, in an age in which a single, narrow-minded, prejudiced Englishwoman's opinions were accepted as the ultimate rule of faith and practice, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... authoritative teacher, distinctly denies that the acceptance of Jesus in this character is any condition of salvation and of the divine favour, and treats of my "demand of an oracular Christ," as inconsistent with my own principles. But this is mere misconception of what I have said. I find Jesus himself to set up oracular claims. I find an assumption of pre-eminence and unapproachable moral wisdom to pervade every discourse from end to end of the gospels. If I may not believe that Jesus assumed ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... as it is beginning to be recognized that in politics, as in everything else, woman's help is needed, and the republic can not afford to have her stand aloof. But this phase of the subject has been so much misunderstood, both by men and women, that time is needed to clear away the mists of misconception which envelop it; and to prove that the co-operation of women in political life is not only just and expedient, but absolutely indispensable to the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... by their downrush—knowing nothing of the mysteries of his own nature, nothing of "the inner God" that is verily himself—imagines that to be from without which is really from within, and, unconscious of his own Divinity, thinks only of Divinities in the world external to himself. And this misconception is the more easy, because the final touch, the vibration that breaks the imprisoning shell, is often the answer from the Divinity within another man, or within some superhuman being, responding to the insistent cry from the imprisoned Divinity within himself; he oft-times ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... and their respective styles are carefully described by Pliny. Even more interesting perhaps is the gallery of Roman ladies, whose portraits are limned with so fine and discriminating a touch. Juvenal again is responsible for much misconception as to the part the women of Rome played in Roman society. The appalling Sixth Satire, in which he unhesitatingly declares that most women—if not all—are bad, and that virtue and chastity are so rare as to be almost unknown, in which he roundly accuses them of all the vices known ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger

... thanked, he would not think of it. For the reserve, the apprehension—dreadful those things are, and desecrating to one's own nature—but we did not make this position, we only endure it. The root of the evil is the miserable misconception of the limits and character of parental rights—it is a mistake of the intellect rather than of the heart. Then, after using one's children as one's chattels for a time, the children drop lower and lower toward the level of the chattels, and the duties of human sympathy to them ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... and the rest are not organs. Buddhi, ahankra and kitta, on the other hand, are (not independent organs but) mere designations of the manas, according as the latter is engaged in the functions of deciding (adhyavasya), or misconception (abhimna), or thinking (kint). The organs therefore are eleven. From this it follows that in the passage 'Ten are these prnas in man, and tman is the eleventh' (Bri. Up. II, 4, ii), the word tman denotes the manas. The number eleven is confirmed by scriptural and Smriti passages, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... respect to whom the Admiralty had been guilty of one of its rare oversights. For generations no call was made upon them to serve the king at sea. This accidental immunity in course of time came to be regarded by the Brighton fisherman as his birthright, and the misconception bred consequences. For one thing, it made him intolerably saucy. He boasted that no impress officer had power to take him, and he backed up the boast by openly insulting, and on more than one occasion violently assaulting the king's uniform. With all this he was a hardy, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... entry to Washington society. The Ambassador was away on leave, and she had appeared during his absence, but she had been accepted unquestionably at the Embassy, where she had taken up her quarters, explaining—as the Ambassador confirmed by cable—that she had sailed under a misconception as to the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... say, an established opinion, that Shakespeare is justly praised when he is pronounced to be 'a wild irregular genius, in whom great faults are compensated by great beauties.' How long may it he before this misconception passes away, and it becomes universally acknowledged that the judgement of Shakespeare in the selection of his materials, and in the manner in which he has made them, heterogeneous as they often are, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... already said to disabuse the reader's mind of the common misconception of Buffon, namely, that he was more or less of an elegant trifler with science, who cared rather about the language in which his ideas were clothed than about the ideas themselves, and that he did not hold the same opinions for ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... external and actual existence of the table, the chair, and the other material substances with which we conceive ourselves to be surrounded, of woods, and mountains, and rivers, and seas, are mere prejudice and misconception. All this is very well in the closet, and as long as we are involved in meditation, and remain abstracted from action, business, and the exertion of our limbs and corporal faculties. But it is too fine for the realities of life. Berkeley, and the most strenuous ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... obligation; but the great Hearer of Prayer regards each heart in its own scope of vision, and helps not less the mistaken than the enlightened distress. And for that matter, who is enlightened? who carries to God's throne a trouble or a temptation in which there is not somewhere a misconception or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... consent to his arrangements received and acknowledged, there was the durbar to attend, at which Kharrak Singh conferred his khilats and received his nazars in the most angelic manner, and it was zealously whispered about that Sher Singh had left the city under a complete misconception of the love and affection entertained for him by his brother, which would be proved by the honourable embassy sent to command his return, and the gifts that it would carry. One of these was to be the ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... friends! Doubtless the Adventurers, mostly men of peace, traders, if thou wilt have it so, yet none the worse for that, do somewhat fail to fathom the perils of this our undertaking; still no man is to be condemned for an honest misconception, and these same traders have freely risked their money to furnish us forth. We, too, had never stood on this rock to-night had not those men thrust their hands deep into their pockets, and is it out of reason for them to ask to see ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... day as I was getting on the train at Petunkey," old General Van Sickle, or Judge Dickensheets, or ex-Judge Avery would begin—and then would follow some amazing narration of rural immorality or dullness, or political or social misconception. Of the total population of the state at this time over half were in the city itself, and these he had managed to keep in control. For the remaining million, divided between twelve small cities and an agricultural population, he had ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... jokes, savour of his familiarity with the vulgar ... mostly inclines to the farcical, to overwrought and often disgusting drollery." This is doubtless true, but, by making the incidental a criterion for the whole, it gives a gross misconception to one that has not ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke

... which event, according to Aunt Aggie, had been brought about by a persistent refusal to wear on her chest a small square of flannel, (quite a small square) sprinkled with camphorated oil, and according to Aunt Mary by a total misconception of the Bellairs' character; when this event happened, the two aunts became what they called supports ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property—historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production—the misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in the case of your ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx

... interested in your welfare, as the chosen friend of my son, and also for your father's sake, now it is for your own. The different positions we occupy in life, the wide distance which circumstances place between us, will, I feel sure, prevent all misconception on your part as to my meaning, and prevent your drawing from my friendly words conclusions opposite to what I intend, therefore I do not hesitate to avow that I not only esteem, but from my heart I thank you, Myrvin, for your indulgence of those ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar

... addressed a monster gathering of business men at Ponkapog. He said that it was a cruel misconception to hold that Americans were without ideals. As a matter of fact they cherished their ideals far beyond any question of making money and would die rather than submit to acts which were an outrage on our common humanity. In declaring ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various

... Colambre; but he thanked the young man, and determined to avail himself of Larry's misconception or false report; examined the stones very gravely, and said, 'This promises well. Lapis caliminaris, schist, plum-pudding stone, rhomboidal, crystal, blend, garrawachy,' and all the strange names he could think of, jumbling them ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth

... Another misconception relative to interest is the idea that to make a subject interesting you must so popularize it that you cheapen it. This idea is typified in the "snap" courses in school—courses made interesting at the expense ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion

... indisposed to see the Duke; but, after a careful consideration of Peel's letter, they came to the conclusion that there was no difference between the Queen's statement to them and Peel's to her, and, therefore, no misconception to correct. The Chancellor accordingly gave his opinion, that there was no ground for an interview between Melbourne and the Duke; so then ended the last hope ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... continued till a period not far back, when several inquiring minds, chiefly Germans, endeavoured to clear up the misconception, and to give the ancients their due, without being insensible to the merits of the moderns, although of a totally different kind. The apparent contradiction did not intimidate them. The groundwork of human nature is no doubt everywhere the same; but in all our investigations, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... any of our charitable work. Imperfect knowledge perverts the noblest sentiments; widened and perfected knowledge strengthens their power. A truly philanthropic sentiment is most potent for good in the power of knowledge, and may be made most powerful for evil through misconception of or inadequate comprehension of facts. As we grow in aspirations after the highest welfare of the insane, let us widen our knowledge of the real nature of insanity and the necessities for its ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... remains the same. Coleridge's service lay in asserting and reasserting such fundamental principles as that a critical standard is something quite distinct from a set of external rules; that the traditional opposition between genius and laws was based on a misconception as to the function of the critic; that all great genius necessarily worked in accordance with certain laws which it was the function of the critic to determine by a study of each particular work of art; that art, being vital and organic, assumed different shapes ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... brandishing peas; his offended napkin chokes him; with the yell and spring of a corpulent hyena, he rises and rushes to the windows. The timid pensionnaire and her shrinking sisterhood follow him, under the misconception that he is summoning them to admire the sunset; the sunset is their evening excitement, and DONNERWITZ can be sentimental in his calmer moments; but no "Wie wunder, wunderschoen!" escapes him; a Saxon word, that even they can understand, is on his lips; the ring on his forefinger gleams luridly; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various

... not, my ignorance is incurable, for I have spared no pains to understand it,—and I do most solemnly assure those of my constituents who put any sort of confidence in my industry and integrity, that everything that has been done there has arisen from a total misconception of the object: that our means of originally holding America, that our means of reconciling with it after quarrel, of recovering it after separation, of keeping it after victory, did depend, and must depend, in their several stages ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... confused misconception of his meaning, Mainwaring tried to recall the historical dress of the great Cardinal and fit it to the masquerader—if such he were—before him. But Richelieu relieved ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte

... she did not reason from an outside stand-point. This was probably what helped her not only to recognize the false position of her sex, but to understand the real cause of the trouble. She referred it, not to individual cases of masculine tyranny or feminine incompetency, but to the fundamental misconception of the relations of the sexes. Therefore, what she had to do was to awaken mankind to the knowledge that women are human beings, and then to insist that they should be given the opportunity to assert themselves as such, and that their sex should become a secondary consideration. ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... evolutionists said, why they said it, wherein he differed from them, and in what way he proposed to set them straight, he would have taken a course at once more agreeable with usual practice, and more likely to remove misconception from his own mind and from those of his readers." {239} This I have no doubt was one of the passages which made Mr. Romanes so angry with me. I can find no better words to apply to Mr. Romanes himself. He knows perfectly well what others have written about the connection ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler

... bounded by the lines of his sensible experience. How any degree of eloquence can be compatible with this state of things, passes comprehension. And what reflection would conclude, a little examination will confirm. The mistake has, doubtless, grown out of a misconception of the nature of eloquence itself.[15] If eloquence were all figure—even if it were, in any considerable degree, mere figure—then the tawdriest rhetorician would be the greatest orator. But it is not so. On the contrary, the use of ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... is confident of the strength of his own position; each is eager for a close hug of dialectics. Far from avoiding the point, they drive directly towards it, clearing their essential propositions from mutual misconception by the sharpest analysis and exactest statement. To get their minds near each other, to think close to the subject, to feel the griding contact of pure intellect with pure intellect, and, as spiritual beings, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... little loving them, with a great heart early clouded and a strong mind warped thereby, had begun to pin his faith to her I speak of, and in her eyes to see reconciliation to earth and heaven; and then for one rash word, one casual misconception such as comes between any of us, had fancied the cup of promise snatched away, and in his misjudging innocence gone back to his cave of gloom, thinking himself doomed to a state worse than that from which he had been nearly rescued. Would she let him ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol

... conservation is that it stands for development. There has been a fundamental misconception that conservation means nothing but the husbanding of resources for future generations. There could be no more serious mistake. Conservation does mean provision for the future, but it means also and first of all the recognition of the right of the present generation to the fullest ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot

... still; he knew there was no appeal for him, and that, so long as Mabel believed that he had sacrificed her husband to his deliberate selfishness, she would never relent towards him. There were times when he asked himself if he was bound to suffer all this misconception from the one woman he had ever loved—but he knew always that in clearing himself he would lay her happiness in ruins, and resolved to bear his burden to the end, sustained by the conviction, which every day became clearer, that he would not have ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... published the Reminiscences himself I think that much misconception in the public mind respecting the character of Mr. Beckford would have been prevented. For instance, I remember, when a child, being warned that this great man was an infidel. When he showed my Father the sarcophagus in which his body was to be placed, he remarked, "There shall ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown

... precision may be laid down, according to which they will be regulated. The political economist justly deems this his proper business: and, as an abstract or hypothetical science, political economy can not be required to do, and indeed can not do, anything more. But it would be a great misconception of the actual course of human affairs to suppose that competition exercises in fact this unlimited sway. I am not speaking of monopolies, either natural or artificial, or of any interferences of authority with the liberty of production or exchange. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... dark mist into the 'lumen siccum' of sincere knowledge!)—I cannot persuade myself that this vehemence of our dear man of God against Bullinger, Zuinglius and OEcolampadius on this point could have had other origin, than his misconception of what they intended. But Luther spoke often (I like him and love him all the better therefor,) in his moods and according to the mood. Was not that a different mood, in which he called St. James's Epistle ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... aspect, of language, above all by the intellectual charm of new, moving, luminous ideas. Perhaps the chief offence in Coleridge is an excess of seriousness, a seriousness arising not from any moral principle, but from a misconception of the perfect manner. There is a certain shade of unconcern, the perfect manner of the eighteenth century, which may be thought to mark complete culture in the handling of abstract questions. The humanist, the possessor ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... contains in ideal all special privileges, the common misconception is quite natural, which takes it to be mere force, empty caprice, and synonymous with despotism. But despotism means a state of lawlessness, in which the particular will as such, whether that of monarch or ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... has laid himself open to much misconception, and has given to his opponents a powerful weapon against himself, by his continual use of metaphor in describing the wonderful co-adaptations ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... only would the sailor himself be in error in taking such a view, but he might seriously compromise the intelligence or integrity of his friend in the judgment of all who held, on his testimony, that it was with his friend, and not from his own misconception of his friend's meaning, that the view had originated. And how, let us ask, ere dismissing our lengthened illustration, is an error such as the supposed one here to be tested, and its erroneousness exposed? There can ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... at some length, and commented on the barbarity of such tactics. They were not only barbarous, he affirmed, but senseless. Where did the inhabitants of the villages go? To the enemy of course! This reveals, perhaps, the most remarkable misconception of the actual facts. The writer seemed to imagine that the tribesmen consisted of a regular army, who fought, and a peaceful, law-abiding population, who remained at their business, and perhaps protested against the excessive military expenditure ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... to make a note on the article under this heading to avoid a possible misconception amongst people outside Ireland. In Ireland there is no religious dissension, but there is religious insincerity. English politicians, to serve the end of dividing Ireland, have worked on the religious feelings of the North, suggesting the danger of Catholic ascendancy. There is not now, and there ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney

... depend the welfare of mankind. Many "solutions" have been offered; and, though they have differed widely, they agree in one respect—they have had a common fate—the fate of being false. What has been the trouble? The trouble has been, in every instance, a radical misconception of what a human being really is. The problem is to discover the natural laws of the human class of life. All the "solutions" offered in the course of history and those which are current to-day ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski

... of the ancient Sees which were held by the established church. It is impossible to mention anything connected with the establishment of the hierarchy which can at all explain the violence of the bishops and clergy generally of the establishment. The popular commotion arose from misconception and the absurd falsehoods that were industriously disseminated. The masses were still raging, when Dr. Wiseman, who had just been raised to the dignity of Cardinal, published an appeal to the people of England, in which ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... orchestra was. The energy with which he threw himself into the task of trying to repair his blunders won the sympathy of the members of the critical guild, though it did not wholly atone for his conscious or unconscious misconception of American conditions. It was not pleasant to think that he had so poor an opinion of American knowledge and taste in music that before coming he thought that anything would be good enough for this country. His experience in Italy ought ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... each supported on a huge gouty leg. This would have been in itself sufficient to have possessed the company with the real state of affairs; but the young woman of all work had prevented the possibility of any misconception arising in the mind of any gentleman upon the subject, by forcibly dragging every man's glass away, long before he had finished his beer, and audibly stating, despite the winks and interruptions of Mr. Bob Sawyer, that it was to be ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... Eugenia's face, had tried to make her laugh, and now, with an effort, laughed with her. She had forgotten her passing notion that Eugenia had something special to say. What could she have? They had gone over that astonishing misconception of hers about the Powers woodlot, and she had quite made Marise understand how hopelessly incapable she was of distinguishing one business detail from another. There could be nothing else that Eugenia could ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... amount of the private debts, you take in compound interest at the different rates specified in our paragraph. This it was not our intention to allow; and lest any misconception should arise on the spot, we have added an express direction that the debts be made up with simple interest only, from the time of their respective ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... understood what patriotism meant, what love for one's own country signified. He had arrived in South Africa determined to spare neither his person nor his strength in her service, and the man who was repeatedly accused both by the Dutch and by the English party in the Colony of labouring under a misconception of its real political situation was the one who had from the very first appreciated it as it deserved, and had recognised its damning as ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill

... is all a dreadful misconception; and if you will go with me to Sir Thomas Vandeleur's in Eaton Place, I can promise that all will be made plain. The most upright person, as I now perceive, can be led ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... that he was merely under a misconception, that she was really only putting on her glasses to humour him, and give him time to find out his mistake. The fact that he had addressed her as "mother" counted for absolutely nothing. Any man in the village would address her ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... the main point of this chapter long enough to explain that equality is not synonymous with identity, as seems to be the impression among the many; a misconception which we regret to say is shared by the judge on the bench with the workingman on the construction gang, and the idiotic observation that "if women expect to vote they must expect to stand up in the street-car," is not, alas! confined to the lout, but is quite often voiced ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad

... Mr. Bullock Hall most deservedly received the Red Ribbon, his leader was overlooked. The tens of thousands of pounds collected by Sir John Robinson which may be said to have kept alive starving people and vivified deserts, were gratefully acknowledged by the French Government. By some unaccountable misconception, the decoration here only gratified ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... hide his poverty, as with the passionate lover whose mistress has her heart broken. In truth, this criticism as to the absence of high passion reminds us again that Scott was a thorough Scotsman, and—for it is necessary, even now, to avoid the queer misconception which confounds together the most distinct races—a thorough Saxon. He belonged, that is, to the race which has in the most eminent degree the typical English qualities. Especially his intellect had a strong substratum of downright dogged common sense; his religion, one may conjecture, was pretty ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... approach. They did so with a prompt readiness which suggested a camp of highly-disciplined soldiers. The chief explained what had been agreed upon, and made his orders so explicit that there could be no misconception on the part of any one. Finley watched closely while he listened, and saw that in this matter at least all was above board. The chieftain's self-confidence was so ingrained and deeply set that he could ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis

... purely as a war necessity and not because of any consideration for the slave. The undergraduate, in imitation of his erudite tutors, has asserted that the freedmen owe more to the pride of the haughty Southerner than to the magnanimity of President Lincoln. But the mists of doubt and misconception have been so dissipated by the sunlight of history, that we, of this generation, may clearly see the martyred President ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... less prominent place in the conduct of its affairs. The idea seemed to be prevalent that the organizers were enthusiastic for direct financial reasons. "Those fellows are talking for what they are going to get out of it," was an open accusation at times—a misconception so unjust that on several occasions Partridge had refuted it by pledging to resign from the presidency as soon as the company was on ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse

... methods of dealing with it and certain economic laws, subject to many exceptions, which we may consider to be established, but nevertheless it is as far from being an exact science as one can conceive. The exact science notion is the misconception of cloistered learning which can build impregnable systems where there are none to attack them, but which has no idea of the practical difficulties of an unsympathetic world where the precious system must meet every possible objection and not merely those ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... to confess that he was not quite satisfied with himself, though "not very bad for a commissary;" and finally, as the decanter waxed low, he would interlard his meditations by passages of Scripture, singularly perverted by his misconception from their true meaning, and alternately throwing out prospects of censure or approval. Such was Major Monsoon; and to conclude in his own words this brief sketch, he "would have been an excellent officer ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... distressing combat into a relatively simple proposition. The conductor and his assistants were fighting for their conception of order, and their opponents were fighting for their conception of manhood. Reduced to its primal elements, the fight was the result of a dual misconception. The conductor was battling to vindicate his conception of order; the foreigners were battling to vindicate their conception of the rights of men in a democracy. Neither party to the contest understood the other, and each one felt himself to be on the defensive. Neither one ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... disciplined men into the heart of the enemy's country. Omdurman and Atbara, to say nothing of previous campaigns, had shown how desperately the Dervishes fought; and the order, for the garrison of Kassala to undertake it, can only have been given under an entire misconception of the circumstances, and of the strength of the army under Fadil, that they would almost certainly be called upon to encounter. This was the more probable, as all the women and the property of his soldiers had been left at Gedareh, when he ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty

... generally much misconception as to the profits ordinarily derived by the author from the publication of a book. The price of a novel today is about two dollars. Usually the author receives a royalty of about fifteen cents a copy on the first two thousand copies ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... Ashton, "the object being, according to a vulgar error, to exempt the husband from the payment of any debts his wife may have contracted in her ante-nuptial condition. This error seems to have been founded on a misconception of the law, as it is laid down 'the husband is liable for the wife's debts, because he acquires an absolute interest in the personal estate of his wife.' An unlearned person from this might conclude, and not unreasonably, ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker

... if Gilpin's statement has afforded you any satisfaction, I can assure you that he was most explicit in giving it, and even seemed anxious (interrupting me) to do away any misconception. His statement is not contradicted by the last and fullest of the two Narratives which have been published (the former being a mere transcript of the newspapers), which I would send you if I did not suppose that you would receive more pain from the unfeeling ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... hint of any doubt. But not only so, there is no hint of any disclaimer on His part. He must have known whether He could work miracles or not. He must have known that His disciples believed Him to possess the power. There is not the slightest trace of His ever having implied that this was a misconception. He did sometimes disclaim what was ascribed to Him, even when what was ascribed to Him was truly His, but was ascribed to Him without real knowledge of what it implied. 'Why callest thou Me good? There is none good but One, that is, God,' we DO find. But 'Why askest thou ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter

... clear from this play itself that Shakespeare did not proceed at all from ignorance or misconception of the man. For it is remarkable that, though Caesar delivers himself so out of character, yet others, both foes and friends, deliver him much nearer the truth; so that, while we see almost nothing of him directly, we nevertheless get, upon the whole, a just reflection of him. Especially ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare

... numerical resources of Germany — Lord Kitchener's immediate recognition of the realities of the situation — Sir J. French's suggestion that Lord Kitchener should be commander-in-chief of the Expeditionary Force indicated misconception of ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... bulks large in our imaginations. It is no mere coincidence that the earliest gods of a race are invariably demons. Our first conception of the great forces of nature is that they are our enemies. This misconception is not only natural, but even necessary on the sternest of physical bases. The old darky, Jim, in Huckleberry Finn, hit upon a profound and far-reaching truth when he replied in answer to Huck's question whether among all the signs and portents with which his mind was crammed—like ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson









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