"Misinterpretation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is frequently involved in the emphasis laid upon speaking. There can hardly be a more absurd misinterpretation of the principles of the direct method than for college teachers to try to "converse" with the students in German—to have with them German chats about the weather, the games, the political situation. This procedure is splendidly fit to develop in the students a habit of guessing at random ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... seemed to him that here at last was one as honest as air and as straightforward as light. But no experienced woman of the world, as she declared herself to be, could forget that this was a ludicrously delicate topic with a widower. She must either avoid it altogether, or expose herself to misinterpretation in pursuing it. It took him a few minutes to perceive that Diane had chosen the latter course, and had done it with a fine disdain of anything he might choose to think. She was not of the order ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... say that even though the reports we were getting were detailed and contained a great deal of good data, we still had no proof the UFO's were anything real. We could, I said, prove that all UFO reports were merely the misinterpretation of known objects if ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... we do so by reference to the eternal truth, not by what the writer considers the present phase of truth; and if literature so tested is found guilty of suppression, evasion or misinterpretation, we call the work insincere, though the author may have written in perfect good faith. That is a necessary distinction to keep in mind. If you call a man's work insincere, the superficial critic will take it as calling the man himself insincere; but the two are distinct, and it needs ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... the American Negro was counted among the reasons why it was thought he could never gain his freedom on this continent. But this was a misinterpretation of his real character. Besides, it was next to impossible to learn the history of the Negro during the years of his enslavement at the South. The question was often asked: Why don't the Negroes rise at the South and exterminate their ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... repeated, watching the lovely, sensitive face which pride and dread of misinterpretation had ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... had divined the court's complacent misinterpretation ere he saw its smile; the facile theory that brooding so much over her fascinating picture had unhinged his brain. From that moment a hardness came over his heart. He shut his lips grimly. What was the ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... magazine several years ago. The idea of "The Kindergarten of God" therein expressed, we think, is far nearer in accordance with the highest Occult Teachings, than the other idea of "Divine Wrath" and punishment for sin, along the lines of a misinterpretation of the Law of Karma, worthy of the worshipers of some ancient Devil-God. Read this little quotation carefully, and then determine which of the two views seems to fit in better ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... had happened, and in reply Faye telegraphed for her to come out, and fearing that he must be very ill she left Boston that very night. But we understood that she would start the next day, and this misinterpretation caused my undoing—that and ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... do not call this notion a silly one: he took it from our Holy Scriptures, but perverted it somewhat. Woman was made from man's rib, and did not require to be cut asunder all the way down: this is no proof of bad reasoning, but merely of misinterpretation. ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... in the following chapters. When the doctrine of immanence began, as it has been of late, to be reasserted in a somewhat pronounced manner, most of those who were best able to judge felt conscious of certain dangers likely to arise through misinterpretation and over-emphasis; that those anticipations have been abundantly realised, no careful student of recent developments will dispute, and the present book is intended both to call attention to these dangers and to bring out the distinction ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... broad Anglicanism; in his public utterances he touched upon the Darwinian doctrine with a weary disdain. This contradiction involved no insincerity; Mr. Lashmar merely held in contempt the common understanding, and declined to expose an esoteric truth to vulgar misinterpretation. Yet he often worried about it—as he worried ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... and following chapters. If, for example, there is reason to believe that savages have always regarded the lower animals as powerful beings, there is no need, in accounting for the veneration given them, to resort to the roundabout way of assuming a misinterpretation of names ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... for care in the exclusion of other stimuli. The mice are extremely sensitive to changes in temperature, such, for example, as are produced by the breath of the experimenter, and one must constantly guard against the misinterpretation of behavior. ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... Oliver's account of that long-forgotten night of crime in Spencer's Folly. It is naively written and reveals a clean, if reticent, nature; but that its effect may be unquestionable I will insert a few lines to cover any possible misinterpretation of his manner or conduct. There is an open space, and our handwritings were always strangely alike. Only our e's differed, and I will ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... can hardly be thought to have had any deciding force in turning the scales already so overloaded by fate. Philosophy failed to prevent war. Nietzsche's philosophy did not cause it. His philosophy affords a convenient phraseology in which to express a philosophy of war, granting sufficient misinterpretation of his philosophy. Probably what influence he has had has been due rather to his literary impressiveness than to his thought ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... are there to create it; that phrases which seem antidotes are poisons in disguise. The naked facts arrayed in the book establish Shelley's guilt in that one episode which disfigures his otherwise superlatively lofty and beautiful life; but the historian's careful and methodical misinterpretation of them transfers the responsibility to the wife's shoulders as he persuades himself. The few meagre facts of Harriet Shelley's life, as furnished by the book, acquit her of offense; but by calling in the forbidden helps of rumor, gossip, conjecture, insinuation, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that keep him from utilizing to the full his social resources in the country. Any attempt to understand rural life that minimizes the common human fellowship which the newspaper offers the farmer is certain to lead to unfortunate misinterpretation. Mentally the farmer is far from being isolated in his experiences, for he no longer is confined to the world of local ideas as he once was. This constant daily stimulation from the world of business, ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... Gordian knot. He does not declare: Grace is everything, free-will is nothing. If the power of grace destroyed the freedom of the human will, their mutual relation would be no problem.(700) Possibly St. Augustine in the heat of controversy now and then expressed himself in language open to misinterpretation, as when he said: "Therefore aid was brought to the infirmity of the human will, so that it might be unchangeably and invincibly influenced by divine grace."(701) But this and similar phrases admit of a ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... Nicaea, in Bithynia, in the year 160 B.C. His life, all too short for the interests of science, ended in the year 125 B.C. The observations of the great astronomer were made chiefly, perhaps entirely, at Rhodes. A misinterpretation of Ptolemy's writings led to the idea that Hipparchus, performed his chief labors in Alexandria, but it is now admitted that there is no evidence for this. Delambre doubted, and most subsequent writers follow him here, whether Hipparchus ever so much as visited Alexandria. In any ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... In less than ten minutes the whole affair took another colour under that plausible tongue. The tactician began by declaring that the plaintiff was perfectly sane, and his convalescence was a matter of such joy to the defendant, that not even the cruel misinterpretation of facts and motives, to which his amiable client had been exposed, could rob him of that sacred delight "Our case, gentlemen, is, that the plaintiff is sane, and that he owes his sanity to those prompt, wise, and benevolent measures, which we took eighteen months ago, at an unhappy ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... theory of descent, is justly considered as its most important outcome and as the keystone of the evolutionist edifice—to the well-known proposition, "Man is descended from the Ape." While we simply ignore all the misrepresentation, distortion, and misinterpretation which this ape, or pithecoid hypothesis, has met with on all sides, we will only remark that this fundamental proposition, in the sense of our modern doctrine of evolution, can rationally have only this plain ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... that He was the Son of God. She told me how He had borne the sorrows of genius; how the slightest pang that I had ever felt was but a dim faint pattern of His; how He, above all men, had felt the agony of calumny, misconception, misinterpretation; how He had fought with bigotry and stupidity, casting His pearls before swine, knowing full well what it was to speak to the deaf and the blind; how He had wept over Jerusalem, in the bitterness ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... Severity of persecution at Rome about the middle of the third century, 354 Four Roman bishops martyred, 355 Statistics of the Roman Church about this period, ib. Schism of Novatian, 356 Controversy respecting rebaptism of heretics, and rashness of Stephen, bishop of Rome, ib. Misinterpretation of Matt. xvi. 18, 357 Increasing power of Roman bishop, 359 The bishop of Rome becomes a metropolitan, and is recognized by the Emperor Aurelian, 360 Early Roman bishops spoke and wrote in Greek, ib. Obscurity of their early annals, ib. ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... compare this intelligent appreciation of the position by rulers and ruled, and their readiness to accommodate their respective actions to it and play their parts as organs for the discharge of special functions, with the haziness of conception, the misinterpretation of events, and the utter lack of co-operation displayed by the corresponding sections of the allied communities, we shall grasp the secret of the superiority of the seemingly weaker group of belligerents and the paltry results hitherto achieved by ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... necessary to destroy them.[70] Perhaps most instructive and most tranquillising of all is this, that the progress of physical knowledge is constantly destroying in silence erroneous opinions which had never seemed to be attacked.[71] And in reading history, how much ignorance and misinterpretation would have been avoided, if the student had but been careful to remember that 'the law as written and the law as administered; the principles of those in power, and the modification of their action by the sentiments of the governed; an institution ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... in all cases belonged to the Crown. 'The right divine of kings to govern wrong' was in those days what many a man would have died for—what many a man did die for; and all in pure simplicity of heart—faithful to the Bible, but to the Bible of misinterpretation. They obeyed (often to their own ruin) an order which they had misread. Their sincerity, the disinterestedness of their folly, is evident; and in that degree is evident the opening for Scripture development. Nobody ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... afterward I was pursued by this unlucky speech, or rather by the misinterpretation given to it alike by friend and foe. Nast's first cartoon was accepted as a faithful portrait, and I was accordingly satirized and stigmatized, though no thought of violence ever had entered my mind, and in the final proceedings I had voted ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... This was a misinterpretation of the facts. Very many of those who joined in the protest sincerely sympathised with the idea of Emancipation, and were ready to be even more ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... stand for this misinterpretation of her attitude, and her involuntary, smiling glance was ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... Excellency's power more than in that of any one else, to put a stop to this, and by doing so, to restore this unfortunate part of the world to its former happiness. We ask no magnanimity, we only demand justice. I enclose a translation of my letter in order to avoid any misinterpretation of it by your Excellency, as this happened not long ago when a letter which I had written to the Government of the South African Republic, and which at Reitz fell into your hands, was published in such a way that it was nearly unrecognizable, ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... off-hand, by a certain class of readers, as an outrage on their sense of propriety. Conscious of having designed and written, my story with the strictest regard to true delicacy, as distinguished from false—I allowed the prurient misinterpretation of certain perfectly innocent passages in this book to assert itself as offensively as it pleased, without troubling myself to protest against an expression of opinion which aroused in me no other feeling than a feeling of contempt. I knew that "Basil" had nothing to fear from ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... in consequence of that misinterpretation, excited similar suspicions in me; and thus, mutual distrust produced ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... Siward eyed it, perplexed, deadly afraid, yet seeing no avenue of escape from what must appear a public exhibition of contempt for Quarrier if he refused to taste its contents. That meant a bad night for him; yet he shrank more from the certain misinterpretation of a refusal to drink from the huge loving-cup with its heavy wreath of scented orchids, now already on its way toward him, than he feared the waking ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... a mutual misinterpretation, and, with a sense of mingled discord and relief, found themselves kissing and smiling as if nothing had happened. Pride sustained them; the hope that, since the other seemed so unconscious, a hurt dealt so unconsciously need ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Brian helpfully would be shocked and thrilled at the sacrificial tribute of penance. Kenny pursed his lips and nodded. He would even concede the sunsets. That, after John Whitaker's cold-blooded misinterpretation, was necessary to his own self-respect—and ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... self-consciousness, revolting against a misinterpretation which would injure her vanity, though it was not likely to aim at her honour, Alma had recourse ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... making any issue as to whether the New Testament is true, or reliable. I am saying thus far, only, that the New Testament (the Gospels of the New Testament), in language concerning which there can be no possible mistake or even ground for misinterpretation, records the fact that Jesus Christ did ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... conceiving what will happen, and how we shall be dealt with, when this familiar world passes away. And this belief in a "final judgment, unlike any other that has ever been in the world," Mr. Maurice would have us regard as a misinterpretation of Bible and Creed—a "dream" which St. Paul would never "allow us" to entertain, but would "compel" us instead "to look upon everyone of what we rightly call 'God's judgments' as essentially resembling it in kind and principle." "Our eagerness to deny this," ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... difficulty in the way of accepting the identification is that it is stated that the lost Atlantis lay beyond the Pillars of Hercules; but doubtless this statement is due to Solon's misinterpretation of what was said by his Egyptian informant, or to the Saite priest's endeavour to accommodate his ancient tradition to the wider geographical knowledge of his own time. The old Egyptian conception of the universe ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... seaman on board the Swash, from the captain to Jack Tier, was on deck. Mulford met Spike at the cabin door, and pointed toward the fiery column, that was booming down upon the anchorage, with a velocity and direction that would now admit of no misinterpretation. For one instant that sturdy old seaman stood aghast; gazing at the enemy as one conscious of his impotency might have been supposed to quail before an assault that he foresaw must prove irresistible. Then his native spirit, and most of all the effects of training, began to show themselves ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... was subsequently promoted to be one of the King's falconers. Kildare, [Footnote: The narrative in the Book of Howth gives the impression that Kildare was at Stoke, and was made prisoner; but this is probably a misinterpretation arising from a lack of dates.] in spite of his undoubted complicity in the rebellion and the actual participation therein of his kinsmen, was even retained in the office of Deputy. Twenty-eight of the rebels, however, ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... knowledge of the Scottish law. I had a vague dislike and dread of the deception which Mr. Brinkworth was practicing on the people of the inn. And I feared that it might lead to some possible misinterpretation of me on the part of a ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... of his emotion perhaps caused Hubert to accentuate his words, so that they conveyed a meaning different from that which he intended. Certainly his hesitations were capable of misinterpretation, and Miss ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... theory rests. But there are certain matters connecting it with the above narrative which must here be noticed. The mention of the shepherd Philition, who fed his flocks about the place where the Great Pyramid was built, is a singular feature of Herodotus's narrative. It reads like some strange misinterpretation of the story related to him by the Egyptian priests. It is obvious that if the word Philition did not represent a people, but a person, this person must have been very eminent and distinguished—a shepherd-king, not a mere shepherd. Rawlinson, in a note on this portion of the narrative of Herodotus, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... of human sacrifice may sometimes have been a mere misinterpretation of a sacrificial ritual in which an animal victim was treated as a human being. For example, at Tenedos the new-born calf sacrificed to Dionysus was shod in buskins, and the mother cow was tended like a woman in child-bed. At Rome a shegoat was sacrificed to Vedijovis as if it were a ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... When we are studying a man's life we want to know the facts; otherwise we shall not be able to judge correctly of his life and work. There are two principal sources of error in writing biography: the first is ignorance, which leads to the omission of important particulars or to a misinterpretation of those that are known; the other source of error is prejudice for or against the person whose life is portrayed. This prejudice leads, on the one hand, to such a presentation of the biographical facts as to magnify the merits ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... changes which he himself thought hazardous, saw him criticised in a post where no one ever escaped the severest criticism, and beheld him return to private life amid unpopularity, founded, as he thought, upon misinterpretation of what was perhaps error, but not dishonesty. Meanwhile he felt that the old "Frank," his brother through Alma Mater, dwelt still within the person of the public man; and though to claim that brotherhood exposed Hawthorne, under the circumstances, to cruel and vulgar insinuations, he saw that ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... summary of causative factors given at the end of the case study deals only with the factors of delinquency. To avoid misinterpretation of the coordinated facts, what they are focused upon should ever be remembered. The statement of these ascertained factors brings out many incidental points which should be of interest to lawyers and ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... went out, but right after him came the doctor—a very pleasant and distinguished-looking young man. He apologised for the guard's bluntness and his misinterpretation of his message. He had not meant to offend a gentleman, and so forth. He introduced himself as Dr. Mayer, family physician at the house of the so-called "Silver King," Mr. Dumany, the father of the little "Silver Prince." After learning ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... man's father—now happily deceased—had offered an instructive example of social and religious survival—survival, to be explicit, of the once famous Clapham Sect, and that in its least agreeable aspect. His theology was that of obstinately narrow misinterpretation of the Scriptures; his piety that of self-invented obligations; his virtue that of unsparing condemnation of the sins of others. His domestic morality was Hebraic—death kindly playing into his hands in regard of it. He married four times—Reginald, the only child of ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... says: "I believe in Christianity as it will be ten thousand years hence," it would be a grave misinterpretation to suppose that he implied any lack of belief in the Christianity of to-day. It is but another assertion of his claim to be in sympathy with the esoteric rather than the exoteric teaching of the present; to be on the mount with the few and not on the plain with the many. For as the glacier ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... avenged on men and Nations than that same, which indeed includes and presupposes all manner of sins: the sin which our old pious fathers called "judicial blindness;"—which we, with our light habits, may still call misinterpretation of the Time that now is; disloyalty to its real meanings and monitions, stupid disregard of these, stupid adherence active or passive to the counterfeits and mere current semblances of these. This is true of all times ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... Can such things be,/And overcome us, like a summer's cloud,/Without our special wonder?] [W: Can't] The alteration is introduced by a misinterpretation. The meaning is not that these things are like a summer-cloud, but can such wonders as these pass over us without wonder, as a casual summer cloud ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... — N. error, fallacy; misconception, misapprehension, misstanding[obs3], misunderstanding; inexactness &c. adj.; laxity; misconstruction &c. (misinterpretation) 523; miscomputation &c. (misjudgment) 481; non sequitur &c. 477; mis-statement, mis-report; mumpsimus[obs3]. mistake; miss, fault, blunder, quiproquo, cross purposes, oversight, misprint, erratum, corrigendum, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... others not perhaps so admissible. First, I say, we must observe Reynolds's exact meaning, for (though the assertion may at first appear singular) a man who uses accurate language is always more liable to misinterpretation than one who is careless in his expressions. We may assume that the latter means very nearly what we at first suppose him to mean, for words which have been uttered without thought may be received without examination. But when a writer or speaker may be fairly supposed to have considered his ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... sexual organs and emotions are swept wholly out of consideration; and it was also necessary to show that the lying and dissimulation so widely attributed to the hysterical were merely the result of an ignorant and unscientific misinterpretation of psychic elements of the disease. This was finally and triumphantly ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... not a second Richard Wagner, not yet has he the charm of the Lizst personality, but he bulks too large in contemporary history to be called a decadent, although in the precise meaning of the word, without its stupid misinterpretation, he is a decadent inasmuch as he dwells with emphasis on the technique of his composition, sacrificing the whole for the page, putting the phrase above the page, and the single note in equal competition with the phrase. In a word, Richard Strauss is a romantic, and flies the red flag of his faith. ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... Prussian"; on the contrary the local white population thought him too great an upholder of native privileges. But he was very keen on getting the black man to work, and had therefore issued this circular, which was open to misinterpretation. An explanatory document would be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... Lobster much more than it does its own adult condition, we cannot doubt that its earlier state is its lower one, and that the organization of the Lobster is not as high in the class of Crustacea as that of the Crab. While using illustrations of this kind, however, I must guard against misinterpretation. These embryological changes are never the passing of one kind of animal into another kind of animal: the Crab is none the less a Crab during that period of its development in which it resembles ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... missionary band, professedly aiming to carry out the design of its Founder, in the wide field of the WORLD. The commission to the apostles is the commission to Christ's ministers in every age. This commission, it is to be feared, is losing much of its force from misinterpretation. ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... of visual misinterpretation, distortion by pressure, or poor condition of the ridge detail of the prints in file, it is advisable to allow a margin for such discrepancies. Except in cases where the ridge count of the final and/or key is questionable ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... infinitely better than they could have managed the business themselves, indeed they could not have contrived matters half so well, for they had previously made a present of the youngest of the horses to the king of Boossa, but most likely, owing to Pascoe's misrepresentation, or rather his misinterpretation, the monarch was not made sensible of the circumstance. The canoe was to be sent to them in a day or two, when they determined to prepare her for the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... was, though ingenious, a misinterpretation of Gaubil's. Mr. Wylie has sent me a paper of his own (in Chin. Recorder and Miss. Journal, July, 1871, p. 45), which makes things perfectly clear. The expression transcribed by Pauthier, Yao san wen, and rendered "Hosanna," appears in a Chinese ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... correct and conciliatory; but the Executive Council had long observed with concern the unfriendliness of the British Ministers, and now pressed its envoy to demand definitely whether they held the position of a neutral or an enemy. The only possible cause of enmity could be a misinterpretation of the decree of 19th November, which obviously applied merely to peoples that demanded the fraternal aid of Frenchmen. As France wished to respect the independence of England and her allies, she would not attack the Dutch. The opening of the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... are given free expression in an atmosphere of mutual concern, there is little danger of misinterpretation by the majority. Such a climate prevailed in the meetings of the Fair Play settlers and the sessions of the Fair Play men; at least, there is no available ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... might be lost by a verbal error; or that wrong information might be laid before me as to one single transaction in the life of a friend or of a blood-relation, and it might lie with me to clear him of mistakes and misinterpretation." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and forgave and overlooked all thy insolence, without being in the very least deceived by thy fustian beginning, which I easily discerned to be a ruse, to enable thee perhaps to steal back into my favour, all founded on a misinterpretation of the woman that I am. For had I really been what people say, and what, listening to them, thou didst imagine me, thy foolish plan might perhaps have been successful, but I am very different indeed. And yet, even so, thy part was played so poorly, that it failed almost as soon as it began, since ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... misinterpretation of such objective planes depends the illusion of underestimation of the height or incline of a hill one is breasting, and of the converse overestimation of one seen across a descending slope or intervening valley. The latter illusion ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... practice is found, in some churches, of singing this Psalm on Sundays but not when it is read in the ordinary course of the Psalms. We believe that this is due to a misinterpretation of the Rubric. There is just as much reason for singing it on the 19th ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... and coarsely laminated (This term is open to some misinterpretation, as it may be applied both to rocks divided into laminae of exactly the same composition, and to layers firmly attached to each other, with no fissile tendency, but composed of different minerals, or of different shades of colour. The term ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... "The cause of his loyalty being called in question, he tells us, was a few lines in a preface to one of his books; the objection, says he, I must not pass in silence, because it was the only part of his life that was liable to misinterpretation, even by the confession of those ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... mere idea of succeeding phases of movement is not at all the original movement idea. This is suggested first by the various illusions of movement. We may believe that we perceive a movement where no actual changes of visual impressions occur. This, to be sure, may result from a mere misinterpretation of the impression: for instance when in the railway train at the station we look out of the window and believe suddenly that our train is moving, while in reality the train on the neighboring track has started. It is the same when we see the moon floating ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... desirable that the Legislature should relieve married women from all their common law disabilities. But to say that it has done so in the Act of 1861, the language of which is carefully guarded, and which makes no allusion to contracts, and does not use that or any equivalent term, would be simple misinterpretation. It would be going as far beyond the meaning of that act as that act goes beyond the common law in changing the legal status of women. The act itself is wise and just, and therefore entitled to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... eagerly. "You don't understand me, Huntingdon! My own aim in life is to make my service to my country compensate for the selfishness and foolishness of my youth. My methods may, as you say, have been open to misinterpretation. But God knows my impulses have been disinterested. And you must realize now, Huntingdon, that it has been the business of certain people to see that you and ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... your escutcheon, Sir Knight, you will not now fly like a coward from this house across whose threshold you stole with shameful insolence, but await me here until I return. You shall not be detained long. But, to guard yourself and another from misinterpretation, you must hear me." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... connexion with similar subjects, is generally traced to one cause alone; and yet half the time it should rather be attributed to some other source. Anxiety, modesty, mere nervousness, or even vexation at this very misinterpretation, often raise the colour, and make the voice falter. Elinor had fully made up her mind, and she felt that a frank explanation was due to Mr. Ellsworth, but her regard for him was too sincere not to make the moment a painful one to her. He ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... hermaphroditic symbols, but if you encounter difficulties you might find the problem there. Also, the colour table at the end is not really much good for anything beyond general impressions; not only are the paper and ink old, but between my scanner and your screen or printer, there is room for too much misinterpretation of precise colour, for anyone to ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... unless her mother or some other discreet female is present, to prevent misinterpretation or remark. I have also taken a good deal of interest in Benjamin Franklin, before referred to, sometimes called B.F. or more frequently Frank, in imitation of that felicitous abbreviation, combining ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Law, if you had asked him, and he had accurately expressed himself, was a mist formed out of the moods and the mistakes of men, which befogged the sea of life and prevented plain sailing for the little commercial and social barques of men; it was a miasma of misinterpretation where the ills of life festered, and also a place where the accidentally wounded were ground between the upper and the nether millstones of force or chance; it was a strange, weird, interesting, and yet futile battle of wits where the ignorant ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... language that admits of no misinterpretation, we see stated the doctrine of telepathy, which is only now beginning to find acceptance among scientific men, but which, as I view it, has been amply demonstrated by the experiments of recent years and by ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... Science taught in the original language of the Bible came through inspiration, and needs inspi- ration to be understood. Hence the misappre- 319:24 hension of the spiritual meaning of the Bible, and the misinterpretation of the Word in some instances by uninspired writers, who only wrote 319:27 down what an inspired teacher had said. A misplaced word changes the sense and misstates the Science of the Scriptures, as, for instance, to name Love ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... whole, and when we are discussing a question that oversteps the limits of possible experience, the proper distinction of the different theories of the reality of sensuous objects is of great importance, in order to avoid the illusion which must necessarily arise from the misinterpretation of our ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... Miners, on way home from celebration, give nine cheers for mother and children. Outcry at Indian Bar against Spaniards. Several severely wounded. Whisky and patriotism. Prejudices and arrogant assurance accounted for. Misinterpretation by the foreigner. Injustices by the lower classes against Spaniards pass unnoticed. Innumerable drunken fights. Broken heads and collarbones, stabbings. "Sabbaths almost always enlivened by such merry events". Body of Frenchman found in river. Murder evident. Suspicion ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... version of "The Sinking of the Vengeur," Carlyle has never laid himself open to the reproach of essential inaccuracy. As far as possible for a man of genius, he was a devotee of facts. He is never a careless, though occasionally an impetuous writer; his graver errors are those of emotional misinterpretation. It has been observed that, while contemning Robespierre, he has extenuated the guilt of Danton as one of the main authors of the September massacres, and, more generally, that "his quickness and brilliancy made him impatient of systematic thought." But his histories ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... of me as a charlatan who contrives to amuse a few idle people," he said. "I don't complain of that; my present position leads necessarily to misinterpretation of myself and my motives. Still, I may at least say that I am the victim of a sincere avowal of my belief in a great science. Yes! I repeat it, a great science! New, I dare say, to the generation we live in, though it was known and practiced ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... of our own shams are liable to misinterpretation. In centuries to come our own modern recipes for "Scotch Woodcock" or "Welsh rabbit" may be interpreted as attempts on our part to hoodwink guests by making game birds and rabbits out of cheese and bread, like Trimalchio's culinary artists are reputed ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... conscience, has worked himself into such a state of mind as this must be permitted to talk himself out before he can be made to see the true state of affairs. In the minds of both man and woman there is likely to be found a superstructure of suspicion, jealousy, misinterpretation and distrust, built upon the basic fact of their incompatibility, which has to be pulled down before the true causes can be probed. To arrest a man in this state of mind is in his eyes simply to ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... vituperation hurled by many Northern friends of the blacks at the "professed philanthropists" who went to Port Royal to "make their fortunes" out of the labor of the "poor negro." The integrity of Mr. Philbrick's motives stands out in his letters beyond the possibility of misinterpretation. This record is a witness of what sort of thing he and his kind were ready to do to redress the wrongs ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... Christianity sincerely assented to the principle that private property is a danger to the soul and a neutralizer of love. Every monastic community tried to cut under sex dangers by celibacy, and property dangers by communism. This was an enormous misinterpretation of Christianity, but it shows that men took the teachings on the dangers of private property seriously. The modern Christian world does not. It has quietly set aside the ideas of Jesus on this subject, lives its life without much influence from them, and contents itself ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... . . His lordship intimated as guardedly as possible that Lord Palmerston and other members of the Government regretted the speech, and'Mr. Gladstone himself was not disinclined to correct, as far as he could, the misinterpretation which had been made of it. It was still their intention to adhere to the rule of perfect neutrality in the struggle, and to let it come to its natural end without the smallest interference, direct or otherwise. But he ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... face; and Dysart's misinterpretation of his philosophy almost stung him into fierce retort; but as his heavy lips unclosed in anger, his eyes fell on Dysart's ravaged face, and he sat silent, his personal feelings merged ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... it is too laborious for ordinary purposes, since the account includes at most only a part of the speech. The best way, doubtless, to get a speech is to take notes on it. And yet this must be done properly or there is a danger of misinterpretation of statements or of undue emphasis upon any single part of the speech. The report of a speech should be as well balanced and logical as the speech itself, differing from the original only in length and the omission of details. The speech report must be accurate and truthful ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... November. The moment he shows his face, all other faces are glum. We defy month or man, under such a trial, to make himself even tolerably agreeable. He feels that he is no favourite, and that a most sinister misinterpretation will be put on all his motions, manners, thoughts, words, and deeds. A man or a month so circumstanced is much to be pitied. Think, look, speak, act as he will—yea, even more like an angel than a man or a month—every eyebrow arches—every nostril distends—every lip curls towards him ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... not our intention to traverse the same ground. There is in the manifesto almost no assertion with regard to past events which is not either a distortion or a misinterpretation of historical fact. But we consider that this is not the moment for discussing the faults and follies of the past, still less for rehearsing ancient grievances, whether well or ill founded, in language of extravagant rhetoric. At a time ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... Riley's Narrative, epitomised in Leyden's Discoveries and Travels in Africa, vol. i., speaking of the King of Timbuctoo, says, this sovereign is a very large, old, grey-headed black man, called Shegar, which means Sultan. This, however, I must observe is a misinterpretation of the word Shegar, which is an African-Arabic word, and signifies red or carrotty, and is a word applicable to his physiognomy; but certainly not to his rank:—Abd 442 Shegar, a carrotty ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... possess it to-day to carry out the mission. The Negro scholar who sets out to pursue the paths pointed out does it at a great amount of self-sacrifice. He must expect to meet rebuff, discouragement, misinterpretation, lack of recognition, hardships, and these do not by any means come alone from the Anglo-Saxon. The foes are often of his own race. It will take all the philosophy he can summon to contend with the opposition that comes from ignorance, ...
— The Educated Negro and His Mission - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 8 • W. S. Scarborough
... infinitely daring, yet he skirted the cause of the quarrel with perfect tact: "The misinterpretation of a few careless and kindly words, said in passing, and repeated, with garbling additions, to a man who was not himself.... The brooding of a mind most unhappily beset with alcohol.... A blow resented by a too devoted but ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... his face, as from a sad and unpleasing object. There had been so long an intelligence and society betwixt them in the management of the public affairs, so great a community of fortunes, so many mutual offices, and so near an alliance, that this countenance of his ought not to suffer under any misinterpretation, or to be suspected for either false or counterfeit, as this other seems ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... ludicrous result. He interprets the last line of Parting at Morning as meaning that the woman "desires more society than the seaside home affords"! But it is the man who speaks, not the woman. The confusion plainly arises from a misinterpretation of "him" in "straight was a path of gold for him." Berdoe reads this as "lucrative work for the man"! Of course "him" refers to the sun who has "looked over the mountain's rim" . . . Here is an instance of making ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... barrier would divide mine or anybody's wilfully false translations from that pretending to authority? I repeat what? None is conceivable, since what could you have beyond the assurance of the translator, even which could only guarantee his intentions)—here is a cause of misinterpretation amounting to ruin, viz., after being read for centuries as if practically meant for our guidance, such and such a chapter (e.g., Jael and Sisera), long proscribed by the noble as a record of abominable perfidy, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... by incessant official interference that harmony between public and private interest which must be the object of a national economic system. But this proposed remedy is simply one more way of shirking the ultimate problem; and it is the logical consequence of the persistent misinterpretation of our unwholesome economic inequalities as the result merely of the abuse, instead of the legal use, of the opportunities provided ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... overvalue the peace and security which have been given to humble persons by forms of creed; and it is evident that either there is no such thing as theology, or some of its knowledge must be thus, if not expressible, at least reducible within certain limits of expression, so as to be protected from misinterpretation. ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... justly claims that it was an entire misinterpretation of his instructions, which were to have Averell join Stoneman's column, so soon as he had masked the latter's movement towards the Aquia and ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... subject to what we may call intermittent chaperonage. Business, definite, serious occupation of any kind, is a coat of mail. The woman or girl who is plainly absorbed in some earnest and dignified work is shielded from misinterpretation or impertinent intrusion while engaged in that work. She may go unattended to and from her place of business, for her destination is understood, and her purpose legitimate. She needs no guardian, for her capacity to take care of herself under these ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... of me, as if to draw me back, kissing my hands as he did so, but his gross misinterpretation of my resistance and the immoral position he was putting me into were stifling me, ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... is a misinterpretation of the teaching of Jesus to represent asceticism as the last word of Christian Ethics. Renunciation and unworldliness are undoubtedly frequently commended in the New Testament, but they are urged not as ends in themselves but as ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... But as it passed westward from the Holy City, it slowly extricated itself out of the spirit and the trammels of Judaism into the self-restraining freedom which Christ gives to His people. The teaching of the Gospel was fully developed, guarded from all possible misinterpretation, and practically applied to all representative circumstances of men, through its coming into contact with the events, persons, and scenes associated with the wonderful missionary journeyings of the apostle Paul, which began at Jerusalem and terminated at Rome. When the Gospel reached ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... lingering gently on the words, 'No, it must not be. We are, indeed, inalienably one, in a nearer and dearer sense than can be expressed by any transient symbol. Let us not seek to quit the spiritual sphere in which we have long dwelt and communed together, for one liable to discord and misinterpretation. I have an irresistible impression that my life here will be very brief. While I remain, come to me when you will, let me be the Egeria of your hours of leisure, and a consoler in your cares,—but let us await, for another and a higher life, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... this misinterpretation of his motives. One or two children, playing close at hand, and a loafer who was trying to keep the wall from falling down, seemed pleased. Theirs was a colourless existence and to the rare purple moments which had enlivened it in the past the calling of a cop had been ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... marginal cost of production; and this marginal cost (in perfect symmetry with what we observed as regards marginal utility), may be conceived as applying either to the marginal producer or to the marginal output of any producer. In the former aspect it is open to a misinterpretation, against which it will be well to guard. Some advocates of socialism have argued, as one of the counts in their indictment of the present industrial system, that the price of a commodity is determined by the cost at which the least efficient concern in the industry can produce. They say, in ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... a token of military achievements. The next day he set off mounted on a fine horse, saying as he left, "I shall be a great prince." But his weak frame could not endure such rough usage and he was taken sick at Spoleto. Again he dreamed. This time the vision revealed his misinterpretation of the former message, and so, on his recovery, he returned somewhat crestfallen to Assisi, where he gave his friends a farewell feast. Thus at the threshold of his career we note two important facts,—disease and dreams. All through his life he had these fits of sickness, ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... of the illustrateds deleted its voice from the general chorus. Cuckoo was aware of this, and looked up again to find two eyes fixed upon her with an expression of thin distaste that was incapable of misinterpretation. A second illustrated ceased to sing, two heads were inclined towards one another, and the "t'p, t'p, t'p" of a low whisper set the remaining two ladies at their posts as sentinels on ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... accompanies this nondescript collection of translations is scattered throughout various works, and is somewhat liable to misinterpretation if taken out of its immediate context. Before proceeding to consider it, however, it is necessary to notice certain phases of the general literary situation which created peculiar difficulties for the translator or which are likely to be confusing to the present-day reader. As ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... exhibited his first steam-engine and his celebrated troop of life-size turkeys gobbling the tall grass in a meadow, at the end of which stood, high up in the picture, a French chateau. Impressionism is a word that has lent itself to every kind of misinterpretation, for in its exact sense all true painting is penetrated with impressionism, but, to use the word in its most modern sense—that is to say, to signify the rapid noting of illusive appearance—Monet is the only painter to whom it may be reasonably applied. ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... only did they believe that the religion of the heathen should be changed by force, but they believed that in some way they could constrain all people to accept Christianity. More blood has been shed in promoting the idea that the outsider should be compelled to come into the fold than from the misinterpretation of any other text in the sacred scriptures. If any civilized power in the world to-day should send an expeditionary force into a heathen country, which should signalize its arrival therein by the desecration of its temples ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... proclamation occupies in Isaiah is altogether misunderstood if, with Kleinert and Ewald, we assume that the passage does not, in Isaiah, belong to the real substance of the prophecy; that it is merely placed in front as a kind of text, the abuse and misinterpretation of which the Prophet meets in that which follows, so that the sense would be: the blessed time promised by former prophets will come indeed, but only after severe, rigorous judgments upon all who had ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... silence Don Hermoso had read the man's real character in his face, and had instantly come to the conclusion that he would rather see his daughter lying dead than in the power of such a ruffian; he therefore cut short the officer's protestations by assuring him that his words admitted of no misinterpretation, and that therefore he must persist ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... able advocate is entitled to gain a false verdict. For how is this to be gained? Either by a suppression of the truth in part, or by a colouring of the falsehood, or by an invention of facts, aided by a misinterpretation of law; all palpably against conscience. The true rule appears to be—the lawyer stands in the place of the client, to do what the client would and could have done, if he had equal skill in exhibiting the circumstances, and equal knowledge of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... a monstrous misinterpretation of pure minds by minds impure! To us the dissecting-room was a temple, and the dead an awe, revolting to all our senses, until the knife revealed to our minds the Creator's hand in structural beauties that the trained can appreciate, if wicked ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... would range round the world, destroying all it came in contact with, itself almost indestructible. Hence large fires, such as those of blast furnaces in ironworks, were extinguished before the expiry of the seven years, and the embryo monster taken out. Such an idea may have had its origin in a misinterpretation of some of St. John's apocalyptic visions, or may have been a survival of the legend of the fiery dragon whose very breath was fire, a legend common during the middle ages and also in ancient Rome. Bacon, in his Natural ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... some among us at the present moment who are waiting for the speedy coming of Christ. They expect, before another year closes, to see Him in the clouds, to hear His voice, to stand before His judgment- seat. These illusions spring from misinterpretation of Scripture language. Christ, in the New Testament, is said to come whenever His religion breaks out in new glory or gains new triumphs. He came in the Holy Spirit in the day of Pentecost. He came in the destruction ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier |
