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More "Undervalue" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Freycinet's maps would have been of no more use to Napoleon in getting a footing in Australia than a postage stamp would be in shifting one of the pyramids. He was capable of many mean things, but we gravely undervalue his capacity for seeing to the heart of a problem if we suppose him both mean and silly enough to conspire to cheat Matthew Flinders out of his well and hardly won honours, on the supposition that the maps would help him to assert ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... most intellectual accomplishment. So is music, too, in its perfection. We do by no means undervalue this noble and most delightful art, to which Socrates applied himself even in his old age. But one recommendation of the art of reading is, that it requires a constant exercise of mind. It involves, in its perfection, the whole art of criticism on language. A man ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... afterwards asserted, the confident asseveration of that which every man was willing to believe, enchanted the world. To a certain degree it influenced the King and Court. James was not of a nature to undervalue dignities and opportunities of wealth. While he imprisoned the explorer, he had asserted the title to Guiana acquired through him. He commissioned Captain Charles Leigh in 1604, and, after his death, Captain Robert Harcourt in 1608, to take ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... about it, and repeating to each other what they overheard of a conversation between yourself and your husband, who seemed greatly shocked that you had done it. Susan Goldsborough remarked that if she had known that you had so little sense as to undervalue such a woman in that way, or so little feeling and good-breeding as to violate the laws of common hospitality and politeness so grossly, she would assuredly have declined the party for Julia when ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... which has for centuries in England afforded healthful recreation to all classes must needs possess some value beyond that of mere physical exercise. Not that we would undervalue the latter advantage. Improvement in health usually keeps pace with improvement in cricket. Mr. Grace, the "champion cricketer of the world," is hardly less a champion of muscular physique: he sought in vain for a companion to walk to town, late at night, from the country-seat of the late Mr. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... because they are not big enough to grasp everything. We shall not have much reason to complain of the narrowness of our minds, if we will but employ them about what may be of use to us; for of that they are very capable. And it will be an unpardonable, as well as childish peevishness, if we undervalue the advantages of our knowledge, and neglect to improve it to the ends for which it was given us, because there are some things that are set out of the reach of it. It will be no excuse to an idle and untoward servant, who would not attend his business by ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... Charles has in some measure answered his own objection, and went on to quote the "amended sentence" ('Antiquity of Man,' 2nd Edition page 469) as showing how far Lyell agreed with the general doctrines of the "Origin of Species': "Yet we ought by no means to undervalue the importance of the step which will have been made, should it hereafter become the generally received opinion of men of science (as I fully expect it will) that the past changes of the organic world have been ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... orthography,—a letter to which it would be impossible to add anything, or to take anything away, unless it were the letter itself. But we have yielded to the necessity of punctuating it. In the original there were neither commas nor stops of any kind, not even notes of exclamation,—a fact which tends to undervalue the system of notes and dashes by which modern authors have endeavored to depict the great disasters of all ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... be found more brilliantly illuminating its substance than in our own hearts and lives. The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God. To undervalue God's Providence it is the most dreadful insult that a fool could dare conceive in his mind against God's existence. But the wise hearken ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... preference, the large cities where periodicals and publishing houses offer some hope of support in a literary career. Even in the older and better equipped universities the faculty is usually a corps of working scholars, each man intent upon his specialty and rather inclined to undervalue merely "literary" performance. In many cases the fastidious and hypercritical turn of mind which besets the scholar, the timid conservatism which naturally characterizes an ancient seat of learning and the spirit of theological ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... himself in that wedding. "The knot was tied," as the papers expressed it, "under a huge bell of yellow roses." The paper also named the figure which the flowers and the collation and other things cost Mr. Cooke. A natural reticence forbids me to repeat it. But, lest my client should think that I undervalue his kindness, I will say that we had the grandest wedding ever seen in that part of the world. McCann was there, and Mr. Cooke saw to it that he had a punchbowl all to himself in which to drink our healths: Judge Short was there, still followed by the conjugal eye: ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... great measure the necessity of studying the previous revelation contained in the Old Testament. Few will openly avow this, but too many inwardly cherish the delusion in a vague and undefined form; and it exerts a pernicious influence upon them, leading them to undervalue and neglect the Old Testament Scriptures. Even if the idea under consideration were in accordance with truth, it would still be to every earnest Christian a matter of deep historical interest to study the way by which God prepared the world for the full light of the gospel. ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... ourselves; but, as time and years afford the means of observation and comparison, you will perceive the effects in matters of the last moment, in a national point of view. It is in human nature to undervalue the things with which we are familiar, and to form false estimates of those which are remote, either by time, or by distance. But, go into the drawing-room, and, in young Wenham, you will find one who fancies ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... should be very sorry, sir, to seem to undervalue your consideration or disregard your warning; but I am afraid that even if you had been less merciful to Tappington, and he were now a convicted felon, I should change neither my feelings nor my intentions to ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... One easily might undervalue Adelle's passion, however, if it were judged solely by its intellectual quality. The beauty and the wonder of passion is that it cannot be weighed by any mental scales, its terms are not transferable. Adelle's share of the universal mystery, in spite of the banality of its expression, may ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... pursued by every suitable means, and that no legislation would be wise that should disparage the importance or retard the attainment of that result. I have no disposition, and certainly no right, to question the sincerity or the intelligence of opposing opinions, and would neither conceal nor undervalue the considerable difficulties, and even occasional distresses, which may attend the progress of the nation toward this primary condition to its general and permanent prosperity. I must, however, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Rutherford B. Hayes • Rutherford B. Hayes
... may have to bear with as many unpleasantnesses from you, as you have to bear with from them. You may misunderstand or undervalue others, as much as they misunderstand or undervalue you. And others may be as much disappointed in you, as you are in them. And you may try their patience, as much as they try yours. We know when we are hurt by others, but we do not always know ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... the half century he turned. He pushed caution to such extremes that you can only call ungentlemanly where a nice woman's concerned, and I never shall know to my dying day what kept him off me. A man of good qualities too, but a proper slave to the habit of caution, and though I'd be the last to undervalue the virtue which never was wanted more than now, yet, when the coast lies clear and the sun's shining and the goal in sight, and that goal me, 'twas a depressing thing for the man to hold back without any sane ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... lover—but being unhackneyed in the passion, his affection is ardent and sincere; and as it engrosses his whole soul, he expects every thought and emotion of his mistress to move in unison with his. Yet, though his pride calls for this full return, his humility makes him undervalue those qualities in him which would entitle him to it; and not feeling why he should be loved to the degree he wishes, he still suspects that he is not loved enough. This temper, I must own, has cost ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... descendants of the woman of Samaria, living there in Shechem, still refer with pardonable vanity to this conversation of their ancestor, held some little time gone by, with the Messiah of the Christians. It is not likely that they undervalue a distinction such as this. Samaritan nature is human nature, and human nature remembers contact with the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had been the real author, all this would of course have been delightful to him; it was all so kind and so evidently sincere for the most part, that only a very priggish or cynical person could have affected to undervalue it, and any other, even if he felt it overstrained now and then, would have enjoyed it frankly while it lasted, remembering that, in the nature of things, it could ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... should have perished if you had not come," added Mrs. Flint, who was not disposed to undervalue Harry's good deeds. ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... upon whom Burr relied were venerable Dutchmen, who had, in their youth, carried the surveying chains over the land in dispute, and who were now aged respectively one hundred and four years and one hundred and six years. Hamilton gently attempted to undervalue their testimony, but he was instantly put down by the Dutch justice, who suggested that Mr. Hamilton could not be aware of the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... thrown into eclipse by the future; the burnished armour, and massive swords and maces of our old intellectual chivalry, superseded by more manageable and more destructive implements of success; and the sterner conflict followed by the more consummate triumph. Yet, when we undervalue the living ability of a nation from its quietude at the moment, we but adopt the example of every past age in succession. The last ten years of the last century were preceded by a period of despair; Chatham's career was run, and the national regrets over his tomb were mingled with sorrows for the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... it in that way. (He goes chivalrously on his knees.) Ah, Tweeny, I don't undervalue the bucket, but what I want to say now is that the sweet refinement of a dear girl has done more for me ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... hand, if Edith had praised Aylmer, Bruce would have been the first to debiner his actions, undervalue his gifts, and crab ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... see Dr. Herrick had prepared everything. And much of what we are about to do is merely symbolical, of course. Most people undervalue symbols. They do not seem to understand that there could never have been any conceivable need of inventing a periphrasis for what did ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... aristocracies and reigning houses are the last places to look for masterful men. They began strongly, but they have been too long in possession. They have been cosseted and comforted and the devil has gone out of their blood. Don't imagine that I undervalue descent. It is not for nothing that a great man leaves posterity. But who is more likely to inherit the fire—the elder son with his flesh-pots or the younger son with his fortune to find? Just think of it! All the younger sons ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... allusions to my lord contained ordinary inquiries relating to the state of his health, and, on one occasion, there was a wish expressed to know whether he was still on friendly terms with Mr. Vimpany. There seemed to be no fear of tempting her mistress to undervalue the danger of returning to the cottage, if she mentioned the cheering improvement now visible in Mr. Oxbye. And yet Fanny still hesitated to trust her first impressions, even after they had been confirmed. Her own sad experience reminded her of the fatal influence which ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... I am speaking of good Christian people; at least so I take them to be. And really, when you come to consider it, we all of us make a great fuss about our own little bit of virtue, and undervalue the rest—I cannot ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... are forbidden to undervalue the gift of song. You must feel its power over the heart, when you enter the opera-house; over the soul, when you ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... say that! I know well that no man who has been such a friend of Mrs. Stannard's, such a friend to Captain Truscott and Grace, could be what you paint yourself. Oh, don't think—don't think for an instant I undervalue the gift; you—you shall not speak of yourself that way! Do you think any woman who deserves a thought could fail to glory in such a name as you have won? Oh, Mr. Ray, Mr. Ray, I hardly realize that it is possible that you care for me! You, so brave ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... elections is weakening the faith of many in representative institutions. An efficient bureaucracy is now being advocated by a writer so distinguished as Mr. Graham Wallas, as the best safeguard against the excesses of an unstable and ignorant democracy. There is no need to undervalue the importance of competent officials, but all experience has shown the equal necessity of an adequate check upon the bureaucracy, however efficient, and such check must be found in the strengthening of representative bodies. Mr. Graham Wallas ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... little cousin in this way. You have no idea how faithful and devoted she is. She has actually refused a most advantageous offer of marriage to remain with us. She told me this in confidence; the girls do not know it: perhaps I ought not to have repeated it; but you undervalue Etta. Few women would sacrifice themselves so entirely ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... monstrous habit of slaughtering each other, not for food—for in a race of normal cannibals, the ratio of increase or decrease might easily be calculated—but uselessly, from rage, hate, fanaticism, or even mere wantonness? No man is less inclined than I to undervalue vital statistics, and their already admirable results: but how can they help us, and how can we help them, in looking at such a past as that of three- fourths of the nations of the world? Look—as a single instance among too many—at that most noble nation of Germany, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... life again; nor should we forget the occasion on which he did not hesitate even to betake himself to Venice as a refuge. Yet M. Angelo was in every way a patriot, a philosopher, and a hero. I do not say this to undervalue the scope of your theory. I think possibilities are generally so much behind desirabilities that there is no harm in any degree of incitement in the right direction; and that is assuredly mental activity of all kinds. I judge you cannot ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... words a slightly different application. I see in them two pictures of youth and of old age, and a commandment based upon both. You young people are often exhorted to a Christian life on the ground of the possible approach of death. I would not undervalue that motive, but I seek now to urge the same thing upon you from a directly opposite consideration, the probability that many of you will live to be old. All the chief reasons for our being Christians are of the same force, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... enthusiasts, though but one quality of enthusiasm. Weak people show their enthusiasm too much on the surface. Powerful folk keep it too deep in their hearts to be seen at all. What then, are we to scout it in the impulsive because too obvious; to undervalue it in the reticent because almost invisible? Nay, let us be thankful for it in any form, for the thing is good, though the individual's manner of displaying it may be faulty. Let us hope that the too gushing may learn to clap on the breaks a little—a very ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... passed to his credit. "So many wise and wealthy souls,"—that is what the sun and his household will have come to. The use of the world is not found in societies faultlessly mechanized; for societies are themselves but uses and means. They are the soil in which persons grow; and I no more undervalue them than the husbandman despises his fertile acres because it is not earth, but the wheat that grows from it, which comes to his table. Society is the culmination of all uses and delights; persons, of all results. And societies answer their ends when they afford two things: ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... or at least to the ancient part of them. The use which has been made of this difference, in reasonings contained in former papers, will have shown that I am disposed neither to deny its existence nor to undervalue its importance. I feel the less restraint, therefore, in observing, that the position concerning the ignorance of the ancient governments on the subject of representation, is by no means precisely true in the latitude commonly given to it. Without entering into ...
— The Federalist Papers
... you it is difficult to live with you. The more I get to know you, the more I feel this difficulty increase. I will not hide it from you: as long as you are what you are, I would rather bring any sacrifice than consent to be near you. I do not undervalue your good points, and that which repels me does not lie in your heart; it is in your outer, not your inner being; in your ideas, your judgment, your habits; in a word, there is nothing concerning the outer world in which we agree. Your ill-humor, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... in Rome passes for sacred. In Florence, in other words, ecclesiasticism is less cheap a commodity and not dispensed in the same abundance at the street-corners. Heaven forbid, at the same time, that I should undervalue the Roman churches, which are for the most part treasure-houses of history, of curiosity, of promiscuous and associational interest. It is a fact, nevertheless, that, after St. Peter's, I know but one really beautiful church by the Tiber, the enchanting basilica of St. Mary Major. Many have structural ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... allowed, he prosecuted his plans of civilising the people. He used to say, that though he had an unspeakable pride in the prospect of the fame to which he aspired; yet if he could but render his countrymen happy, he could be content to be forgotten. His own importance he never affected to undervalue. "We are now to our country," said he, "like the prophet Elisha stretched over the dead child of the Shunamite,—eye to eye, nose to nose, mouth to mouth. It begins to recover warmth, and to revive: I hope it will yet ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... not mean here to undervalue the higher motives which lead men and women into religious communities, and which control the leaders, and no doubt a considerable part of the membership in such communes; but not all. For even among the most spiritual societies there are, and must ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... came to the Doctor's, and harangued with his usual warmth. I heard him saying to two or three persons, "People are unjust to great men, Ministers and Princes; nothing, for instance, is more common than to undervalue their intellect. I astonished one of these little gentlemen of the corps of the infallibles, by telling him that I could prove that there had been more men of ability in the house of Bourbon, for the last hundred years, than in any other family."—"You prove that?" said somebody, sneeringly. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... anxiety for the fate of others, is apt to go to much greater lengths in his preference of the objects of his immediate solicitude than Mr. Burke has ever done. A man so circumstanced often seems to undervalue, to vilify, almost to reprobate and disown, those that are out of danger. This is the voice of nature and truth, and not of inconsistency and false pretence. The danger of anything very dear to us ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... medicine will also be over-praised. The reason will be that the race will so need these discoveries. Unlike the great cats, simians tend to undervalue the body. Having less self-respect, less proper regard for their egos, they care less than the cats do for the casing of the ego,—the body. The more civilized they grow the more they will let their bodies deteriorate. They ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... "No. I don't undervalue your friendship. You know that, Roger, you too. Uncle Jack. I suppose I should have said something about it. But I—I just sort of drifted into it. I think walloping Sagorski spoiled me—made me ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... anything like their existing power in American politics; and he will survive in some form their reduction to political insignificance. He has been a genuine and within limits a useful product of the American democracy; and it would be fatal either to undervalue or ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... slightly apart, and under her full head of steam the ship began to forge ahead towards the open sea and safety. 'For me,' Scott adds, 'the lesson had been a sharp and, I have no doubt, a salutary one; we were here to fight the elements with their icy weapons, and once and for all this taught me not to undervalue the enemy.' During the forenoon the ship was within seven or eight miles of the high bold coast-line to the south of Cape Adare, but later she had to be turned outwards [Page 46] so that the heavy stream of pack-ice drifting along the land ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... self-protection. For these reasons, in its tranquil and harmless life, it may appear to casual observers to exhibit even less than ordinary ability; but when danger and apprehension call for the exertion of its powers, those who have witnessed their display are seldom inclined to undervalue its sagacity. ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... roofs, and the knife to their throats. It was natural that a man who lived in times like these should overrate the importance of those measures by which a nation is rendered formidable to its neighbours, and undervalue those which ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to. If any Thing that is obscene be said, don't laugh at it, but keep your Countenance, as though you did not understand it; don't reflect on any Body, nor take place of any Body, nor boast of any Thing of your own, nor undervalue any Thing of another Bodies. Be courteous to your Companions that are your Inferiors; traduce no Body; don't be a Blab with your Tongue, and by this Means you'll get a good Character, and gain Friends without Envy. ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... beautiful woman," interrupted the King, quickly, in a tone that he would have used to a spoiled child. "It needed a woman of tact, a woman of courage, a woman among women—the Countess Zara. Do not imagine, Marie, that we undervalue your part. It is their lack of courage that ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... correctness of your principles in the main, Mr. Grahame, but I hope you do not think that all Lilian's fine acquaintances as you call them, would be so unjust in their judgment as to think the less of her for her love of you, or to undervalue you on account of your position ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... out of my power to visit America during the present season.... The newspapers, both of England and America, have done me great injustice. While they have described my apparel with the minute accuracy of professional tailors, they have seen fit to charge me with a disposition to undervalue the female sex, and to identify myself with the other. Such calumnies are annoying to me. I have never wished to be an Iphis—never for a moment affected to be anything but a woman. I do not think any one ever mistook me for ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... that?" and Greta's eyes had a dreamy look in them; "but I tell Alwyn that I mean to lean on him. Indeed, Olive, you must not undervalue him. Alwyn is stronger than you think. He has repented truly and deeply of all his boyish mistakes, and those who love him should utterly and for ever wipe out the record of his past. See how devotedly his father loves him; his forgiveness ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... domestic life. He was a man who thoroughly respected religion, and could well discriminate between the genuine servant of Christ and the mere sounding professor, while at the same time scientific studies had rather tended to make him undervalue clear dogmatic teaching as set forth in the revealed Word of God. Yet he was too profound a thinker to adopt that popular scepticism which is either the refuge of those who, consciously or unconsciously, use it as ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... genius, with some peculiar advantages—that the human mind was in a state of decay—and that our knowledge was nothing more than scattered fragments saved out of the general shipwreck. He writes with a premeditated design to dispute the improvements or undervalue the inventions of his own age. Wotton, the friend of Bentley, replied by his curious volume of "Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning." But Sir William, in his ardour, had thrown out an unguarded opinion, which excited the hostile ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... feed upon it? Memories are full enough, but the judgment totally void Men approve of things for their being rare and new Men are not always to rely upon the personal confessions Men as often commend as undervalue me beyond reason Men make them (the rules) without their (women's) help Men must embark, and not deliberate, upon high enterprises Men should furnish themselves with such things as would float Mercenaries who would receive any (pay) Merciful ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... the Church as a spiritual society, divinely incorporated to teach certain doctrines, and do certain acts which none other could do, than to the preservation of those temporal advantages which had been conferred by the State. From the first there was a tendency to undervalue these external aids, which made the movement an object of suspicion to thorough Church-and-State men. This suspicion was repaid by the members of the new school with a return of contempt. They believed that in struggling for the temporal advantages of the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... to undervalue Oxford and Cambridge prize-poems; but it is a stupid fashion. Many of them are most beautiful. Heber's 'Palestine!' A flight, as upon angel's wing, over the Holy Land! How fine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... things which he knew in the letter; nothing seemed more despicable to him in the world, than true godliness; but now he judgeth otherwise, because he hath the mind of Christ. The things which in his darkness he did undervalue as trifles to be mocked at, he now can only mind and admire, since he became a child of light; now being delivered from that blindness and brutishness of spirit, which possesseth the world, (and possessed himself till he was transformed by the renewing of his mind) ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... to God, Sancho," returned Don Quixote, "for he will give her what suits her best; but do not undervalue thyself so much as to come to be content with anything less than ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... undervalue it? The least poet and poetling lisps some word or syllable of it. The masters build its temples and holy places. All own it, all receive it gladly. But the gospel of life, there is danger that we shall not know it when we hear it. It is a harsher and more heroic strain ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... however, none of that pride, which would make him ashamed of his poor and humble relatives. He had, indeed, a confidence in his own powers, approaching to arrogance, which led him to undervalue the abilities of others, and to look on them as his instruments rather than his equals. But he had none of the vulgar pride founded on wealth or station. He frequently alluded to his lowly condition in early life, with great humility, thanking Heaven, with ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... "You undervalue them," said I; "they have their College and Academies, their grammar schools and primary institutions, and I believe there are few among them who cannot read ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the lately annexed Colonies in South Africa. This is, I suppose, upon the whole, the most considerable business with which this new Parliament has had to deal. But although no one will deny its importance, or undervalue the keen emotions and anxieties which it excites on both sides of the House, and the solemn memories which it revives, yet I am persuaded that there is no reason why we should be hotly, sharply, or bitterly divided on the subject; on the contrary, ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... but hereafter Lansing Treadwell and I will share and share alike. I shall endeavour, to the best that is in me, to prove to him that it is such men as you who hold the world back! Men who over-estimate money and undervalue blood and social position are not to ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... being the author of an account of his life, "My Schools and Schoolmasters"; died by his own hand at Portobello; he was a writer of considerable literary ability, and "nothing," says Prof. Saintsbury, "can be more hopelessly unliterary than to undervalue Hugh Miller" (1802-1856). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Havelock Ellis has pointed out, the absurdity and even hopelessness of effecting Eugenic improvement by placing on the statute books prohibitions of legal matrimony to certain classes of people, reveal the weakness of those Eugenists who minimize or undervalue the importance of environment as a determining factor. They affirm that heredity is everything and environment nothing, yet forget that it is precisely those who are most universally subject to bad environment who procreate most copiously, ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... you not believe me when I tell you the thing you ask is impossible?" replied his mother more calmly. "I am sorry for you if you are disappointed, Archie; but you undervalue Mattie,—you do indeed. She will make you a nice little housekeeper, and, though she is not clever, she is so amiable that nothing ever puts her out; and visiting the poor and sick-nursing are more in her line than in Grace's. Mrs. Blair ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... down, and she, who had once so feared me, was now free to wander when she would within the lines of an honorable enemy. That she should walk there with increasing frequency as the days passed was a tribute to my powers of restraint which I was too wise to undervalue. I ignored the shyness of which she seemed unable to divest herself in my presence. It would have been easy not to ignore it, for there were times when, so little careful was she to guard herself, that this shyness suggested, invited, appealed, signalled; ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... of our position, and had no confidence whatever in the courage or discipline of our allies; and we saw that in the very melee of the battle the efforts of the enemy were directed almost exclusively against our line, so confidently did they undervalue the efforts of the Spanish troops. Morning broke at length, and scarcely was the heavy mist clearing away before the red sunlight, when the sounds of fife and drum were heard from a distant part of the field. The notes swelled or sank as ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... hint, to let the world know, that I am far from thinking, 'tis a Satire upon the English nation, to tell them, they are derived from all the nations under heaven; that is, from several nations. Nor is it meant to undervalue the original of the English, for we see no reason to like them worse, being the relicts of Romans, Danes, Saxons and Normans, than we should have done if they had remain'd Britons, that is, than if they had been ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... few in default of that material aid; and they had a family pride in him. The pride was mixed with fear, which threw over it a tender light, like a mother's dream of her child. The people, I have said, are not so lost in self-contempt as to undervalue their best men, but it must be admitted that they rarely produce young fellows wearing the undeniable chieftain's stamp, and the rarity of one like Robert lent a hue of sadness ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... many leaders. Also, they undervalue the Mexican soldiers. I assure you they do. They fought Spain for ten years; they do not want, then, the persistence of true valor. The Americans may die in the Alamo, but they cannot hold it against the thousands Santa Anna ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... Darius recollected the cloak, though he had forgotten the giver. "Are you, indeed," said he, "the man who made me that present? I thought then that you were very generous to me, and you shall see that I do not undervalue the obligation now. I am at length, fortunately, in a situation to requite the favor, and I will give you such an abundance of gold and silver as shall effectually prevent your being sorry for having shown a kindness to ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... plausible, and some of them indeed quite dignified. I like dignity: any man who has lived the greater part of his life in a colony is so accustomed to it, that he becomes quite enamoured of it, and wrapping himself up in it as a cloak, stalks abroad the "observed of all observers." I could undervalue this species of writing if I thought proper, affect a contempt for idiomatic humour, or hint at the employment being inconsistent with the grave discharge of important official duties, which are so distressingly onerous, as not to leave me a moment for recreation; but these ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the future in store for these islands, it will be impossible for any Hawaiian while the nation exists to forget or undervalue the fostering care which your Great Country, as a Parent, has extended towards them; and among the names of individual Americans that will stand out prominently, I foresee a high place assigned to those of Mr. President Pierce, and the ...
— Speeches of His Majesty Kamehameha IV. To the Hawaiian Legislature • Kamehameha IV
... the practice of art is undoubtedly the sense of performance and the desire for applause. It is easy from a pose of dignity and high-mindedness to undervalue and overlook this. But it may safely be said that when a man challenges the attention of the public, he does not do it that he may give pleasure, but that he may receive praise. As Elihu the Buzite said with such exquisite frankness ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the loving solicitude which had brought his cousin across the water to his dying bed, he almost seemed to undervalue the act of rare unselfishness by which so much money had been relinquished which might have been kept without fear of reproach. "Cobbler" Horn was not hurt by the seeming insensibility of his poor cousin to the great sacrifice he had made on his behalf. He did not desire, nor did he think that he ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... of this could she perform—and what did she there? For sympathy, at such a moment, he cared little for such sympathy, at least, as he could command. His pride and ambition, heretofore, had led him to despise and undervalue the easy of attainment. He was always grasping after the impossible. The fame which he had lost for ever, grew doubly attractive to his mind's eye from the knowledge of this fact. The society, which had expelled him from its circle and its privileges, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... but generally for the state as well. Incapable and dishonest assessors often work injustice by underestimating the value of some forms of property, and overestimating the value of other forms. In addition, political pressure is brought to bear upon the assessor to cause him to undervalue the property of the township or county as a whole, so that the local unit will bear a relatively small share of the ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... will be pleased; but that will be because she believes that I deserve everything and anything, and is only surprised that the world has not found out sooner what a marvellous person I am. God knows I do not undervalue her belief in me; but it makes and keeps me humble to feel how far she is from the truth, how far from realising the pitiful weakness and emptiness of ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Unquestionably the fame of the painter, as of other people, undergoes vicissitudes: varies very much accordingly as it is appraised by contemporaries or posterity. But it may be open to doubt whether the editor of Boswell does not undervalue the artists specified in illustration of his proposition: more especially Romney. That any benefit has accrued to Romney's fame from the unsafe sort of embalmment it has received in the rhymes of such poetasters as Hayley and Cumberland cannot be contended. Even Pope's verse, though it has saved ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... on the contingencies of human conduct can only divine the future from what has already been acted on the earth. The philosopher, leaning on principles which Science styles immutable, is confined within the narrow bounds of created matter. Why then should Reason make us undervalue that Revelation which carries us upwards to Creation's birth, and bears us downward to a period when time ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... started to his mode of getting through a difficulty, "Ah! I had not thought of that—perhaps your way is the best." And this mode of dealing with himself and the undergraduates whom he liked, made them like him, but also made them really undervalue his talent, which, as we now see, was what he meant they should do. At the same time, though watchful over his own vanity, he was keen and prompt in snubs—playful and challenging retort—to those he liked, but in the nature of scornful exposure, ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... Do we then undervalue the discoveries of Natural Science; or view with jealousy the progress she has of late been making? GOD forbid! With unfeigned joy we welcome her honest triumphs, as so many fresh evidences of the wisdom, the power, the goodness of GOD. "Thou, LORD, hast made me glad through Thy ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... fault with my present company," she said demurely, dropping her head and eyelids until a faint suffusion seemed to follow the falling lashes over her cheek. "I don't think YOU ought to undervalue it." ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... this world is such an illusion as this belief. Life is rich; its tree blossoms eternally, because it is nourished by immortal fountains. It bears dissimilar fruits, varies in colour and glory, but all beautiful; let us undervalue none of them, for all of them are capable of producing plants ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... not undervalue the blessings of inheritance, mother, believe me, nor deny the general doctrine; though intelligence does not always descend, and manners die out, and that invaluable legacy, a name, may be thrown away. But this delicate thing we are speaking of is not intelligence ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... And being English, unless you have a friend in India who has made you aware that cane-bottom chairs are India-English, you will be pretty sure to believe that there is no comfort without carpets and coal; or being an American, you will be apt to undervalue a gallery of pictures with only a three-ply carpet on the floor, and to "calculate," that, if they could see your house in Washington Street, they would feel rather ashamed. However, there is a great deal of human nature in mankind, wherever you go,—except in Paris, perhaps, where ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... hastened to declare, laughing a little wryly. "Such a journey is a liberal education in itself, knocking the insularity out of a man—if he has any receptive faculty that is—and ridding him of all manner of stodgy prejudices. I don't the least undervalue my good fortune.—But you talk of remembering. That's stretching a point surely. You must have been a mere baby, my dear Damaris, when ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... authorities on every point which he thought it in the least probable might be started against him by either the bench or the bar. I told him, on one of these occasions, that I thought "he need not give his enemy credit for such far-sighted astuteness."—"Oh," said he quickly, "never undervalue an opponent: besides, I like turning up law—I don't forget it, and, as Lord Coke says, it is sure to be useful at some time or another." In court, he was absorbed in his case, appearing to be sensible of the existence of nothing else but his opponent and the bench. He was very calm, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... Stork to the poor Crane, who stood dejectedly to one side, "not to scorn and undervalue qualities in any one, because they are not flaunted in the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... is not scanty, and contains both serious and pleasant elements sufficient to be worthy of attention, so that it will not depreciate historians to treat of Indian occurrences and wars, which those who have not experienced undervalue. For the people of those regions are valiant and warlike nations of Asia, who have been reared in continual warfare, both by sea and by land, and who use artillery and other warlike implements, which the necessity of defending ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... in himself led him to ignore or undervalue the fact, patent to others, that he was no bushman either by instinct or training. And he seemed to prefer for companions men like himself, who could not detect this failing, as is evident from a letter written by him to W. Hull, of Melbourne, ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... Hubert Walter had secured order in England, but oversea Richard found himself face to face with dangers which he was too clear-sighted to undervalue. Destitute of his father's administrative genius, less ingenious in his political conceptions than John, Richard was far from being a mere soldier. A love of adventure, a pride in sheer physical strength, here and there a romantic generosity, jostled roughly with the craft, the unscrupulousness, ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... congresses are held, induces hot fits. Those who have drunk enthusiastic toasts in common, and have rubbed shoulders and compared notes with various foreigners, and gone home having made perhaps lifelong interesting friendships which bring them in touch with other lands, will not undervalue the brotherhood aspect of ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... That in advocating the opening to woman of this larger sphere, we do not undervalue her relations as a wife and mother, than which none can be more worthy of a true woman's love and pride; but it is only by a full development of her faculties and a wide range for her thought that she can become the true companion of an intelligent husband, and the wise and inspiring educator ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... for me to understand you, Phaidor," I replied, "can you not understand that possibly it is equally difficult for you to understand the motives, the customs and the social laws that guide me? I do not wish to hurt you, nor to seem to undervalue the honour which you have done me, but the thing you desire may not be. Regardless of the foolish belief of the peoples of the outer world, or of Holy Thern, or ebon First Born, I am not dead. While I live my heart ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... perfect skill; but whether we are or not, we have become so accustomed to the tacit acceptance of the phrase, "other things being equal," that we have come to forget that other things may not be equal at all; and that they certainly will not be on the day of trial, if we forget or undervalue those other things, while ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... me that it is to undervalue the muses, to make use of them only for sport and to pass away the time, I shall tell him, that he does not know, so well as I, the value of the sport, the pleasure, and the pastime; I can hardly forbear to add that all other end is ridiculous. I live from hand to mouth, and, with ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... Slavs who lived beyond his home, the Bulgars. This awoke a flame in him. At Ochrida, where he was presently appointed as a teacher in the school, he gave his lessons in the customary Greek, nor did he undervalue the advantages the Macedonian Slavs could draw, particularly at the stage they were in, from the study of Greek literature and from the contemplation of the patriotic virtues of old Greece. But at the same time he began to give his ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... existence. The love of the good and beautiful of course you are prepared to cultivate—that goes without saying, as the French say; the love of the ludicrous will not appear to you as important, and yet you will be wrong to undervalue it. In the first place, I might tell you that it was almost like cherishing the love of one's fellow-creatures—at which no doubt you shake your head reprovingly; but, leaving aside the enormous provision for the exercise of this natural faculty which we offer to each other, why should crabs ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... to look at any situation straight in the face, so to speak. He flattered himself that he was not a man to be led away by vanity. He was, as a rule, on very good terms with himself, but he was rather inclined to undervalue than overestimate the distinction which he enjoyed among his fellow-men. And the result of his due consideration of his last meeting with Phyllis was to make him feel that he had never met a girl who was quite so nice; but ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... which is extremely natural to democratic nations and extremely dangerous, is that which leads them ta despise and undervalue the rights of private persons. The attachment which men feel to a right, and the respect which they display for it, is generally proportioned to its importance, or to the length of time during which they have enjoyed it. The rights of private persons amongst democratic nations are commonly of small ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... about it," said Colonel Preston, gravely. "I shall not refer to it, unless you undervalue my ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... assigned in the last chapter, it is probable that the great horns possessed by the males of many Lamellicorn, and some other beetles, have been acquired as ornaments. From the small size of insects, we are apt to undervalue their appearance. If we could imagine a male Chalcosoma (Fig. 16), with its polished bronzed coat of mail, and its vast complex horns, magnified to the size of a horse, or even of a dog, it would be one of the most ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... was thinking about Joseph Bullar's doctrine after I went to bed, founded on what I cannot but think a blasphemous asceticism, which has obtained in the world ever so long, and which is disposed to curse, hate, and undervalue the world altogether. Why should we? What we see here of this world is but an expression of God's will, so to speak—a beautiful earth and sky and sea—beautiful affections and sorrows, wonderful changes and developments of creations, suns rising, stars shining, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... pardon, Mr. Counsellor, his excellency does not undervalue these treasures, but appreciates them highly, and is always glad enough when the bookbinder delivers new volumes in gorgeous bindings. For this very reason his excellency has ordered the library to ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... ere thou love, give eare unto my voice; Turne not aside thy eye, the feares I feele Makes me to bow, where tis thy part to kneele. Loe vassailelike, laying aside command, I humbly crave this favour at thy hand: Let me have my beloved, and take my state; My life I undervalue to that rate. Crave anything that in my power doth lye, Tis thine, so faire ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... having abandoned my master after his fall, and not having shared his exile. I will show that, if I did not follow the Emperor, it was because I lacked not the will but the power to do so. God knows that I do not wish to undervalue the devotion of the faithful servants who followed the fortunes of the Emperor to the end. However, it is not improper to say that, however terrible the fall of the Emperor was for him, the situation (I speak here only of the personal advantages), in the island of Elba, of those who remained ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... on the view of an excellent production, is to undervalue it, will never have one of ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... place, and, like Elisha stretched on the dead child, (to use one of Jeremy Taylor's characteristic illustrations), gave life and animation to every part of the body politic. But years rolled on; and the original impulse given at the Reformation, and augmented at the Rebellion, to undervalue all outward forms, has silently continued to prevail, till, with the form of godliness, (much of it, up doubt, objectionable, but much of it wholesome), the power in a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... truth. Of course I have known very fine girls who caused the usual thrills, whose conservatory kisses I should never undervalue. But when it comes to the fatuous delirium—the celestial idiocy that queers the brain and impairs the vision—why, I have ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... chapter on the English novelists (that is to say, those of the last century) is perhaps the best thing ever written on the subject; and is particularly valuable nowadays when there is a certain tendency to undervalue Smollett in order to exalt Fielding, who certainly needs no such illegitimate and uncritical leverage. I do not think that he is, on the whole, unjust to Campbell; though his Gallican, or rather Napoleonic mania made him commit the literary crime of slighting "The Battle of the ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... between us that the words of affection which you have written were used by you after the period at which the great change of my life took place. To grudge any sacrifice which that change entails would be to undervalue its paramount blessedness, but, as far as regrets are compatible with extreme thankfulness, I do and must regret any estrangement from you— you with whom I have trod so large a portion of the way which has led me to peace; you, who are 'ex voto' at least in that Catholic ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... JOHN QUINCY ADAMS is one that opens no new truth in the philosophy of virtue; for there is no undiscovered truth in that philosophy. But it is a history that sheds marvellous confirmation on maxims which all mankind know, and yet are prone to undervalue and forget. The exalted character before us was formed by the combination of virtue, courage, assiduity, and modesty, under favorable conditions, with native talent and genius, and illustrates the truth, that in morals ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... She dropped the spoon, sighed, and became serious again. "I am guilty of the vanity of having let him admire me," she went on, penitently, "without the excuse of being able, on my side, to reciprocate even the passing interest that he felt in me. I don't undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the excellent position he can offer to his wife. But a woman's heart is not to be commanded—no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master of Thorpe Ambrose, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... terrible grief to him, I know, and I don't undervalue your kindness, indeed I don't; but I cannot be happy about it while Miss Mohun does not know. I don't understand why you do not ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... most impassioned character. He led the Assembly, as Henry Clay afterwards led the Senate, and Canning led the House of Commons, by that inspired logic which few could resist. Jefferson spoke of him as "the colossus of debate." It is the fashion in these prosaic times to undervalue congressional and parliamentary eloquence, as a vain oratorical display; but it is this which has given power to the greatest leaders of mankind in all free governments,—as illustrated by the career of such men as Demosthenes, Pericles, Cicero, Chatham, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... the punishments of a future state are objects too remote to have any great weight in deterring people from yielding to the importunate sollicitations of a present powerful passion. When once a woman has got the length to undervalue the immediate shame, ruin and disgrace she has to dread from being detected in an amour, religious motives never can restrain her from indulging her inclinations. Far be it from me, by any thing here said, to ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... read over your friend's[70] haughty dictatorial letter: you are answerable only to your God in such a matter. Who gave any fellow-creature of yours (one incapable of being your judge because not your peer) a right to catechise, scold, undervalue, abuse, and insult—wantonly and inhumanly to insult you thus? I do not even wish to deceive you, Madam. The Searcher of hearts is my witness how dear you are to me; but though it were possible you ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... imagine that the English General could, in any way have anticipated so easy a conquest. He had no reason to undervalue the resolution of the enemy, and yet he appears to have been fully sanguine of the success of his undertaking. Possibly he counted much on his own decision and judgment, which, added to the confidence reposed in him by all ranks and branches of the expedition, he might have felt fully adequate ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... trade in a tolerable physical well-being, in the suppression of all disorders, and in an enforced calm such as Louis, by reason of his false position, had not been able to secure for them—a boon which, it must be confessed, their placid dispositions did not undervalue. When, however, opportunity was ripe, they bravely rose to assert once more ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... few words as to the action of the last legislature on this subject. After an examination of the Geghan bill, we shall perhaps come to the conclusion that in itself it is not of great importance. I would not undervalue the conscientious scruples on the subject of religion of a convict in the penitentiary, or of any unfortunate person in any State institution. But the provision of the constitution of the State covers the whole ground. It needs no awkwardly framed statute ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... within the last twenty or thirty years that those notable discoveries in criticism have been made which have taught our recent versifiers to undervalue this energetic, melodious, and moral poet. The consequences of this want of due esteem for a writer whom the good sense of our predecessors had raised to his proper station have been NUMEROUS AND DEGRADING ENOUGH. This is not the place to enter ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... years when the fevers and dysenteries are in earnest, and when they're only making believe. I know the folks that think they're dying as soon as they're sick, and the folks that never find out they're sick till they're dead. I don't want to undervalue your science, Mr. Langdon. There are things I never learned, because they came in after my day, and I am very glad to send my patients to those that do know them, when I am at fault; but I know these people about here, fathers and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... expect to see produced in her, if she really does recover her sight. The result may be of incalculable benefit in teaching me how I may own the truth, most harmlessly to her, as well as to myself. Pray don't suppose I undervalue your advice. I only want to be doubly fortified, before I risk my confession, by the ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... seem, however, to undervalue that difference. Statistics, after all, do not dominate human nature; on the contrary, human nature determines the statistician's figures. Every artisan emigrant to America gains opportunities of advancement of which his European fellows know nothing. If ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... not make man worse than he is, nor his condition more miserable than it is. But could I though I would? As a man cannot flatter God, nor overpraise him, so a man cannot injure man, nor undervalue him. Thus much must necessarily be presented to his remembrance, that those false happinesses which he hath in this world, have their times, and their seasons, and their critical days; and they are judged and denominated according ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... his side. Step by step she had kept pace with her brother: sometimes he had excelled her, sometimes she thought that she was outstripping him. Now in the hour of his possible success (of which she would be proud and glad), why should her father seem to undervalue her powers and her industry? They would never bring her the guerdon that might fall to Sydney's lot; but she felt that she, too, had a right to ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Militaires," a condensed view of his own military life, as complete, if not as pleasantly diffuse, as his large volumes of "Memoires." Jomini, from an extended experience, and a study of the genius of Napoleon, which his Russian position could never induce him to undervalue, has produced those standard works which must always remain the treasure-houses of military knowledge. We admire veracity, but let no soldier confess that he has not read the "Vie Politique et Militaire," and the "Precis de l'Art de la Guerre." But, in all these cases, the litera scripta has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... Let Independence, Self-Conceit, and Go-ahead undervalue them, if they will; but I, Sola Foemina, (for that is the name I go by,) of Ignorance, (the place I hail from,) casting up my unbalanced accounts, (with a view to settling,) find a large credit due to this class ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... directions, the great thinkers have had large stores. 'The best heads that have ever existed,' says an idealist,—'Pericles, Plato, Julius Caesar, Shakespeare, Goethe, Milton,—were well read, universally educated men, and quite too wise to undervalue letters. Their opinion has weight, because they had the means of knowing the ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... They did not undervalue him. If he had been less a man than he was, they would not have taken the trouble to cover him with their drunken ribaldry. He had scored off them in the past in just such sprees as this, when he had the power to do so, and used ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... discreditable to the intellect and judgment of a free people to complain of that which is right in itself, and rests upon established principles of right, as to submit without resistance or murmur to usurpation or misgovernment. I do not mean to undervalue the periodical press; but it must always assume something in regard to its readers, and in politics it must assume that the principles of government and the history of national institutions are ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... pitied and esteemed him the more because he was slighted by Willoughby and Marianne, who, prejudiced against him for being neither lively nor young, seemed resolved to undervalue his merits. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... He did not undervalue himself and knew that he might well be proud of the position he had won by his own industry and talents; and still she was the grandchild of the man who had had the right to sell his grandfather for mere coin, and was so high-born, rich and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... out the essential difference in their kinds of poetry, and the qualities which insured perpetuity to that of her husband. 'You can't persuade Campbell of that,' said she. 'He is apt to undervalue his own works, and to consider his own lights put out, whenever they come blazing out with their ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... will not undervalue the compliment she is inclined to make you, Sir Harry. The moment you ask for her compliance, she will not refuse to your affection, what she makes a difficulty to grant to the entreaty of ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... he dreaded lest she might have formed for Glaucus the first fluttering prepossessions that lead to love. And, secretly, he ground his teeth in rage and jealousy, when he reflected on the youth, the fascinations, and the brilliancy of that formidable rival whom he pretended to undervalue. ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... or any of them?—are they acceptable?" "Monsieur has seen me reading them a hundred times, and knows I have not so many recreations as to undervalue those he provides." ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... more to my fortune than industry, forasmuch as I design everything by chance and in fear. I have this, also, in general, that of all the opinions antiquity has held of men in gross, I most willingly embrace and adhere to those that most contemn and undervalue us, and most push us to naught; methinks, philosophy has never so fair a game to play as when it falls upon our vanity and presumption; when it most lays open our irresolution, weakness, and ignorance. I look upon the too good opinion that man has of himself to be the nursing mother of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... in common with other churches, we have the Sunday School. We do not undervalue its influence and cannot dispense with its aid. But does the Sunday School meet the requirement of an adequate system of religious instruction? It is an institution that has endeared itself to the hearts of millions. Originally intended for the waifs of an English ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... that I undervalue this class. I will come boldly to the other, composed of those who are neither servile not absolutists,—I repel this name, in my turn, with all the pride to which every sincere conviction has a right,—but who believe that humanity has in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... say that I was as indifferent to the result, so far as it affected me personally, as to the question whether I should walk on one side of the street or the other. I did not undervalue the great honor of representing Massachusetts in the Senate of the United States. But I had an infinite longing for my home and my profession and my library. I never found public employment pleasant or congenial. But the ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... unlovely, she has held this crown only by her genius, she has yet to see human nature justify itself by preferring a humane to an inhuman power. The most splendid illustration of this kind of homage was the career of Jenny Lind in America. It was rather the fashion among the dilettanti to undervalue her excellence as an artist. A popular superficial criticism was fond of limiting her dramatic power to inferior roles. She was denied passion and great artistic skill; she was accused of tricks. But, even had these things been true, what a career it was! It was unprecedented, and can never be repeated. ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... side, it must be said that he was too much of a poet to undervalue the state of apparent indolence which is so favorable to inspiration, and that he often quoted in self-defence the words of Claude Tillier,—"Le temps le mieux employe est celui que l'on perd." Aware of his strong propensity to ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... ready, like our Lord, to follow the beck of misery,—"to deliver the needy when he crieth, the poor also, and him that hath no helper." Sympathy costs but little. Its recompense and return are great, in the priceless consolation it imparts. Few there are who undervalue it. Look at Paul—the weary, jaded prisoner,—chained to a soldier—recently wrecked, about to stand before Caesar. He reaches Appii Forum and the Three Taverns, dejected and depressed. Brethren come from Rome, a distance of sixty miles, to offer their sympathy. The ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... harm to any one. I am reproached with having abandoned my master after his fall, and not having shared his exile. I will show that, if I did not follow the Emperor, it was because I lacked not the will but the power to do so. God knows that I do not wish to undervalue the devotion of the faithful servants who followed the fortunes of the Emperor to the end. However, it is not improper to say that, however terrible the fall of the Emperor was for him, the situation (I speak here only of the personal advantages), in the island ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... wonder at the loving solicitude which had brought his cousin across the water to his dying bed, he almost seemed to undervalue the act of rare unselfishness by which so much money had been relinquished which might have been kept without fear of reproach. "Cobbler" Horn was not hurt by the seeming insensibility of his poor cousin to the great sacrifice he had made on his ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... Nature."—"Plotinus was ashamed of his body."—"Michael Angelo said of external beauty, 'it is the frail and weary weed, in which God dresses the soul, which He has called into time.'" Emerson would not undervalue Nature as looked at through the senses and "the unrenewed understanding." "I have no hostility to Nature," he says, "but a child's love of it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons."—But, "seen in the light of thought, the world always is phenomenal; ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... hand, "I would not sell them all I am worth for double that sum; and as to what you believe, or they believe, I care not a fig, no not a fart. I am not poor because you think me so, nor because you attempt to undervalue me in the country. I know the envy of mankind very well; but I thank Heaven I am above them. It is true, my wealth is of my own acquisition. I have not an estate, like Sir Thomas Booby, that has descended in my family through many generations; but I know heirs of such estates ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... he wished to remove his son altogether from the influence of Athenian life he took him to Lacedaemon, and placed him with the young men who were undergoing the Spartan training there. The Athenians were vexed at this, because Phokion appeared to despise and undervalue the institutions of his own country. Once Demades said to him "Phokion, why should we not advise the Athenians to adopt the Spartan constitution; if you bid me, I am quite willing to make a speech and bring forward a motion ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... stretched on the dead child, (to use one of Jeremy Taylor's characteristic illustrations), gave life and animation to every part of the body politic. But years rolled on; and the original impulse given at the Reformation, and augmented at the Rebellion, to undervalue all outward forms, has silently continued to prevail, till, with the form of godliness, (much of it, up doubt, objectionable, but much of it wholesome), the power in a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... among men of genius often originates in a deficiency of analogous ideas.—It is not always envy or jealousy which induces men of genius to undervalue each other. 159 ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... might hope, would not be driven to any such wretched expedients; nor in fact does she condescend to them. They only thus undervalue her strength, who mistake her character, and are ignorant of her powers. It is her peculiar glory, and her main office, to bring all the faculties of our nature into their just subordination and dependence; that so the ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... "Now you undervalue your station, Clinch. The berth of a master's-mate in one of His Majesty's finest frigates is something to be proud of; I was once a master's-mate—nay, Nelson has doubtless filled the same station. For that matter, one of His Majesty's own sons may have gone ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of the mainsail, grazing the mast, and the very next instant a bushel of grape, from one of the bow guns, a 32—pound carronade, was crashed in on us amidships. I flung down the glass, and dived through the companion into the cabin—I am not ashamed to own it; and any man who would undervalue my courage in consequence, can never, taking into consideration the peculiarities of my situation, have known the appalling sound, or infernal effect of a discharge of grape. Round shot in broadsides is a joke to it; musketry ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... is such an illusion as this belief. Life is rich; its tree blossoms eternally, because it is nourished by immortal fountains. It bears dissimilar fruits, varies in colour and glory, but all beautiful; let us undervalue none of them, for all of them are capable of ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... by coach with L100 to the Exchequer to pay fees there. There left it, and I to St. James's, and there with; the Duke of Yorke. I had opportunity of much talk with Sir. W. Pen to-day (he being newly come from the fleete); and he, do much undervalue the honour that is given to the conduct of the late business of Holmes in burning ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Learoyd, who had fought for the prize, and in the winning secured the highest pleasure life had to offer him, was altogether disposed to undervalue it, while Ortheris openly said it would be better to break the thing up. Dearsley, he argued, might be a many-sided man, capable, despite his magnificent fighting qualities, of setting in motion the machinery of the civil law—a thing much ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... full of anxiety for the fate of others, is apt to go to much greater lengths in his preference of the objects of his immediate solicitude than Mr. Burke has ever done. A man so circumstanced often seems to undervalue, to vilify, almost to reprobate and disown, those that are out of danger. This is the voice of nature and truth, and not of inconsistency and false pretence. The danger of anything very dear to us removes, for the moment, every other affection from the mind. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... rendered it. The Greek replied by relating the circumstance of the cloak. Darius recollected the cloak, though he had forgotten the giver. "Are you, indeed," said he, "the man who made me that present? I thought then that you were very generous to me, and you shall see that I do not undervalue the obligation now. I am at length, fortunately, in a situation to requite the favor, and I will give you such an abundance of gold and silver as shall effectually prevent your being sorry for having shown a kindness ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... passages have appeared to contradict and disprove them. Let any one notice the numerous citations of the various books of the Bible in Raleigh's History, and he will surely fail to discover any evidence of Raleigh's being a Deist, or that Hariot had taught him to undervalue the scripture. ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... but a piece of a Saviour; thou wilt do something, and Christ shall do the rest; thou wilt set thy own things in the first place, and if thou wantest at last, then thou wilt borrow of Christ; thou art such an one that dost Christ the greatest injury of all. First, in that thou dost undervalue His merits by preferring of thy own works before His; and, secondly, by mingling of thy works thy ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... strongly recommended; for, as a deviation on this side is much more innocent than on the other, so the pride of man renders us much less liable to it. For, besides that we are apt to overrate our own perfections, and undervalue the qualifications of our neighbours, we likewise set too high an esteem on the things themselves, and consider them as constituting a more essential difference between us than they really do. The qualities of the mind do, in reality, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... you to give him every facility you can for his work, but of course you will remember that he is an enthusiast, and in certain circumstances might undervalue his own safety or that of the ship. I don't want you to run risks ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... houses offer some hope of support in a literary career. Even in the older and better equipped universities the faculty is usually a corps of working scholars, each man intent upon his specialty and rather inclined to undervalue merely "literary" performance. In many cases the fastidious and hypercritical turn of mind which besets the scholar, the timid conservatism which naturally characterizes an ancient seat of learning and the spirit of theological conformity which suppresses free discussion ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... common fault of old communities to overvalue themselves, and to undervalue new actors in the great drama of nations, as men long successful disregard the efforts of new aspirants for favor;" said Seadrift, while he looked with amazement at the pettish eye of the frowning beauty. "In this instance, ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... till he could lead his own life again; nor should we forget the occasion on which he did not hesitate even to betake himself to Venice as a refuge. Yet M. Angelo was in every way a patriot, a philosopher, and a hero. I do not say this to undervalue the scope of your theory. I think possibilities are generally so much behind desirabilities that there is no harm in any degree of incitement in the right direction; and that is assuredly mental activity of all kinds. I judge you cannot suspect me of thinking ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... word to mouth, but how precious in the sight of God! Liberty is one of the treasures of heaven and only committed to men at great cost, lest they should undervalue it. ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... the truth, until the present period Mr. Crampton had taken no great interest in his nephew's marriage, or, indeed, in the young man himself. The old gentleman was of a saturnine turn, and inclined to undervalue the qualities of Mr. Perkins, which were idleness, simplicity, enthusiasm, ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Lord was killed like a felon by the law, which He came to repeal. I was thinking about Joseph Bullar's doctrine after I went to bed, founded on what I cannot but think a blasphemous asceticism, which has obtained in the world ever so long, and which is disposed to curse, hate, and undervalue the world altogether. Why should we? What we see here of this world is but an expression of God's will, so to speak—a beautiful earth and sky and sea—beautiful affections and sorrows, wonderful ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... the highest praise of the horsemanship and swordsmanship of the cavalry, who galloped their horses at speed over any ground, and leaped them over formidable obstacles, and of the bayonet practice, and especially of the marksmanship, of the infantry. He remarked that hunters were apt to undervalue the soldiers as marksmen, but that Wayne's riflemen were as good shots as any hunters he had ever seen at any of the many matches he had attended in the backwoods. [Footnote: Knoxville ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the Lord's hands—you know what I mean. I always thought him a gracious youth, madam, didn't you? And perhaps—I only observe it in passing—the Lord's people among the dissenting connexions are apt to undervalue human learning as a means—of course, I mean, only as a means. It is not generally known, I believe, that our reverend Puritan patriarchs, Howe and Baxter, Owen and many more, were not altogether unacquainted with heathen authors; ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... pushed caution to such extremes that you can only call ungentlemanly where a nice woman's concerned, and I never shall know to my dying day what kept him off me. A man of good qualities too, but a proper slave to the habit of caution, and though I'd be the last to undervalue the virtue which never was wanted more than now, yet, when the coast lies clear and the sun's shining and the goal in sight, and that goal me, 'twas a depressing thing for the man to hold back without any sane reason for ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... in any other way, and the piles of rock and gravel have been considered so many moraines, that is, deposits of diverse material transported by the glaciers. They do not regard the probability of other agents taking the place of glaciers, and undervalue the moving power of water. Water in liquid state has often produced analogous effects, and it has often been the error of the glacialists to confound the one with the other. The erratic rocks and the moraines are undoubtedly the ordinary indications of the ancient gravels, but, taken isolatedly, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... Self-Conceit, and Go-ahead undervalue them, if they will; but I, Sola Foemina, (for that is the name I go by,) of Ignorance, (the place I hail from,) casting up my unbalanced accounts, (with a view to settling,) find a large credit due to this class of individuals, which (though I have not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... difficult to live with you. The more I get to know you, the more I feel this difficulty increase. I will not hide it from you: as long as you are what you are, I would rather bring any sacrifice than consent to be near you. I do not undervalue your good points, and that which repels me does not lie in your heart; it is in your outer, not your inner being; in your ideas, your judgment, your habits; in a word, there is nothing concerning the outer world in which we agree. Your ill-humor, your complaints of things inevitable, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... church, have turned back again to their own right-hand extremes of error, which once they professedly gave up, but now persist in, an obstinate impugning the validity of their ministerial authority and protestative mission, undervalue the pure ordinances of the gospel dispensed by them, and live as if there were no church of Christ in the land, where they might receive the seals of the covenant, either to themselves or their children; and therefore, in the righteous ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... a terrible grief to him, I know, and I don't undervalue your kindness, indeed I don't; but I cannot be happy about it while Miss Mohun does not know. I don't understand why you do ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... efficient bureaucracy is now being advocated by a writer so distinguished as Mr. Graham Wallas, as the best safeguard against the excesses of an unstable and ignorant democracy. There is no need to undervalue the importance of competent officials, but all experience has shown the equal necessity of an adequate check upon the bureaucracy, however efficient, and such check must be found in the strengthening of representative bodies. Mr. Graham Wallas declares that "the empirical art of politics ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... sure we should have perished if you had not come," added Mrs. Flint, who was not disposed to undervalue Harry's ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... issue. Their demonstration is only preparatory work, the value of which must be established cautiously and without prejudice. It may be said that the feeling of satisfaction with what has been done causes jurists frequently to forget what must yet be done, or to undervalue it. Further, a psychological examination must seek out the motives which led or might have led the accused to deny some point not particularly dangerous to him. In most cases an intelligible ground for such action can be discovered, and if the psychologically ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... us not undervalue ourselves—which would, in fact, be to undervalue our Creator—for such shortcomings. Though into our iron horse's skull or cab we have to put one or two living men to supply its deficiency of understanding, it is nevertheless a recognizable animal, of a very grand and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... which justified the opinion he had already formed of me, and justified something else, too—his faith in his own eloquence, logic, and powers of persuasion. Not that I meant to make his mistake and undervalue him; he was an intelligent, capable, remarkable criminal—with the one failing—an overconfident ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... lady will not undervalue the compliment she is inclined to make you, Sir Harry. The moment you ask for her compliance, she will not refuse to your affection, what she makes a difficulty to grant to the entreaty of ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... bring it about? There are many kinds of enthusiasts, though but one quality of enthusiasm. Weak people show their enthusiasm too much on the surface. Powerful folk keep it too deep in their hearts to be seen at all. What then, are we to scout it in the impulsive because too obvious; to undervalue it in the reticent because almost invisible? Nay, let us be thankful for it in any form, for the thing is good, though the individual's manner of displaying it may be faulty. Let us hope that the too gushing may learn to clap on the breaks ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... the joys and sorrows of a domestic life. He was a man who thoroughly respected religion, and could well discriminate between the genuine servant of Christ and the mere sounding professor, while at the same time scientific studies had rather tended to make him undervalue clear dogmatic teaching as set forth in the revealed Word of God. Yet he was too profound a thinker to adopt that popular scepticism which is either the refuge of those who, consciously or unconsciously, use it as ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... brother; but still we felt all the hazardous daring of our position, and had no confidence whatever in the courage or discipline of our allies; and we saw that in the very melee of the battle the efforts of the enemy were directed almost exclusively against our line, so confidently did they undervalue the efforts of the Spanish troops. Morning broke at length, and scarcely was the heavy mist clearing away before the red sunlight, when the sounds of fife and drum were heard from a distant part of the field. The notes swelled or sank as the breeze ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... to forge ahead towards the open sea and safety. 'For me,' Scott adds, 'the lesson had been a sharp and, I have no doubt, a salutary one; we were here to fight the elements with their icy weapons, and once and for all this taught me not to undervalue the enemy.' During the forenoon the ship was within seven or eight miles of the high bold coast-line to the south of Cape Adare, but later she had to be turned outwards [Page 46] so that the heavy stream of pack-ice drifting along the land could be avoided. By the morning of the 11th she was ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... pigeon that I will bring on the scene. And, in the first place, his name was Godefroid de Beaudenord; neither Finot, nor Blondet, nor Couture, nor I am likely to undervalue such an advantage as that! After a ball, when a score of pretty women stand behooded waiting for their carriages, with their husbands and adorers at their sides, Beaudenord could hear his people called ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... same," said Gabriel sadly: "but unfortunately—" and then, as if he wished to escape from a painful thought, and to change the conversation, he, addressing himself to Dagobert, added: "Believe me: be more just than to undervalue your own courage by exalting mine. Your courage must be very great—very great; for, after a battle, the spectacle of the carnage must be truly terrible to a generous and feeling heart. We, at least, though we may be killed, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... supposed to undervalue the genuine and graceful ability of execution displayed by the author at his best. He could write at times very much after the earliest fashion of the adolescent Shakespeare; in other words, after the fashion of the day or hour, to ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... changing from friendship to open hostility. In the Prince the Cardinal met his match. He found himself confronted by an intellect as subtle, an experience as fertile in expedients, a temper as even, and a disposition sometimes as haughty as his own. He never affected to undervalue the mind of Orange. "'Tis a man of profound genius, vast ambition—dangerous, acute, politic," he wrote to the King at a very early period. The original relations between himself and the Prince bad been very amicable. It hardly needed ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... recently, had been obliged to wear old and shabby clothes. In this democratic spirit, Linton was encouraged by his parents, who, while appreciating the refinement which is apt to be connected with liberal means, were too sensible to undervalue sterling merit and ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... social phenomena, were either influenced by the strongest prejudice against Hebrew antiquities or by the strongest desire to construct their system without the assistance of religious records. Even now there is perhaps a disposition to undervalue these accounts, or rather to decline generalising from them, as forming part of the traditions of a Semitic people. It is to be noted, however, that the legal testimony comes nearly exclusively from the institutions of societies belonging to the Indo-European stock, the ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... whether we are or not, we have become so accustomed to the tacit acceptance of the phrase, "other things being equal," that we have come to forget that other things may not be equal at all; and that they certainly will not be on the day of trial, if we forget or undervalue those other things, while our antagonist ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... explanation the dialectical skill of an accomplished schoolman. The poor country-gentleman could not understand the terms on which he held his own estate without calling in an expert equal to such a task. The man who has acquired skill so essential to his employer's interests is not likely to undervalue it or to be over anxious to simplify the labyrinth in which he shone ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... miscarried before discovery, Philippe was ordered to break all links connecting the two plots, and to allow the secrets of the secondary plot only to become known. For this purpose, his abject misery, to which his state of health and his clothing bore witness, was amply sufficient to undervalue the character of the conspiracy and reduce its proportions in the eyes of the authorities. The role was well suited to the precarious position of the unprincipled gambler. Feeling himself astride of both parties, the crafty Philippe played the saint to the royal ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... primitive Judah the Pious! We wiser moderns should never dream of making the comparison between a dog and a book, but for the opposite reason. Judah shrank from equalling a book to a dog, but we know better than to undervalue a dog so far as to compare it with a book. The kennel costs more than the bookcase, and love of dogs is a higher solace than love of books. To those who think thus, what more convincing condemnation of books could be formulated than the phrase coined by Gilbert de Porre in praise of his library, ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... their Religion they are very indifferent. If their Gods answer not their Desires, they curse them. They undervalue and revile their Gods. A Fellow gives out himself for a Prophet. His Success. The King fends for one of his Priests. Flyes to Columbo. Pretends himself to be a former Kings Son. Flyes from the Dutch. The King catches and quarters him. The Peoples high opinion still ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... misunderstand my poor little cousin in this way. You have no idea how faithful and devoted she is. She has actually refused a most advantageous offer of marriage to remain with us. She told me this in confidence; the girls do not know it: perhaps I ought not to have repeated it; but you undervalue Etta. Few women would sacrifice themselves ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... not the person to undervalue such a catalogue of qualities when presented to her in the concrete. True, on her theory, a Christian young woman ought to be ready in certain circumstances to throw such a lover over the gunwale as ruthlessly as the sailors pitched Jonah headlong. ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... from a dead formalism to living ideals, was taking place at that period of Frederick Chopin's life when the human mind is most open to new impressions, and most disposed to entertain bold and noble ideas. And, further, let us not undervalue the circumstance that he must have come in close contact with one of the chief actors in this ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Hotham is no such conjurer as they fancy in Berlin;—singular enough, how these English are given to undervalue the Germans; whilst we in Germany overvalue them" ( avons une idee trop vaste, they trap petite ). 'There is, for instance, Lord Chesterfield, passes here for a fair-enough kind of man (BON HOMME), and is a favorite with the King [not with Walpole or the Queen, if Nosti ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... Friends disappoint us. But in the contemplation of flowers all our finer feelings are stimulated and blended, and yet there is no excess of feeling to end in regrets, or a painful reaction. When the flowers fade, we cheerfully gather fresh ones. But I hope I do not undervalue my friends," she broke off. "I only mean to say—when you think of all the uncertainties of life, of sickness and death, and other things more dreadful, which overtake our dearest, do what we will to protect them; ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... divine order, of this earth that it is a training school for a better sphere of existence. The Christian pessimist in his most typical manifestation is apt to wear a solemn aspect, to speak, especially from the pulpit, in the minor key, to undervalue the lesser enjoyments of life, to insist on a more extended list of articles of belief. His theory of the universe recognizes this corner of it as a moral ruin; his idea of the Creator is that of a ruler whose pardoning power is subject to the ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... they had contrived to entrap him in the midst of his own troops.30 He added, that he had been made acquainted with the progress of the white men from the hour of their landing; but that he had been led to undervalue their strength from the insignificance of their numbers. He had no doubt he should be easily able to overpower them, on their arrival at Caxamalca, by his superior strength; and, as he wished to see for himself what manner of men they were, he had suffered ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... so long and doubtfully for the prize, that, by the time she had won it, she was disposed to undervalue and despise it. ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... can be bought, in the form of linseed or corn meal, for a very small amount, while the butter-fat costs, for table use, a much larger sum. Of course, then, it is not economical to allow calves to use unskimmed milk. Some people undervalue skimmed milk; with the addition of some fatty food it makes an excellent ration for ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... don't undervalue your friendship. You know that, Roger, you too. Uncle Jack. I suppose I should have said something about it. But I—I just sort of drifted into it. I think walloping Sagorski spoiled me—made me rather ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... Boswell had become more intense in his literary idolatry, he affected to undervalue Goldsmith, and a lurking hostility to him is discernible throughout his writings, which some have attributed to a silly spirit of jealousy of the superior esteem evinced for the poet by Dr. Johnson. We have a gleam of this in his account ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... contrast between working in the power of the Spirit and in the energy of the flesh is easily discernible, even more clearly in knowledge and teaching is the contrast between the tuition of learning and the intuition of the Spirit. While we should not undervalue the former, it is striking to note how the Bible puts the weightier emphasis on the latter; so that really the unspiritual hearer is to be accounted less blameworthy for not discerning the truth than the intellectual preacher ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... him. If it cannot carry itself as it ought, high and unmatchable in the presence of any man; if the secret oracles whose whisper makes the sweetness and dignity of his life do here withdraw and accompany him no longer,—it is time to undervalue what he has valued, to dispossess himself of what he has acquired, and with Caesar to take in his hand the army, the empire, and Cleopatra, and say, "All these will I relinquish, if you will show me the fountains of the Nile." Dear to us are those who love us; ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... which we dwelt. For the mind and eyes of the average man this world is as lost as Eden and as sunken as Atlantis. There runs a strange law through the length of human history—that men are continually tending to undervalue their environment, to undervalue their happiness, to undervalue themselves. The great sin of mankind, the sin typified by the fall of Adam, is the tendency, not towards pride, but towards this weird and ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... the sake of our country, deprived ourselves during several months of the power to make money, and during this time we have existed without many of the comforts to which we are accustomed." Now, I by no means wish to undervalue the sacrifices of the Parisians, but heroism is not the word for them. So long as there are enough provisions in the town to enable every one to live without feeling the pangs of hunger, they have no opportunity to show negative heroism. So long as the town is not assaulted, and they do ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... struggling to hide the fact that we have permitted ourselves to be loved. Put a woman in a position to say that she has yielded only to a species of violence, or to surprise; persuade her that you do not undervalue her, and I ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... amatory versifying wasn't entirely a youthful passion. Colonel Cash is about as fatal with a couplet as with a double-barreled gun, and scatters as terribly. Judge Butts and Dr. Wilson have both discerned the resemblance of your gifts to those of Venus, and their own to Apollo. But don't undervalue those tributes, Miss Mulrady," he added, more seriously. "You'll have thousands of admirers where you are going; but you'll be willing to admit in the end, I think, that none were more honest and respectful than your subjects at Rough-and-Ready and Red Dog." He stopped, and added in a ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... said the coachman, in his gruff voice, "that here is a low fellow who takes every opportunity to undervalue me and my horses, and I have sworn to give him a good drubbing the first time I could lay my hands upon him. So, Pere Rousselet, step aside. He will see if I am a pickle; he will find out ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... of the policy of the government. It is as discreditable to the intellect and judgment of a free people to complain of that which is right in itself, and rests upon established principles of right, as to submit without resistance or murmur to usurpation or misgovernment. I do not mean to undervalue the periodical press; but it must always assume something in regard to its readers, and in politics it must assume that the principles of government and the history of national institutions are known ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... features small and delicately cut, with a complexion so soft and bright that his silky, chestnut mustache hardly saved the face from effeminacy; his hands and feet would have satisfied the Pacha of Tebelen at once as to his purity of race; indeed, though Charley was not disposed to undervalue any of his own bodily advantages, I imagine he considered his extremities as his strong point. His manner was very fascinating, and, with women, had a sort of caress in it which is hard to describe, though even with them he seldom excited himself much, preferring, consistently, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... to St. James's, and there with the Duke of York. I had opportunity of much talk with Sir W. Pen to-day (he being newly come from the fleet); and he do much undervalue the honour that is given to the conduct of the late business of Holmes in burning the ships and town, saying it was a great thing indeed, and of great profit to us in being of great loss to the enemy, but that it was wholly a business of chance. Mrs. Knipp tells me my song of "Beauty ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... reasons assigned in the last chapter, it is probable that the great horns possessed by the males of many Lamellicorn, and some other beetles, have been acquired as ornaments. From the small size of insects, we are apt to undervalue their appearance. If we could imagine a male Chalcosoma (Fig. 16), with its polished bronzed coat of mail, and its vast complex horns, magnified to the size of a horse, or even of a dog, it would be one of the most ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... scholars, than scholars to them; but they undervalue themselves, and so by those great men are kept down. Let them have that encyclopaedian, all the learning in the world; they must keep it to themselves, [2018]"live in base esteem, and starve, except ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... some sympathy with the work. I do not mean that we must necessarily praise the execution of it; but we must be in such a frame of mind that the success of the work would give us pleasure. I am sure someone says somewhere that a man whose first emotion upon seeing anything good is to undervalue it will never do anything good of his own. It argues a want of genius in ourselves if we fail to see it in others; unless, indeed, we do really see it, and only say we don't out of envy. This is very shameful. I had ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... accomplished in manners, and admirably informed, not having had the benefits when young of a regular classical education, find (upon any accident bringing up such subjects) a deficiency which they do not find on other subjects. They are too honorable to undervalue advantages, which they feel to be considerable, simply because they were denied to themselves. They regret their loss. And yet it seems hardly worth while, on a simple prospect of contingencies that may never be realized, to undertake an entirely new course of study for redressing this loss. But ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... admiration—real admiration—because the gross bathos he had just uttered betrayed a weakness—vanity. Now I began to understand him; vanity must also lead him to undervalue men. True, with the faintest approach to eloquence he could no doubt hold the "Clubs" of Belleville spellbound; with self-effacing adroitness to cover stealthy persuasion, he had probably found little difficulty in dominating this inexperienced girl, who, touched to ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... say, no doubt, using the language of the law, that 'to make out my case,' I should rather undervalue, than insist upon a full estimation of the activity required in this matter. This may be the practice in law, but it is not the usage of reason. My ultimate object is only the truth. My immediate purpose is to lead you to place in juxtaposition, that very unusual activity of which I have ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of the male line in this example, but they're too strongly marked. Good qualities, such as resolution and courage, may degenerate through being developed to exaggeration at the expense of others, and after all Captain Challoner strikes me as a much finer type. I'm afraid you undervalue the ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... can be measured is ever tending to become in itself the chief, if not the sole, measure of worth. And in proportion as we tend to value the results of education for their measureableness, so we tend to undervalue and at last to ignore those results which are too intrinsically valuable to ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... led him to ignore or undervalue the fact, patent to others, that he was no bushman either by instinct or training. And he seemed to prefer for companions men like himself, who could not detect this failing, as is evident from a letter written by him to W. Hull, of Melbourne, with reference to a young man who was anxious ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... no fault with my present company," she said demurely, dropping her head and eyelids until a faint suffusion seemed to follow the falling lashes over her cheek. "I don't think YOU ought to undervalue it." ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... coarse woollen shirt which they make themselves, and then receive as a present from the missionaries, constitutes their only clothing. Such is the happiness which the Catholic religion has brought to the uncultivated Indian; and this is the Paradise which he must not presume to undervalue by attempting a return to freedom in the society of his unconverted countrymen, under penalty of ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... is this, that she should be so educated as to know her appropriate sphere. There are two errors in this respect, which she is liable to commit. She may undervalue her capacities, and imagine, that being able to acquire or perform little, nothing need be attempted; or that her influence is trifling, that she helps few and harms less, and therefore, whether she be ignorant or learned is of no consequence. Or she may pass to the opposite extreme, and believe ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... centuries in England afforded healthful recreation to all classes must needs possess some value beyond that of mere physical exercise. Not that we would undervalue the latter advantage. Improvement in health usually keeps pace with improvement in cricket. Mr. Grace, the "champion cricketer of the world," is hardly less a champion of muscular physique: he sought in vain for a companion ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... to be an exaggerated pretension. None, however, who are conversant with the facts connected with the author's experience, will so regard this practical reference, for the statement might be greatly amplified without exceeding the bounds of truth. Physicians generally undervalue the nervous functions, and overlook the importance of the brain as an indicator of the conditions of the physical system, because they are not sufficiently familiar with its influence over the bodily functions. Pathological conditions are faithfully represented by the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... the gradual improvement, the cautious unhazardous labours of the industrious though contented gardener—to prune, to strengthen, to engraft, and one by one to remove from its leaves and fresh shoots the slug and 355 the caterpillar. But far be it from us to undervalue with light and senseless detraction the conscientious hardihood of our predecessors, or even to condemn in them that vehemence, to which the blessings it won for us leave us now neither temptation nor pretext. We antedate the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... life, as complete, if not as pleasantly diffuse, as his large volumes of "Memoires." Jomini, from an extended experience, and a study of the genius of Napoleon, which his Russian position could never induce him to undervalue, has produced those standard works which must always remain the treasure-houses of military knowledge. We admire veracity, but let no soldier confess that he has not read the "Vie Politique et Militaire," and the "Precis de l'Art de la Guerre." But, in all these cases, the litera scripta ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... "I should be very sorry, sir, to seem to undervalue your consideration or disregard your warning; but I am afraid that even if you had been less merciful to Tappington, and he were now a convicted felon, I should change neither my feelings nor ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... celebrated author of the Rambler, wishing to show him a mark of peculiar respect, drank Dr. Johnson's health in these words: "Your health, Mr. Vagabond." Assuredly no well-judging Englishman would undervalue the Frenchman's abilities, because he mistook the meaning of the words Vagabond and Rambler; he would recollect, that in old English and modern French authors, vagabond means wanderer: des eaux vagabondes is a phrase far from inelegant. But independently of this consideration, no well-bred gentleman ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... strikes one as almost insane to assume that in a Christian country Atheism should be professed as a cloak or as an excuse for misconduct. They who talk in this strain greatly undervalue the accommodating power of religion. Is there a single form of rascality known to man for which religion has not been able to provide a sanction? If there is I have failed to come across it. The use of religion made by tyranny in all ages and in all countries is proof ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... beck of misery,—"to deliver the needy when he crieth, the poor also, and him that hath no helper." Sympathy costs but little. Its recompense and return are great, in the priceless consolation it imparts. Few there are who undervalue it. Look at Paul—the weary, jaded prisoner,—chained to a soldier—recently wrecked, about to stand before Caesar. He reaches Appii Forum and the Three Taverns, dejected and depressed. Brethren come ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... unhealthy fungus crop, were to Amyas simply, as he expressed it, "wind and moonshine;" and he treated his cousin as a sort of harmless lunatic, and, as they say in Devon, "half-baked." And Eustace knew it; and knew, too, that his cousin did him an injustice. "He used to undervalue me," said he to himself; "let us see whether he does not find me a match for him now." And then went off into an agony of secret contrition for his self-seeking and his forgetting that "the glory of God, and not his own exaltation," was the object ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... committed to me and betraying thereof. Notwithstanding of all which they persisted in their Resolution, and not only Debarred me from the Use of the Court House but also to deliver up the Negroes, etc., to be sold, as I had ordered, and afterward sold them amongst themselves at an undervalue: By which their Contempt of his Majesty's Authority and Court of Admiralty is obvious, Yea, their incroaching upon and usurping of the Admiralty Jurisdiction contrary to Queen Ann's express Order abovementioned is Palpable, And their refusing to give that aid and assistance which the Judge ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... said, "Depart from me, for I am sinful man, O Lord," "Lord, thou shalt never wash my feet." But humility is rather like Mary, that sat down at Christ's feet, and washed them with tears. Sobriety of mind does not undervalue God's gifts and graces, neither doth it overvalue them. It thinks of itself according to the measure of grace freely given, (Rom. xii. 3) and sobriety looks on all its own gifts, and ornaments, as not its own but another's, as free ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... have also another object, sufficiently important to determine our Government in looking to the increase of our connexion with Eastern Africa. It is certainly a minor one, but one which no rational Government can undervalue. The policy of the present French King is directed eminently to the extension of commercial influence in all countries. To this policy, none can make objection. It is the duty of a monarch to develop all the resources of his country; and while France exerts herself only ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... form of linseed or corn meal, for a very small amount, while the butter-fat costs, for table use, a much larger sum. Of course, then, it is not economical to allow calves to use unskimmed milk. Some people undervalue skimmed milk; with the addition of some fatty food it makes an excellent ration ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... knew that, whatever abilities her nephew might possess, he could not be upon a footing with other men in the world, without possessing that species of knowledge which is universally expected from gentlemen, as an essential proof of their having received a liberal education; nor did she attempt to undervalue the pleasures of classic taste merely because she was not qualified to enjoy them: she was convinced, by the testimony of men of candour and judgment, that a classical taste is a source of real enjoyment, ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... could not understand the terms on which he held his own estate without calling in an expert equal to such a task. The man who has acquired skill so essential to his employer's interests is not likely to undervalue it or to be over anxious to simplify the labyrinth in which he shone as ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... blossoms like enameled stars; I think it is a species of euphrasia. It is the exceeding beauty of the whole which I wish you could see, and to which the most exquisite arrangement of art is in no way superior. I know it is common with the lovers of nature to undervalue art; but for all that, there are exceedingly few scenes in nature (except those of pre-eminent wildness and sublimity) where the genius of man, and his perception of beauty, may not remove and supply some things with advantage. In these ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... it was hardly necessary for Mr. Croker to assure us. Unquestionably the fame of the painter, as of other people, undergoes vicissitudes: varies very much accordingly as it is appraised by contemporaries or posterity. But it may be open to doubt whether the editor of Boswell does not undervalue the artists specified in illustration of his proposition: more especially Romney. That any benefit has accrued to Romney's fame from the unsafe sort of embalmment it has received in the rhymes of such poetasters ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... not be thought to undervalue merit and virtue, wherever they are to be found; but will allow them capable of the highest dignities in a state, when they are in a very great degree of eminence. A pearl holds its value though it be found in a dunghill; but however, that is not ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... with all national traits except their own. And being English, unless you have a friend in India who has made you aware that cane-bottom chairs are India-English, you will be pretty sure to believe that there is no comfort without carpets and coal; or being an American, you will be apt to undervalue a gallery of pictures with only a three-ply carpet on the floor, and to "calculate," that, if they could see your house in Washington Street, they would feel rather ashamed. However, there is a great deal of human nature in mankind, wherever you go,—except ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... shall tell me that it is to undervalue the muses, to make use of them only for sport and to pass away the time, I shall tell him, that he does not know, so well as I, the value of the sport, the pleasure, and the pastime; I can hardly forbear to add that all other end is ridiculous. I live from hand to mouth, and, with reverence ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... degree. An old rickety table had been spread out in a corner of the little room as a bedstead, on top of which was propped up a grand cama de luxo, or state bed, which appeared to be the admiration of the house. I could not, for the soul of me, appear to undervalue what the poor people had prepared with such hearty good-will, and considered such a triumph of art and luxury; so I again entreated Don Juan to dispense with my sleeping at his house, promising most faithfully to make my meals there whilst I should ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... and baptized with a special theological name, to publish a work intended to do justice to hostile theories. The too usual course of each sect has been, through all its organs, to attack, denounce, undervalue, and vilify the positions taken by its antagonists. This has been considered as only an honest zeal for truth. The consequence has been, that no department of literature has been so unchristian in its tone ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... arms were forever laid down, and she, who had once so feared me, was now free to wander when she would within the lines of an honorable enemy. That she should walk there with increasing frequency as the days passed was a tribute to my powers of restraint which I was too wise to undervalue. I ignored the shyness of which she seemed unable to divest herself in my presence. It would have been easy not to ignore it, for there were times when, so little careful was she to guard herself, that this shyness suggested, invited, ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... might undervalue Adelle's passion, however, if it were judged solely by its intellectual quality. The beauty and the wonder of passion is that it cannot be weighed by any mental scales, its terms are not transferable. Adelle's share of the universal ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... the Doctor's, and harangued with his usual warmth. I heard him saying to two or three persons, "People are unjust to great men, Ministers and Princes; nothing, for instance, is more common than to undervalue their intellect. I astonished one of these little gentlemen of the corps of the infallibles, by telling him that I could prove that there had been more men of ability in the house of Bourbon, for the last hundred years, than in ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... indicatively into the hollow of her cup. She dropped the spoon, sighed, and became serious again. "I am guilty of the vanity of having let him admire me," she went on, penitently, "without the excuse of being able, on my side, to reciprocate even the passing interest that he felt in me. I don't undervalue his many admirable qualities, or the excellent position he can offer to his wife. But a woman's heart is not to be commanded—no, Mr. Midwinter, not even by the fortunate master of Thorpe Ambrose, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... I had reason to think that you cared for me very much—oh, very much indeed; and then I found out that you didn't care a bit more than usual; and then—well, then—" James, who was too apt to undervalue people, did not attempt to pursue the embroilment. But he valued her in this melting mood. He held her ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... fellows. But such may be as entirely destitute of all true benevolence as the most determined miser, and, what is more deplorable, as offensive to Infinite Love. Property is God's gift, and he does not require us to undervalue his gifts, but to use them with his own good-will to men. To be willing that our labor or capital should be unproductive is no indication of a faithful steward. 2. There is a difference between the design of becoming rich, and that of ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... Of course I have known very fine girls who caused the usual thrills, whose conservatory kisses I should never undervalue. But when it comes to the fatuous delirium—the celestial idiocy that queers the brain and impairs the vision—why, I have been unlucky, ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... give him every facility you can for his work, but of course you will remember that he is an enthusiast, and in certain circumstances might undervalue his own safety or that of the ship. I don't want you to run risks ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... successful man of business, and left a large fortune to the nation in works of art, the productions of native artists, which reveal the talent prevailing among native painters, whom it was the fashion to undervalue. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... writer, may well be enhanced by ascribing to him that which he himself, for the protection of his own honour, has been constrained to disclaim. He cannot suppose that too much is alleged, if he will admit that a grammarian's fame should be thought safe enough in his own keeping. Are authors apt to undervalue their own performances? Or because proprietors and publishers may profit by the credit of a book, shall it be thought illiberal to criticise it? Is the author himself to be disbelieved, that the extravagant praises bestowed upon him may be justified? "Superlative commendation," says Dillwyn, "is ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... exegesis, and to doctrine. As a critic he did not restrict himself to the examination of texts, but investigated the canonicity of the books of Scripture.(681) It is probable that the criticism commenced by R. Simon and Spinoza furnished hints for his views. He was one of the first to undervalue external evidence in the formation of the canon. The determination of the canon, i.e. of the list of books which are to be considered scripture, is a question of fact. What did the early church ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... politics; and he will survive in some form their reduction to political insignificance. He has been a genuine and within limits a useful product of the American democracy; and it would be fatal either to undervalue or to misunderstand him. ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... will be made to turn knowledge against itself, and to catechise the nation back into the schoolboy acquiescence of the good people of Germany. Much good is there in that people—I would not be thought to undervalue it—much bonhommie—and in the most despotic districts, as much sensual comfort as can make any people happy who know no other happiness. But England and France, the leaders of Europe, the peregrinators of the world, cannot be confined to those lazy and prospectless ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... of those who make much use of instruments rather undervalue popular knowledge, and are reluctant to admit that a 'wise saw' may be valuable as well as a 'modern instance;' while less informed persons who use weather-glasses unskilfully too often draw from them erroneous conclusions, and then blame ...
— Barometer and Weather Guide • Robert Fitzroy
... steam the ship began to forge ahead towards the open sea and safety. 'For me,' Scott adds, 'the lesson had been a sharp and, I have no doubt, a salutary one; we were here to fight the elements with their icy weapons, and once and for all this taught me not to undervalue the enemy.' During the forenoon the ship was within seven or eight miles of the high bold coast-line to the south of Cape Adare, but later she had to be turned outwards [Page 46] so that the heavy stream of pack-ice drifting along the land could be avoided. By the morning ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... the suppression of all disorders, and in an enforced calm such as Louis, by reason of his false position, had not been able to secure for them—a boon which, it must be confessed, their placid dispositions did not undervalue. When, however, opportunity was ripe, they bravely rose to assert ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... secure of some, and full of anxiety for the fate of others, is apt to go to much greater lengths in his preference of the objects of his immediate solicitude than Mr. Burke has ever done. A man so circumstanced often seems to undervalue, to vilify, almost to reprobate and disown, those that are out of danger. This is the voice of nature and truth, and not of inconsistency and false pretence. The danger of anything very dear to us removes, for the moment, every other affection from the mind. When ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... is about as fatal with a couplet as with a double-barreled gun, and scatters as terribly. Judge Butts and Dr. Wilson have both discerned the resemblance of your gifts to those of Venus, and their own to Apollo. But don't undervalue those tributes, Miss Mulrady," he added, more seriously. "You'll have thousands of admirers where you are going; but you'll be willing to admit in the end, I think, that none were more honest and respectful than your subjects at Rough-and-Ready and Red Dog." He stopped, and added in a graver ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... loving solicitude which had brought his cousin across the water to his dying bed, he almost seemed to undervalue the act of rare unselfishness by which so much money had been relinquished which might have been kept without fear of reproach. "Cobbler" Horn was not hurt by the seeming insensibility of his poor cousin to the great sacrifice he had made on his ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... offer some hope of support in a literary career. Even in the older and better equipped universities the faculty is usually a corps of working scholars, each man intent upon his specialty and rather inclined to undervalue merely "literary" performance. In many cases the fastidious and hypercritical turn of mind which besets the scholar, the timid conservatism which naturally characterizes an ancient seat of learning and the spirit of theological conformity which suppresses free ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... been a great favourite in Scotland in my recollection has much gone out of practice—I mean the frequent use of diminutives, generally adopted either as terms of endearment or of contempt. Thus it was very common to speak of a person whom you meant rather to undervalue, as a mannie, a boddie, a bit boddie, or a wee bit mannie. The Bailie in Rob Roy, when he intended to represent his party as persons of no importance, used the expression, "We are bits o' ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... we assume perfect skill; but whether we are or not, we have become so accustomed to the tacit acceptance of the phrase, "other things being equal," that we have come to forget that other things may not be equal at all; and that they certainly will not be on the day of trial, if we forget or undervalue those other things, while our ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... godly life. Godly lives there were in all these dark times; and it was at their fires that the torch of gospel truth was kindled and kept burning. There may be reason for a question whether we have not come to trust in these times too much in a word that is written, and to undervalue that other revelation which God is making of his truth and love in the characters of his children. For it is only in the light that Christ is constantly manifesting to the world in the lives of men that we can see any meaning in the words of the ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... eager "to pay honours almost divine" to his memory. "The last age," writes Hobhouse, in 1817 (note 18 to Canto IV. of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 496), "seemed inclined to undervalue him.... The present generation ... has returned to the ancient worship, and the Danteggiare of the northern Italians is thought even indiscreet by the more moderate Tuscans." Dante was in the air. As Byron wrote in his Diary ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... sorry, Mr. Schlemihl, that you thus obstinately persist in rejecting my friendly offer. Perhaps, another time, I may be more fortunate. Farewell! May we shortly meet again! But, a propos, allow me to show you that I do not undervalue my purchase, but ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... disposition for fun, into which you enter with all your heart, that you have such a store of 'wise saws.' How in the world did you ever acquire them? for your time seems to have been spent more in the active pursuits of life than in meditation. Excuse me, I neither undervalue your talent nor power of observation, but the union does not seem quite natural, it is so much out of ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... exaggerated pretension. None, however, who are conversant with the facts connected with the author's experience, will so regard this practical reference, for the statement might be greatly amplified without exceeding the bounds of truth. Physicians generally undervalue the nervous functions, and overlook the importance of the brain as an indicator of the conditions of the physical system, because they are not sufficiently familiar with its influence over the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... argue against such reasoners. I believe that, disappointed in not finding the field of licentiousness quite so open as formerly, they will not give credit to a morality which they do not wish to practice, or to a religion which they undervalue ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... was so elated with this continued tide of prosperity, that he began to undervalue even an English parliament, at all times formidable to his family; and from his speech to that assembly, which he had assembled early in the winter, he seems to have thought himself exempted from all rules of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... remarkable. In the land of his birth, by those who undervalue him the most, he is ranked as the second name in German literature; everywhere else he is ranked as the first. For us, who are aliens to Germany, Schiller is the representative of the German intellect in its highest form; and to him, at all events, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... have built up a happy illusion in your son's mind, Mrs. Alving—and that is a thing you certainly ought not to undervalue. ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... certainly be aggregating languages during the greater portion of the coming years. Of the two I am inclined to think French will spread further than German. There is a disposition in the world, which the French share, to grossly undervalue the prospects of all things French, derived, so far as I can gather, from the facts that the French were beaten by the Germans in 1870, and that they do not breed with the abandon of rabbits or negroes. These are considerations that affect the dissemination ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... worse than he is, nor his condition more miserable than it is. But could I though I would? As a man cannot flatter God, nor overpraise him, so a man cannot injure man, nor undervalue him. Thus much must necessarily be presented to his remembrance, that those false happinesses which he hath in this world, have their times, and their seasons, and their critical days; and they are judged and denominated according to the times when they befall us. What poor elements ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... Philippe was ordered to break all links connecting the two plots, and to allow the secrets of the secondary plot only to become known. For this purpose, his abject misery, to which his state of health and his clothing bore witness, was amply sufficient to undervalue the character of the conspiracy and reduce its proportions in the eyes of the authorities. The role was well suited to the precarious position of the unprincipled gambler. Feeling himself astride of both parties, the crafty Philippe ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... "The knot was tied," as the papers expressed it, "under a huge bell of yellow roses." The paper also named the figure which the flowers and the collation and other things cost Mr. Cooke. A natural reticence forbids me to repeat it. But, lest my client should think that I undervalue his kindness, I will say that we had the grandest wedding ever seen in that part of the world. McCann was there, and Mr. Cooke saw to it that he had a punchbowl all to himself in which to drink our healths: Judge Short was there, still followed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... overlook or undervalue the training of girls in games. The fact is that girls especially need this training as the woman's sphere in present-day life is widening. Men have always had contact with the world. Women have in times past had to content themselves with a single interest involving contest—the ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... energetic development of which has ever preceded or accompanied a great and free development of the national will, has arisen as it were from a new birth. In spite of the low-thoughted envy which would undervalue contemporary merit, our own will be a memorable age in intellectual achievements, and we live among such philosophers and poets as surpass beyond comparison any who have appeared since the last national struggle for civil and religious ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... drugs. As to this matter, one learns more from men's lives than from their books, but nowadays care as to matters of hygiene has become in a valuable degree the common wisdom of a large part of my profession. Surveying our vast gains, we are a little apt to undervalue the men of older days, and no lesson is wiser than sometimes to go back and see how the best of them thought and acted amidst the ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... in service, the contrast between working in the power of the Spirit and in the energy of the flesh is easily discernible, even more clearly in knowledge and teaching is the contrast between the tuition of learning and the intuition of the Spirit. While we should not undervalue the former, it is striking to note how the Bible puts the weightier emphasis on the latter; so that really the unspiritual hearer is to be accounted less blameworthy for not discerning the truth than the intellectual preacher is for {91} ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... doubtful and complicated mental effort, all the active strategic movement, of the campaign, and to him consequently has been attributed justly the greater meed of glory; though care must be taken not to ignore or undervalue the well-played parts of other admirals, which were essential to the success of the great defensive campaign comprehended ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... galloped their horses at speed over any ground, and leaped them over formidable obstacles, and of the bayonet practice, and especially of the marksmanship, of the infantry. He remarked that hunters were apt to undervalue the soldiers as marksmen, but that Wayne's riflemen were as good shots as any hunters he had ever seen at any of the many matches he had attended in the backwoods. [Footnote: Knoxville Gazette, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... that, Ida. Nothing in this world is such an illusion as this belief. Life is rich; its tree blossoms eternally, because it is nourished by immortal fountains. It bears dissimilar fruits, varies in colour and glory, but all beautiful; let us undervalue none of them, for all of them are capable of producing plants of ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... dressed gorgeously, and many decorations adorned his uniform. He shook the proud commander warmly by the hand, and through his interpreter gratefully thanked him for carrying himself and his suite safely to their destination. He did not undervalue the great danger of having them aboard in the event of being chased and captured, nor did he under-estimate the risk that had been run in steaming into dangerous waters during a dense fog; and in order that the captain might be assured of his grateful appreciation, he begged ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... myself have always been remarkable, and I thoroughly endorse and support his excellent advice, of which I am the best judge. I have very much regretted of late to observe a tendency in this family (I say a tendency, for I hope it goes no further) to undervalue Mr. Flaps, and even (I hardly like to allude to such reprehensible and disgusting absurdity) to recall the memory of a vulgar red-haired impostor, who gained a brief entrance into our family circle. I am not consulted as I should be ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... that! I know well that no man who has been such a friend of Mrs. Stannard's, such a friend to Captain Truscott and Grace, could be what you paint yourself. Oh, don't think—don't think for an instant I undervalue the gift; you—you shall not speak of yourself that way! Do you think any woman who deserves a thought could fail to glory in such a name as you have won? Oh, Mr. Ray, Mr. Ray, I hardly realize that it is possible that you care ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... through which we could see the star upon which we dwelt. For the mind and eyes of the average man this world is as lost as Eden and as sunken as Atlantis. There runs a strange law through the length of human history—that men are continually tending to undervalue their environment, to undervalue their happiness, to undervalue themselves. The great sin of mankind, the sin typified by the fall of Adam, is the tendency, not towards pride, but towards ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... that; I don't mean to undervalue him. I wouldn't sell him to any one else for less than ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... St. James's, and there with the Duke of York. I had opportunity of much talk with Sir W. Pen to-day (he being newly come from the fleet); and he do much undervalue the honour that is given to the conduct of the late business of Holmes in burning the ships and town, saying it was a great thing indeed, and of great profit to us in being of great loss to the enemy, but that it was wholly a business of chance. Mrs. ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... surprise us that one of their many tribes had been persuaded to settle there, instead of seeking their fortunes farther west. The effect upon these settlers in course of time was marvellous. Though it was not of course the mere climate of Sogdiana that changed them, still we cannot undervalue the influence which is necessarily exerted on the mind by the idea of property, when once recognised and accepted, by the desire of possession and by the love of home, and by the sentiment of patriotism which arises in the mind, especially with the occupation of a rich and beautiful country. ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... especially disgusting. It might seem surprising to us that one strongly convinced of his own value should prefer to exalt an age in which he did not flourish, if it were not for the reflection that the present age is the only one in which anybody has appeared to undervalue him. ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... of beauty,—who would undervalue it? The least poet and poetling lisps some word or syllable of it. The masters build its temples and holy places. All own it, all receive it gladly. But the gospel of life, there is danger that we shall not know it when we hear it. It is a harsher and ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... Their demonstration is only preparatory work, the value of which must be established cautiously and without prejudice. It may be said that the feeling of satisfaction with what has been done causes jurists frequently to forget what must yet be done, or to undervalue it. Further, a psychological examination must seek out the motives which led or might have led the accused to deny some point not particularly dangerous to him. In most cases an intelligible ground for such action ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... be still further enforced by his successor—had given a fresh though perhaps somewhat artificial popularity. It had been consistent with many another homely and old-fashioned trait in him, not to undervalue the charm of exclusiveness and immemorial authority, which membership in a local priestly college, hereditary in his house, conferred upon him. To set a real value on [16] these things was but one element in that pious concern for his home and all that belonged to it, which, as Marius afterwards ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... you are dwelling too largely upon your feelings and experiences, and are giving to them a value they do not possess. Not that I would undervalue them—they are gracious tokens of God's favor; but they are not the grounds of your salvation ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... said the successful Stork to the poor Crane, who stood dejectedly to one side, "not to scorn and undervalue qualities in any one, because they are not flaunted in the eyes of ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... immense resources and organized power of rival religious bodies succeed in absorbing her and in bringing her to naught? I am not disposed to undervalue this power. Against any human force it would be irresistible. But if the colossal strength, and incomparable machinery of the Roman Empire could not prevent the establishment of the Church; if Arianism, Nestorianism, Eutychianism could not check her development, how can modern organizations stop ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... of being witty," which, in his fashionable day, was called "a bite." "You must ask a bantering question," he informs Stella, "or tell some damned lie in a serious manner, and then they will answer or speak as if you were in earnest; then cry you, 'there's a bite.' I would not have you undervalue this, for it is the constant amusement in court, and every where else among the great people; and I let you know it, in order to have it obtain amongst you, and teach you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... fever a short time previously. Sekeletu asked us for medicine and medical attendance, but we did not like to take the case out of the hands of the female physician already employed, it being bad policy to appear to undervalue any of the profession; and she, being anxious to go on with her remedies, said "she had not given him up yet, but would try for another month; if he was not cured by that time, then she would hand him over to the white doctors." But we intended to leave the country ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... experience that the passive susceptibilities needed to be cultivated as well as the active capacities, and required to be nourished and enriched as well as guided. I did not, for an instant, lose sight of, or undervalue, that part of the truth which I had seen before; I never turned recreant to intellectual culture, or ceased to consider the power and practice of analysis as an essential condition both of individual and of social improvement. But I thought ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... explained and judged by a reference to other supposed laws than those of material nature—the only laws which we know in a determinate manner. It would be unfair to decry the latter philosopher, who endeavoured to harmonize his paradoxical opinions with the interests of religion, and to undervalue an honest and reflecting man, because he finds himself at a loss the moment he has left the field of natural science. The same grace must be accorded to Hume, a man not less well-disposed, and quite as blameless in his moral character, and who pushed his abstract speculations to an extreme length, ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... and I'll take the book," as though the two were comparable in value. Poor, primitive Judah the Pious! We wiser moderns should never dream of making the comparison between a dog and a book, but for the opposite reason. Judah shrank from equalling a book to a dog, but we know better than to undervalue a dog so far as to compare it with a book. The kennel costs more than the bookcase, and love of dogs is a higher solace than love of books. To those who think thus, what more convincing condemnation of books ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... ancestor three hundred years ago, no doubt the descendants of the woman of Samaria, living there in Shechem, still refer with pardonable vanity to this conversation of their ancestor, held some little time gone by, with the Messiah of the Christians. It is not likely that they undervalue a distinction such as this. Samaritan nature is human nature, and human nature remembers ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... King and all admire in him; and he is the first that hath come to any certainty before-hand, of foretelling the draught of water of a ship before she be launched. I must confess I am much pleased in his successe in this business, and do admire at the confidence of Castle who did undervalue the draught Deane sent up to me, that I was ashamed to owne it or him, Castle asking of me upon the first sight of it whether he that laid it down had ever built a ship or no, which made me the more doubtfull of him. He being gone, I to the office, where much business and many persons ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Emperor. I don't know. You'd have to find that out. But the principle's sound. That's why I call myself a pacifist. There's tosh talked about pacifism, of course. There always must be tosh talked—and texts. I don't undervalue texts as a means of influencing public opinion. But the principle is the thing. It's business. Pay a big price to the man who can deliver the goods. If you pay a big enough ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... challenged as one of the judges. If he is not, then he is but imperfectly qualified—imperfectly as respects his knowledge and powers; whilst, even as respects his will and affections, it may be alleged that he also is under a bias and a corrupt influence; his interest being no less obvious to undervalue a literature, which, as to him, is tabooed and under lock and key, than his opponent's is to put a preposterous value upon that knowledge which very probably is the one sole advantageous distinction between him and ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... spoiled by the ill-considered attempts to make a passable engineer; and the annals of every profession abound in parallel instances of misdirected zeal. In saying this, however, one would not wish to undervalue enthusiasm, nor to deny that it sometimes reveals or develops latent and ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... responsible for many family maladjustments. Any change in family habits of recreation which means that the man and wife enjoy fewer things together is a danger signal the seriousness of which is not always appreciated. Social workers are inclined to undervalue not only the influence of faulty recreation as a factor in family breakdown, but also the possibilities of good recreation as an aid ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... contemplation in regard to the lately annexed Colonies in South Africa. This is, I suppose, upon the whole, the most considerable business with which this new Parliament has had to deal. But although no one will deny its importance, or undervalue the keen emotions and anxieties which it excites on both sides of the House, and the solemn memories which it revives, yet I am persuaded that there is no reason why we should be hotly, sharply, or bitterly divided on the subject; on the contrary, I think its ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... is still the same," said Gabriel sadly: "but unfortunately—" and then, as if he wished to escape from a painful thought, and to change the conversation, he, addressing himself to Dagobert, added: "Believe me: be more just than to undervalue your own courage by exalting mine. Your courage must be very great—very great; for, after a battle, the spectacle of the carnage must be truly terrible to a generous and feeling heart. We, at least, though we may be killed, do ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... that had, under Napoleon, become a levelling despotism; then it helped, as actively, to keep revolutionary principles alive, after the reaction of 1815:—a Protean institution, whose power we in England are as apt to undervalue as the governments of the Continent were apt, during the eighteenth century, to exaggerate it. I mean, of course, Freemasonry, and the secret societies which, honestly and honourably disowned by Freemasonry, yet have either copied it, or actually sprung out of it. In England, ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... question of the splendor of the sight. We may decry our own almost as much as we please, but there is a point where we must cease to depreciate ourselves; even for the sake of evincing our superiority to our possessions, we must not undervalue some of them. One of these is the Metropolitan Opera House, where the pride of wealth, the vanity of fashion, the beauty of youth, and the taste and love of music fill its mighty cup to the brim in the proportions that they bear to ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... derived from the talents and peculiarities of the players. No situation could be more unfit for a man of his temperament, than one which exposed him to form intimacies with persons whose profession, almost necessarily, leads them to undervalue ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... finding no fault with my present company," she said demurely, dropping her head and eyelids until a faint suffusion seemed to follow the falling lashes over her cheek. "I don't think YOU ought to undervalue it." ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... thing, the very finest of all human things, to be very rich. A much smaller number, either from the exercise of their own reflective powers, or from the indoctrination of romantic novels and overdrawn religious books, run to the opposite extreme: undervalue wealth, deny that it adds anything to human comfort and enjoyment, declare that it is an unmixed evil, profess to despise it. I dare say that many readers of the Idylls of the King will so misunderstand that exquisite song of 'Fortune and her Wheel,' as to see in it only the charming and ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... in a few months), that German Bach ought to be considerably touched up to suit the altered requirements of the day, and that the rich hues of romantic Weber—nay, even of his giantship the great Beethoven himself—are fading visibly and rapidly. Far be it from the academics to undervalue the great significance of "modernity." Our musical palette, the orchestra, has in our own time been enriched by the addition of many brilliant colors. Music has become, if possible, still more closely ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... to artifice for self-protection. For these reasons, in its tranquil and harmless life, it may appear to casual observers to exhibit even less than ordinary ability; but when danger and apprehension call for the exertion of its powers, those who have witnessed their display are seldom inclined to undervalue its sagacity. ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... piece of a Saviour; thou wilt do something, and Christ shall do the rest; thou wilt set thy own things in the first place, and if thou wantest at last, then thou wilt borrow of Christ; thou art such an one that dost Christ the greatest injury of all. First, in that thou dost undervalue His merits by preferring of thy own works before His; and, secondly, by mingling of thy works thy dirty, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... about human nature; not in indulging in shadowy fancies and conceits. There is nothing whatever to show that Hawthorne had any such doctrines or convictions; certainly, the note of depression, of despair, of the disposition to undervalue the human race, is never sounded in his Diaries. These volumes contain the record of very few convictions or theories of any kind; they move with curious evenness, with a charming, graceful flow, on a level which lies above that of a man's ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... woman of sense, worth, and cultivation, yet not very expert at cutting out a shirt, or making paste, pies, and puddings (though I would not by any means undervalue this necessary part of female knowledge, or tolerate ignorance in my sex respecting them), yet pray, my good sir, do not, on this account only, show discontent and ill-humour towards her. If she is qualified to be your bosom friend, to advise, to comfort, and ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... words as to the action of the last legislature on this subject. After an examination of the Geghan bill, we shall perhaps come to the conclusion that in itself it is not of great importance. I would not undervalue the conscientious scruples on the subject of religion of a convict in the penitentiary, or of any unfortunate person in any State institution. But the provision of the constitution of the State covers the whole ground. ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... other way, and the piles of rock and gravel have been considered so many moraines, that is, deposits of diverse material transported by the glaciers. They do not regard the probability of other agents taking the place of glaciers, and undervalue the moving power of water. Water in liquid state has often produced analogous effects, and it has often been the error of the glacialists to confound the one with the other. The erratic rocks and the moraines are undoubtedly the ordinary indications ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... easy word to mouth, but how precious in the sight of God! Liberty is one of the treasures of heaven and only committed to men at great cost, lest they should undervalue it. ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... praise the execution of it; but we must be in such a frame of mind that the success of the work would give us pleasure. I am sure someone says somewhere that a man whose first emotion upon seeing anything good is to undervalue it will never do anything good of his own. It argues a want of genius in ourselves if we fail to see it in others; unless, indeed, we do really see it, and only say we don't out of envy. This is very shameful. I had rather do like some ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... told you it is difficult to live with you. The more I get to know you, the more I feel this difficulty increase. I will not hide it from you: as long as you are what you are, I would rather bring any sacrifice than consent to be near you. I do not undervalue your good points, and that which repels me does not lie in your heart; it is in your outer, not your inner being; in your ideas, your judgment, your habits; in a word, there is nothing concerning the outer world in which we agree. Your ill-humor, your complaints of things ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... spoken to them that undervalue a person or thing, which we think indeed not very valuable, yet better than ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... which Dr. Johnson pronounced upon a good hater. He had no mercy for bad writers, and notably for bad poets, unless they were in want of money; in which case he became within his means, the most open-handed of patrons. He was too apt to undervalue both the heart and the head of those who desired to maintain the old system of civil and religious exclusion, and who grudged political power to their fellow-countrymen, or at any rate to those of their fellow-countrymen whom he was himself prepared to enfranchise. Independent, frank, and ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... to be kept constantly in view, and the teacher should feel that these three fundamental branches stand by themselves, and stand first in importance. I do not mean to undervalue the others, but only to insist upon the superior value and importance of these. Teaching a pupil to read, before he enters upon the active business of life, is like giving a new settler an axe, as he goes to seek his new home in the forest. Teaching him a lesson in history, is, on the other ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... of that pride, which would make him ashamed of his poor and humble relatives. He had, indeed, a confidence in his own powers, approaching to arrogance, which led him to undervalue the abilities of others, and to look on them as his instruments rather than his equals. But he had none of the vulgar pride founded on wealth or station. He frequently alluded to his lowly condition in early life, with great ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... I trust it may not be supposed that I undervalue M. Renan's labours, or intended ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... gentlemen who write to tell me that I'm a muse. The very Corn Law Leaguers in the North used to leave your 'Seagulls' to fly where they could, and clap hands over mysteries of iniquity. Dearest Miss Mitford—for the rest, don't mistake what I write to you sometimes—don't fancy that I undervalue simplicity and think nothing of legitimate fame—I only mean to say that the vogue which begins with the masses generally comes to nought (Beranger is an exceptional case, from the form of his poems, obviously), while the appreciation beginning with the few always ends with ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... we may expect to see produced in her, if she really does recover her sight. The result may be of incalculable benefit in teaching me how I may own the truth, most harmlessly to her, as well as to myself. Pray don't suppose I undervalue your advice. I only want to be doubly fortified, before I risk my confession, by the advice ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... is a disposition to undervalue common flowers. There are few that will trouble themselves to examine minutely a blossom that they have often seen and neglected; and yet if they would question such flowers and commune with them, they would often be surprised to ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... we undervalue the civilization of the far past of Connaught. Those who erected such churches, such abbeys and such castles were both intelligent and possessed of wealth in no small degree. The ingenuity of the cut ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... they are astonished when they are told that there are persons in Italy who give good prices for paintings; indeed, in my judgment they do not act in this like such noble people as they say they are, even though it were for nothing else but not to undervalue that which they have no experience of and cannot do; it recoils on their own head, however, they demean themselves and disgrace the nobility of which they boast; and not indeed that virtue, which will always be esteemed so long as there are men here in Italy and in this ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... individuality and interest of its own, without so rounding it off as to obscure even for a moment its subsidiary, and, in the case of the first act, its introductory, relation to the whole. This is a point which many dramatists ignore or undervalue. Very often, when the curtain falls on a first or a second act, one says, "This is a fairly good act in itself; but whither does it lead? what is to come of it all?" It awakens no definite anticipation, and for two pins one would take up one's hat and go home. The author ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... so much undervalue your Majesty's judgement as not to obey you herein, and I wish I could remember as much of this as when I was a ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... effects of which, though gradually dissipating, have not been wholly done away at the present day. The disadvantages, therefore, of human learning, or the arguments which would be advanced against it by those who may undervalue it, ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
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