"Confusing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he settled down when the voices of two men in loud conversation rose, immediately under his window. Now, when one is in the agony of trying to understand how it comes that a certain number of angles in one figure are equal to a certain number of angles in another, it is, to say the least of it, confusing to have to listen to a spirited account of a boxing-match between Jack Straight and the Hon. Wilfred Dodge; and when that account manages to get interwoven inextricably with the problem in hand the effect is likely to ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... recognized as a classic, and it remains so to this day. It was a work of genius. Supplemented by elucidations and extensions, it served an admirable purpose in introducing my students to the things really worth knowing in modern history, without confusing them with masses of ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... follow; whereas a slow speech confirmeth the memory, addeth a conceit of wisdom to the hearers, besides a seemliness of speech and countenance[732]." Dr. Johnson's method of conversation was certainly calculated to excite attention, and to amuse and instruct, (as it happened,) without wearying or confusing his company. He was always most perfectly clear and perspicuous; and his language was so accurate, and his sentences so neatly constructed, that his conversation might have been all printed without ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... beneficed clergy had fallen were repulsive to him, and his whole soul thirsted after that new revelation, as it were, which Colet's sermon had made to him. Yet the word heresy was terrible and confusing, and a doubt came over him whether he might not be forsaking the right path, and be lured ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Officer's voice continued. "All I do is make sure that no unauthorized person comes into Chilblains Base. Other than that, I have nothing but personal guesses and little trickles of confusing information, neither of which am ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... obliged for your kind note, and especially for your offer of sending me some time corrections, for which I shall be truly grateful. I know that there are many blunders to which I am very liable. There is a terrible one confusing the supra-condyloid foramen with another one. (471/1. In the first edition of the "Descent of Man," I., page 28, in quoting Mr. Busk "On the Caves of Gibraltar," Mr. Darwin confuses together the inter-condyloid foramen in the humerus ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... "Mr. Fair, we rode hap-hazard! We simply chanced that way! What should I know, or care, about lands? You're confusing me with pop-a! ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... error in the reckoning would be from confusing the great cycles of 260 (or 312) years, one with another, and assigning events to different cycles which really happened in the same. This would increase the number of the cycles, and thus extend the period of time they appear to cover. This has ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... American transcendentalist, born in Massachusetts; a friend of Emerson's and founder of BROOK FARM (q. v.); took to Carlyle as Carlyle to him, though he was "grieved to see him" taken up with the "Progress of Species" set, and "confusing ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the externals of man, his body and appetites, not his soul and its ideals; and so, like most realists, they resemble a man lost in the woods, who wanders aimlessly around in circles, seeing the confusing trees but never the whole forest, and who seldom thinks of climbing the nearest high hill to get his bearings. Later, however, this tendency to realism became more wholesome. While it neglected romantic poetry, in which youth is eternally ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... they realized most severe loss, and then, with angry unanimity, they condemned, and would have prosecuted, Boyd. Wrath fell upon the younger brother, Mark, who had stayed at home, and who, I think, had honestly but vainly striven to keep an intelligible reckoning out of the confusing advices of his senior's various and huge money-absorbing speculations. There was a sad uncertainty about Mr. Boyd's ending. The local representatives, for the time, of the Royal Bank of Australia ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... my intention to describe with any detail the individuals of this company. I have chosen already those of us who are especially concerned with my present history, but these others made a continually fluctuating and variable background, at first confusing and, to a stranger, almost terrifying. When the army doctors and Sisters dined with us we numbered from thirty to forty persons: sometimes also the officers of the Staff of the Sixty-Fifth came to our table. There were other occasions when every one was engaged on one business or another ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... here and there were blind spots left upon his eyes. He was able to get up and steer himself about, feed himself once more, read, smoke, and behave like an ordinary citizen again. At first it was very confusing to him to have these two pictures overlapping each other like the changing views of a lantern, but in a little while he began to distinguish ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... spiritual suffering by those who deceive them and also deceive themselves. Indeed, it may be that the position which I occupy gives me special facilities for revealing the artificial and criminal relations which exist between men—for telling the whole truth in regard to that position without confusing the issue by attempting to vindicate myself, and without rousing the envy of the rich and feelings of oppression in the hearts of the poor and downtrodden. I am so placed that I not only have no desire to vindicate myself; but, on the contrary, I find it necessary to make an effort lest I should ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... useful as toy bricks, and for innumerable purposes. Our civilization is now wedded to a decimal system of counting, and, to begin with, it will be well to teach the child to count up to ten and to stop there for a time. It is suggested by Mrs. Mary Everest Boole that it is very confusing to have distinctive names for eleven and twelve, which the child is apt to class with the single numbers and contrast with the teens, and she proposes at the beginning (The Cultivation of the Mathematical Imagination, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... It is a confusing walk; one feels quite dizzy with the constantly passing stems and branches, and a white man would be lost in this wilderness without the native, whose home it is. He sees everything, every track ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... wisdom, the new points of view, and the new interests must, of course, be from time to time bewildering and confusing. Today those who have a voice in the body politic have expressed their wishes and sufferings. The result has been a smaller or greater balancing of their conflicting interests. The appearance of new ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the day breaks, even if it were only through the window, in the night dews, trembling, as I do now, from head to foot. The maddest, wildest thoughts rush through my brain like flashes of lightning, dazzling and confusing me. I feel the prompting of some evil spirit to do some rash and irreparable thing, I feel as if I were treading on the edge of perdition. It would, I feel, lift the great weight from my heart, would take this suffocating knot from my throat if, at this moment, I could cry aloud, into the ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... from one fete to another it was almost confusing. The rejoicings over the baptism were followed by a fete given by the Emperor in the private park of Saint-Cloud, and from early in the morning the road from Paris to Saint-Cloud was covered with carriages and men on foot. The fete took ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... unnatural states of mind in which we are not altogether morally responsible beings. Among these may be numbered the ballroom mood, which drives quite sane people to act madly. The music, the wine, the giddy turning, the display of women's charms and the confusing proximity of them produce an unwonted atmosphere, of which we have most of us been aware, so bewildering that admiration of one woman will drive sane men to kiss another. Explanation is of course impossible; and circumstances must have their way. Scheming ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... so; for he is the most damnable villain that ever disgraced God's earth, and that is the truth. That man, cousin, in one of his devil's raids, tore a baby from its mother's breast by the leg, dashed its brains out against a tree, and then—I daren't tell a woman what happened." [Note: Tom was confusing Touan with Michael Howe. The latter actually did commit this frightful atrocity; but I never heard that the former actually combined the two ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... that the Springfield through which he had passed and the Springfield to which he was writing were in different States widely separated, and that there were also several other "Springfields." To this he demurred, protesting that it made matters quite confusing to foreigners to have the same names repeated in different parts of the Country. In vain did we suggest that all confusion was avoided by adding the abbreviated name of the State. No! "It was very confusing." Suddenly, a thought occurred to us, and, refreshing our memory by a glance at the Index ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... the mode of carrying out the Truck system, nor, in fact, the innumerable details of any process, for fear of confusing my readers. Women will not be allowed to perform any arduous ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... down the Sytch Bank to the new chapel of which Mr Orgreave, though a churchman, was the architect, in that vague quarter of the world between Bursley and Turnhill. The roof was not on; the scaffolding was extraordinarily interesting and confusing; they bent their heads to pass under low portals; Edwin had the delicious smell of new mortar; they stumbled through sand, mud, cinders and little pools; they climbed a ladder and stepped over a large block of dressed stone, and Mr ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... repugnance to the match, she need not consider her obliged to submit. More followed about the religious duty of full consideration and prayer before deciding on what would fix her destiny for life, but all was so confusing to the girl, entirely unprepared as she was, that after hastily glancing on in search of an explanation which she failed to find, she laid it aside, and opened the ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... darkness rang the metallic reverberations from the battering on the four doors all around. The fluid nothingness was a place of fear. Its nerve-shattering, mind-confusing bedlam might have come from the fantastic anvils ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... and lusty. His naked feet were black with the dirt of his childhood, and not only black, but shining and gleaming in the sun. His tattered trousers were completely worn away to the knee, showing his muscular legs to perfection. The rags that clothed his body were confusing and indefinite. You could not tell where one garment ended and another began, or whether there were more than one at all. Cover a pump with boiling glue, shake over it a sack of rags, and you will get an approximate ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... "I am confusing and confused. I shouldn't be—I shouldn't care if there weren't something in you, in me, in our—friendship, something I can't explain, something that shines still through the fog and the smoke in which we have lived our lives—something which, I think, we saw clearer as children. We have ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... right, and at the last he drove his heels sharply into the pony's flanks and wrenched its head round so suddenly that the startled little beast made a tremendous bound off towards the open veldt, its sudden action having a stunning and confusing effect upon ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... kill him, day after day, month after month, as you may read in the First Book of Samuel, from chapters xix. to xxviii. Bitter enough these troubles of David would have been to any man, but what must have made them especially bitter and confusing to him was, that they all arose out of his righteousness. Because he had conquered the giant, Saul envied him—broke his promise of giving David his daughter Merab—put his life into extreme danger from the Philistines, before ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... Mary was not slow to take a feminine advantage of, in her present humor. But it was somewhat confusing to observe, also, that the beast, despite some faint signs of past dissipation, was amiable-looking,—in fact, a kind of blond Samson, whose corn-colored silken beard apparently had never yet known the touch of barber's razor or Delilah's shears. So that the ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... a small irregularity. Several of the girls, the majority, indeed, had brothers or cousins at the neighbouring college. But "la robe grise, le chapeau de paille," here surely was a clue—a very confusing one. The straw-hat was an ordinary garden head-screen, common to a score besides myself. The grey dress hardly gave more definite indication. Madame Beck herself ordinarily wore a grey dress just now; another teacher, and three of the pensionnaires, had had grey dresses purchased ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... strict rules and convent seclusion of the Villa Camellia had given her no opportunity of sampling shops at Fossato, so, except for her half-term holiday at Naples, this was her first experience of marketing in Italy. The unfamiliar money and measures were of course confusing, but the quaint little cakes, the lollipops wrapped in fringed tissue paper of gay colors, the sugar hearts, the plaited baskets, the inlaid boxes, the mosaic brooches, the beads, and the hundred and one cheap trifles spread forth on stalls or in windows ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... talks about is the nearest approximation to the universal form of life, but this is constantly marred by a stray thought of permanence and the confusing hint of the passive mind that we suppose the balance to be the law, and are glad to accept night with day, and cold with heat, because there is a blindness in the spiritual eye which will not let us see the riper spirits who are not sated but satisfied ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... all the same. For many years he had been assisting needy relatives, and thus had hampered himself, in spite of his income. By sheer force of will, so as to force Braddock into giving him Lucy, he had contrived to secure the necessary thousand pounds, without confusing the arrangements he had made to pay off certain debts connected with his domestic philanthropy; but this brought him to the end of his resources. In six months he hoped to be free to have his income entirely to himself, and then—small as it was—he could support a wife. But until the half ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... with one hand on the low wall, half-turned to him, but her face bent downwards. Regarding her for what seemed a long time, Sidney felt as though the fragrance of the earth and the flowers were mingling with his blood and confusing him with emotions. At the same his tongue was paralysed. Frequently of late he had known a timidity in Jane's presence, which prevented him from meeting her eyes, and now this tremor came upon him with painful intensity. He knew to what his ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... depends ultimately on money, therefore (said Dundas) the Chancellor of the Exchequer ought to control its operations and act virtually as Secretary of State for War. Then why not also as First Lord of the Admiralty? No sooner is the question formulated than we see that Dundas is confusing two very different things, namely, general financial control and the administration of military affairs. In fact, Dundas still clung to the old customs which allotted to the Secretaries of State wide and often overlapping duties. He did ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... Out of this confusing answer he retained a single idea: the bank. It was in the home air, so to speak. Evidently his father was closely connected with it, and this was good for the whole family. For a little while the boy imagined that his father was the bank. Later he began to think of it as some sort of superlatively ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... I am on the subject of an orderly and daintily kept room, let me tell you that the modern bane of order and neatness in a house is too many trivial and useless things, intended perhaps for ornament, but confusing to the eye, offensive to good taste, and more effective for catching dust than for anything else. The multiplication of cheap picture-cards, wall-pockets, brackets, and all sorts of little useless knicknacks, has helped on this confusion, till ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... all up so!" pleaded the little girl. "It's perfectly confusing. I can't hardly tell ...
— Christmas Every Day and Other Stories • W. D. Howells
... words which I can't quite understand,' Charlie replied, for the cookery-book was an extraordinary work. The writing was bad, the spelling was worse, and the abbreviations were confusing. But the cook went right through the book with ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... the thought in which the compositors were not always able to follow and apprehend. The only authority for the text of 'Macbeth' is the folio of 1623, the apparent corruptions of which must be restored with a more than usually cautious hand. Without being multitudinous or confusing, they are sufficiently numerous and important to test severely the patience, acumen, and judgment of any editor."—"The Works of William Shakespeare." Vol. X., ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... It was all very confusing, very unbelievable. Richard had a faint impression that it was happening to someone else or in a dream. Why was this wonderful creature worrying about him. The wine was mounting to ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... and its terminal is, therefore, the positive terminal or pole of the cell. However, because the current in the electrolyte flows from the consumed plate to the unconsumed plate, the consumed plate is called the positive plate and the unconsumed, the negative. This is likely to become confusing, but if one remembers that the active plate is the positive plate, because it sends forth positive ions in the electrolyte, and, therefore, itself becomes negatively charged, one will have the proper basis always ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... me to such mean tasks! Being so superior, I cannot make up my mind to obey the commands of a sinful person. He that causeth a superior person arrived of his own will and obedient from love, to yield to a sinful wight, certainly incurreth the sin of confusing the superior with the inferior. Brahman created the Brahmanas from his mouth, and the Kshatriyas from his arms. He created the Vaishyas from his thighs and the Shudras from his feet. In consequence of the intermixture of those four orders, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... about all their outlines,—a perpetual resemblance to living features, distorted and scornful. Myriads of deceitful shadows and lurid lights played and floated about and through the pale blue pinnacles, dazzling and confusing the sight of the traveller; while his ears grew dull and his head giddy with the constant gush and roar of the concealed waters. These painful circumstances increased upon him as he advanced; the ice crashed and yawned into fresh chasms at his feet, tottering ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... affair seemed a blinding and confusing tissue of falsehood and deception that amazed and repulsed ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... line-of-battle ships and the fine steamers, armed with their engines of destruction, approaching in order the devoted town, and still more when they began thundering away from a thousand loud-mouthed guns, confusing the senses with their roars and filling the air with their smoke. Even Jack felt his spirits awed as hour after hour, without cessation, the mighty uproar continued, and houses were overthrown and strong stone walls were seen crumbling ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... to the Founder of the Christian religion? Would not the Kaiser, he who professed to be a Christian, have laid down the sword if he had been appealed to in the name of the Prince of Peace? How could a bloody war be waged by those who believed in Christ? It was all confusing, maddening! ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... Burris, Malone told himself, were bound to be a little confusing. "I'll be right ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... what he had seen, will give more credence still to the stories which have been circulated during the past three years on the island, absurd stories but useful, and which until now alas! have been our safeguards by so confusing events that it has been impossible to separate the true ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... forward was wide enough to permit of our advancing together and for a few steps the light dribbled in past us, quite sufficient for guidance, although our shadows were somewhat confusing. There were closed doors on either side, evidently locked, as they refused to yield to the hand. I took these to be storerooms, possibly containing spoils of the voyage, but gave them little other thought, my whole ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... roof, which was carried high over another building, and fell in the street. A horse and cart barely escaped being buried under this. It seems the frame of the other building came down with a deafening crash at the same time, confusing instead of warning those in danger. At any rate, before they could escape, they were buried in a mass of timber, and three of them instantly killed, and four or five dangerously wounded; and others slightly ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... defence. His method of defence was frequently almost as objectionable as the crime he was defending. He attacked the character of honest witnesses, and of respectable persons, victims of his guilty clients, who were seeking the remedy of the law. He had many ingenious fashions of confusing or browbeating witnesses, and sometimes of misleading juries. He once asked a medical expert who undertook to testify about human anatomy, in a case of physical injury, this question: "State the origin and insertion of all the ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... you're confusing Sir Henry with a different Durwood," said the detective, coming to the rescue. "Sir Henry Durwood is the distinguished specialist of Harley Street, and not the paleontologist of that name. We have called to make some inquiries about the murder which was committed ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... generalise (that is, to assume the similarity of all the cases), we must determine the country, the group, the class, the period as to which we are to generalise. Care must be taken not to make the field too large by confusing a part with the whole (a Greek or Germanic people with the whole Greek or Germanic race). (2) We must make sure that the facts lying within the field resemble each other in the points on which we ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... tread of travellers came to them through the confusing cross-lights of the platform. A head appeared at the window, and Darrow threw himself forward to defend their solitude; but the intruder was only a train hand going his round of inspection. He passed on, and the lights and cries of the station dropped away, merged in ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... but the thin shadow And blank foreboding, never a wainscot rat Rasping a crust? Or at the window pane No fly, no bluebottle, no starveling spider? The windows frame a prospect of cold skies Half-merged with sea, as at the first creation, Abstract, confusing welter. Face about, Peer rather in the glass once more, take note Of self, the grey lips and long hair dishevelled, Sleep-staring eyes. Ah, mirror, for Christ's love Give me one token that there still abides Remote, beyond this island mystery, So be it only ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... at the foot of the steps with a crash of breaking glass. The light sputtered out. The air was full of the smell of spilled kerosene. In the faint radiance that was not moonlight, but a glimmering reflection of it, more confusing than darkness, dim figures struggled and shrill ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... were perhaps intentionally confusing, the committee inquired, how could the original formulas really be known? This quest seemed so fruitless that it was not pursued. Instead the pharmacists turned to American experience in making the English medicines. From many members of the College, and from other pharmacists as well, ...
— Old English Patent Medicines in America • George B. Griffenhagen
... romancing is common enough among intelligent children, it distinguishes itself in this case by the strong impression which the incident had left on his own mind. It seems to have been a first real flight of dramatic fancy, confusing his identity for ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... gone, worry and dread replaced this other confusing emotion. She turned to the business of meeting events. Before supper she packed her valuables and books, papers, and clothes, together with Bo's, and had them in readiness so if she was forced to vacate the premises she would have her ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... Pleasure is "a sensible process of production." For "process etc." should be substituted "active working of the natural state," for "sensible" "unimpeded." The reason of its being thought to be a "process etc." is that it is good in the highest sense: people confusing "active working" and "process," ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... two in the morning when I reached the alarm-post. Brussels by this time was full of the rolling of drums and screaming of pipes; and the regiment formed up in darkness rendered tenfold more confusing by a mob of citizens, some wildly excited, others paralysed by terror, and all intractable. We had, moreover, no small trouble to disengage from our ranks the wives and families who had most unwisely followed many officers ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... which are supported wholly by missionary funds, the Government contributing nothing. Here, again, in the recent {120} order, the Department employs the confusing use of terms, speaking in general terms of "missionary schools," and then of missionary schools under the charge of "native Indian teachers," and at remote points; the inference being that the white teacher of a missionary school, though it may be ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., May, 1888., No. 5 • Various
... rational connection. A mere survival from barbaric use. A score, and a dozen. The score is one man, ten fingers and ten toes; the dozen is one man with shoes on—fingers and feet together. Twelve pence make one shilling; twenty shillings one pound. How very confusing! And then, the nomenclature's so absurdly difficult! Which of these is half-a-crown, if you please, and which is a florin? and what are their respective values in pence ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... wakened again, the last pale glimmer of the lighted smoke was gone. He was bewildered at first, confusing reality with his dreams, but soon the full memory of the night's events swept back to him. His faculties had rallied now, his thought was clearer. The few hours that he had rested had ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... government. The tumult of the Ciompi formed but an episode in their career toward oligarchy; indeed, that revolution only rendered the political material of the Florentine republic more plastic in the hands of intriguers, by removing the last vestiges of class distinctions and by confusing the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... modern American tendencies, however confusing the impression that it may give, will at any rate convince us, I think, of one thing—the absurdity of objecting to anything whatever on the ground that it is un-American. We are the most receptive people in the world. We "take our good things where we find them," and what we take becomes ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... was n't going to say, 'When I was a little girl.' I was going to say, 'When I was a little leaner,' but you snapped me up so. However, it's true, isn't it? Everybody was a little girl once, were n't she?—was n't they?—hem!—confusing weather for talking, very! And what is true one ought to ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... have said by way of preface to what follows upon Niccola Pisano. Almost all we know about him is derived from a couple of inscriptions, a few contracts, and his Life by Giorgio Vasari. It is clear that Vasari often wrote with carelessness, confusing dates and places, and taking no pains to verify the truth of his assertions. Much of Niccola's biography reads like a legend in his pages—the popular and oral tradition of a great man, whose panegyric it was more ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... I understand you, Messire John, for your infinitives are split beyond comprehension. And when you talk about the non-enforcement of anything in many directions, even though these directions were during past years, I find it so confusing that the one thing of which I can be quite certain is that it was never you whom the law selected to pass upon and to amend ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell
... Confusing to the moral sense as we possess it, and destructive of true morality as we must hold it to be, we must further admit with astonishment that pilgrimage was held to be a cure for the ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... swollen with weeping as she opened the kitchen door in the basement on hearing somebody give a gentle knock. Frau Laemke greeted her in a whisper; she had always sent the children so far, but they had come home the day before with such a confusing report, that her anxiety impelled her to come herself. She wanted to ask how he was getting on. Two doctors' carriages stood outside the gate, and that had terrified ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... people to talk sensibly about the family is the same as that which I pointed out in a previous volume as confusing discussions of marriage. Marriage is not a single invariable institution: it changes from civilization to civilization, from religion to religion, from civil code to civil code, from frontier to frontier. The family is still more variable, because the number of persons constituting a family, unlike ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... lighting. The story of any one year in this period, if treated chronologically, would branch off in a great many different directions, some going back to earlier work, others forward to arts not yet within the general survey; and the effect of such treatment would be confusing. In like manner the development of the Edison lighting system followed several concurrent, simultaneous lines of advance; and an effort was therefore made in the last chapter to give a rapid glance over the whole movement, embracing a term of nearly five years, and including in its scope ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the troops; but no use. I then sent well-known Syads and Mullahs of each class, but of no avail; up till now, evening, the disturbance continues. It will be seen how it ends. I am grieved with this confusing state of things. It is almost beyond conception. (Here follow the date and the ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... and truces followed one another in rapid and confusing succession. Conspiracies, treacheries, and assassinations help to fill up the dreary record of the period. The Treaty of St. Germain (in 1570) brought a short but, as it proved, delusive peace. The terms of the treaty were very favorable to the Huguenots. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... what to ask for as I ought; help mine infirmities as thou hast said; suggest the prayer, be in me the spirit of prayer and supplication, and especially in that hour of need, when sickness saps the clay tabernacle, discomposing the spirit, and confusing perhaps the ideas: still, still let my thoughts rise to my God. Oh, let no unhallowed subject get hold of me in that hour, but keep my Saviour's name in my heart, and on my lips. Is not this according to thy will? watch over it then, and keep ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... recognize it? This formula sounds as phantastic, as "weird" and as "vile" as any of the Apician concoctions, confusing even a well-trained cook because we stated neither the title of this preparation nor the mode of making it, nor did we name the ingredients in their proper sequence. This mystery was conceived with an illustrative purpose which will ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... Michel—the students' boulevard—until it reached the Luxembourg Gardens. Like most of his kind, the cocher knew less than nothing of the art of driving, and he ran a reckless, zig-zag flight, in and out, forcing his way through a confusing maze of vehicles of every description, pulling first to the right, then to the left, for no good purpose that was apparent, and averting only by the narrowest of margins half a dozen bad collisions. At times the fiacre lurched in such alarming fashion that Shirley was visibly perturbed, but when ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... known that Emerson was to follow with a poem, a stillness fell on the vast assembly as if one ear were waiting to catch his voice; but the awful moment, which was never too great for his will and endeavor, was confusing to his fingers, and the precious leaves of his manuscript fell as he rose, and scattered themselves among the audience. They were quickly gathered and restored, but for one instant it seemed ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... really is, and by what law it lives. We have been passing during the last generation from an idea of law which belonged to our forefathers to a new idea of law which has been given to us by modern science; and in transition we still talk in ambiguous terms about "law"—moral "law," for instance—confusing ourselves between a law that is imposed on us from outside, a law that is passed by Parliament, for instance, or a law that has been the common custom of the country through its judges, and that kind of "law" ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... pounds of kernels. These kernels go directly to confectionary syrup and ice cream plants. Therefore, they are not interested in size of pieces. In fact, if they are too large, the commercial users have to chop them up. So what we are doing here, ladies and gentlemen, is confusing what we want to do in the way of judging nuts, it appears to me. There is little reason to assume that the Thomas, if they could get 10 million pounds of Thomas, would be more valuable to the commercial crackers. But that doesn't necessarily interfere with our judging system that we ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... not expected at the office till the following Monday. Since I had taken to my bed I had wondered at my imprisonment in this narrow room into which we had tumbled after a railway journey of fifteen hours, followed by a hurried, confusing transit through the noisy streets. My wife had nursed me with smiling tenderness, but I knew that she was anxious. She would walk to the window, glance out and return to the bedside, looking very pale and startled by the sight of the busy thoroughfare, the aspect of the vast city of which she ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... wet with sweat, and when he was slow and the engine-room rang with the clash of machinery his heart beat. The big columns that held the cylinders rocked; crank and connecting-rod spun too fast for him to see. There was a confusing flash of ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... dangerous than the storm which will not let one sail, so those storms of the soul are more formidable which do not allow a man to take in sail, or to calm his reason when it is disturbed, but without a pilot and without ballast, in perplexity and uncertainty through contrary and confusing courses, he rushes headlong and falls into woeful shipwreck, and shatters his life. So that from these points of view it is worse to be diseased in mind than body, for the latter only suffer, but the former do ill as well as suffer ill. But why need I speak of our various passions? The very times ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... think you're confusing him with Marconi," said Sir James, shaking his head. "But I always detect genius! It's a curious thing, Woodville, but I never make a mistake! By the way, I should like to send a card to the Leader of the Opposition ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... had in mind for some time," added George. "It didn't make much difference where there were only a few,—a hundred or so, but now, when we have three hundred or more it is rather confusing to have a dozen or more Lolos, and as many more ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... Parisian faubourg with its thousand different dins; the bustle of the street; the clatter of a factory; the voice of the workshop; the cries of the pedlers intermingled with the chimes of the bells of a near-by convent-a confusing buzzing noise, which the author, however, seems to enjoy; for Coppee is Parisian by birth, Parisian by education, ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... of the present day. Of histology, and such other subjects as could not be brought within his direct personal observation, the knowledge of Hippocrates was necessarily defective. Thus he wrote of the tissues without distinguishing them; confusing arteries, veins, and nerves, and speaking of muscles vaguely as "flesh." But with matters within the reach of the Ancient Physician's own careful observation, the case is very different. This is well shown ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... is so universally known that there is no fear of confusing it with others. It flourishes as a common weed in the U. S. as ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... also be proved that the Earth, and those planets which have moons or satellites, also act inductively on their satellites, with the result that they too become electrified bodies, with their own smaller electric fields and lines of force. This may seem at first sight a little confusing, but the confusion will gradually disappear if we will look at it carefully for a moment or two. Let us endeavour to picture the solar system from this new standpoint, and map out the equipotential surfaces, which this idea suggests. ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... that a man who makes an induction holding up a lady to ridicule is probably a cad, and that the cad who makes a deduction confusing patriotism with ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... Nanak, the founder of the sect, who died in the year 1530. It is full of excellent moral precepts; it teaches the brotherhood of man, the equality of the sexes; it rejects caste, and embraces all of the good points in Buddhism, with a pantheism that is very confusing. It would seem that the Sikhs worship all gods who are good to men, and reject the demonology of the Hindus. They believe in one Supreme Being, with attributes similar to the Allah of the Mohammedans, and recognize Mohammed as his ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... would have been dreadful, to have to go behind the screens to take off her hat and gloves. Then instead of sending word for her to come up, he himself had come down. As he led the way past the confusing halls and studios, he had looked back over his shoulder just a little, to let her know that not for a moment did he lose thought of her. To have walked in front of her, looking straight ahead, might have meant that he esteemed her a person of no consequence. A master so walks before a servant, ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... the number of savings bank deposits. As often happens when reliance is placed upon the direct statistical method, the result of all the discussion and controversy upon this subject is extremely disappointing and confusing. The same figures are used to support both sides of the argument with equal plausibility. The difficulty lies in the fact that the available statistics do not include all the facts essential to ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... very awkward and confusing, but in all probability the effects were by no means so much so in actual practice. We need go no farther than to our own experience to know that the names of seasons, as of months and days, come to have in the minds of most ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... largely through desires for beliefs that the primitive nature of desire has become so hidden, and that the part played by consciousness has been so confusing and ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... says that both the goats and the god were named Mendes in Egyptian, but he is here confusing ordinary goats with the special goat which was supposed to contain the soul of Osiris. It was the latter that the Egyptians named after the god himself, Bainibdiduit, i.e. the soul of the master of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... reasonableness. A detailed discussion of such methods of consciousness and the proper value to be placed upon such investigations rightly belongs to another chapter. It is enough now to warn the reader against the error of confusing the pronouncements of pseudo psychism with the work of the psychic scientists who have already done much toward placing a scientific foundation beneath ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... songs, Lord of religion and worship 7 seated a thousand singers and musicians: and established a choral band 8 who to his hymn were to respond in multitudes ... 9 With a loud cry of contempt they broke up his holy song 10 spoiling, confusing, confounding, his hymn of praise. 11 The god of the bright crown [1] with a wish to summon his adherents 12 sounded a trumpet blast which would wake the dead, 13 which to those rebel angels prohibited return, 14 he stopped their service, and sent them to the ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... English historical literature when correctly presented by authors with text containing these patronymics with the abbreviation point added, have simply removed the points arguing that this 'full stop' in the middle of sentences is confusing for the English reader, thereby wrongly embedding the abbreviated name as the real one in the readers' minds. This happened for example with the text of "Batavia's Graveyard" according the Cambridge educated historian Mike Dash, its author. This is the more reason to write ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... the stern, the ship trembles and groans all round them, there's the noise of the seas about and overhead, confusing Cloete, and he hears the other screaming as if crazy. . . Ah, you don't believe me! Go and look at the port chain. Parted? Eh? Go and see if it's parted. Go and find the broken link. You can't. There's no broken link. That means a thousand pounds for me. No less. A thousand the day ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... them-those lads with their beer and their poker games in the dead of the night with a towel hung over the keyhole. Their habits are often vicious enough, but something remains in them through it all and they may go away and do great things. This happens. We know it. It happens with confusing insistence. It destroys theo- ries. There-there isn't much to say about it. And sometimes we like this kind of a boy better than we do the-the others. For my part I know of many a pure, pious and fine- minded student that I have positively loathed from a personal point-of-view. But," he added, ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... is beautiful," said the little Princess to her mother. "All my life I have longed to look on beauty, and now it is all so confusing that I cannot tell one thing from another. Is there anything ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... of the Motor and Gas Gazette was of an overwhelming mass of desks and files and books, and a confusing, spying crowd of strange people, among whom the only safe, familiar persons were Miss Moynihan, the good-natured solid block of girl whom she had known at the commercial college, and Mr. S. Herbert Ross, the advertising-manager, ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... defences and the direction of the roads, neither he nor any one in the Union army knew any thing. The topography of the ground in sight afforded the only indication of what might be expected farther on, and this was confusing and difficult to the last degree. Weitzel had, therefore, strong reason for believing that his difficulties, instead of ending with the capture of the Confederate works, might be only beginning. There was, of course, ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... was very stupid, but it was terribly confusing to me for the most part. I grasped very well the fact that a plus quantity killed a minus quantity if they were of equal value, and that a little figure two by the side of a letter meant its square, and I somehow blundered through some simple equations, but when Mr Hasnip lit a scholastic fire ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... the mowing grass, ripe for the scythe, the simplicity of these cardinal hues is lost in the multitude of shades and the addition of other colours. The surface of mowing grass is indeed made up of so many tints that at the first glance it is confusing; and hence, perhaps, it is that hardly ever has an artist succeeded in getting the effect upon canvas. Of the million blades of grass no two ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... made considerable progress in the arts and sciences before their conquest by the Persians, is generally admitted. The classical writers commonly parallel them with the Egyptians; and though, from their habit of confusing Babylon with Assyria, it is not always quite certain that the inhabitants of the more southern country—the real Babylonians—are meant, still there is sufficient reason to believe that, in the estimation of the Greeks and Romans, the people of the lower Euphrates were regarded as at least equally ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... meek and pensive that no one could suspect him of wrong-doing who had not actually witnessed it; and he had seen the Woman, when she had actually witnessed it, become a sort of accessory after the fact, and shield Tom from "Scotty's" just wrath, which was extraordinary and confusing. ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... romp, prolonged through the details of Idella's washing and dressing, and Annie tried to lose, in her frolic with the child, the anxieties that had beset her waking; she succeeded in confusing them with one another in one dull, ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... circle and under the great roof every one knew his neighbor and was known to him. Strangers did not come and go swiftly and mysteriously and there was no constant and confusing roar of machinery and of new projects afoot. For the moment mankind seemed about to take time to try ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... grounded on optical principles; nor is at all difficult of execution; but it must be so divulged as not to be understood by the vulgar, and yet be clear to the sharp-sighted.' After this, he proceeds to describe a mechanism the details of which are confusing and unintelligible, nor did it appear to bear any resemblance to a ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... writers; others, when carried out, as incompatible with general experience or general beliefs, and therefore as proving too much; still others, as proving nothing at all: so that, on the whole, the effect is rather confusing and disappointing. We certainly expected a stronger adverse case than any which the thorough-going opposers of Darwin appear to have made out. Wherefore, if it be found that the new hypothesis has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... all the obtainable information given concerning the varieties which they represent. The testimony given is sometimes contradictory, either from want of proper observation on the part of the writers quoted, or from differences in the seeds sold under the same name. This is necessarily somewhat confusing to one who is looking up the merits of a variety, but it will form a better basis for judgment than would a mere descriptive list, without reference to dates or authorities. It is practically impossible to make a satisfactory classification which will include all the ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... I was doing honorable things in a foolish way. With no knowledge of how to publish my work I was bringing out a problem novel here, a realistic novelette there and a book of short stories in a third place, all to the effect of confusing my public and disgusting the book-seller. But then, no one in those days had any very clear notion of how to launch a young writer, and so (as I had entered the literary field by way of a side-gate) I was doing as well as could have been expected of me. My idea, ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... through the most crowded streets of the central part of the town and looked at the shop windows. At first Bertha found the din somewhat confusing; afterwards, however, she found it more pleasant than otherwise. She gazed at the passers-by and took great pleasure in watching the well-groomed men and smartly-attired ladies. Almost all the people seemed to be wearing new clothes, and it seemed ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... to the Daily Journal, on 28 April 1730.[2] Pope's mention of it in Appendix II to The Dunciad A, his "List of Books, Papers, and Verses, in which our Author was abused" which is our best guide to Popiana, is somewhat confusing and made more difficult because the first part dates from 1729, the second from 1735: "Labeo, A Paper of Verses written by Leonard Welsted. [1729 a-d], which after came into One Epistle, and was publish'd by James Moore. 4to. ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... been taken to task by some critics for having, the tale once opened at a given time and place, harked back to other days and other scenes: an inartistic and confusing method, I was told. I am still of contrary opinion. There are certain stories which belong, by their very essence, to certain places. All ancient buildings have, if we only knew them, their human dramas: this is the very soul of the hidden but irresistible ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... in the management of the voice. But you will find they are both English in a special way, and that their education has been essentially the same. They are ignorant on the same subjects. They have never heard of the same plain facts. They have been taught the wrong answer to the same confusing question. There is one fundamental element in the attitude of the Eton master talking about "playing the game," and the elementary teacher training gutter-snipes to sing, "What is the Meaning of Empire Day?" And the name of that element is ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... fatuity, and insistently, quite yearningly applied it. What I wanted, in my presumption, was that the object, the place, the person, the unreduced impression, often doubtless so difficult or so impossible to reduce, should give out to me something of a situation; living as I did in confused and confusing situations and thus hooking them on, however awkwardly, to almost any at all living surface I chanced to meet. My memory of Boulogne is that we had almost no society of any sort at home—there appearing to be about us but one sort, and that of far too great, or too fearful, an immediate bravery. ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... plainly be heard on the other. Another strange thing was discovered. Iron wire was not so good a conductor for the telephone current as it was for the telegraph current. The talking distance, therefore, was limited by the imperfect carrying power of the conductor and by the confusing effect of all sorts of disturbing currents from the atmosphere and from ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... might be trickless as an aid to, or defense against, a No-trump declaration, and one which would produce seven or eight tricks under such circumstances. This kind of bidding was found to be much too confusing for the partner, and prevented him ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... brought down the steward's victim. But it was a heavy stroke, for the wood of the feather duster was split into many pieces, and the stumps of the feathers were scattered all over the table. The onslaught could not fail to be very confusing to the ideas of the intruder, and he seemed to be tangled up in the arm-chair in which he had ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... stated upon the authority of others. We should have no patience with a very common tendency to set forth facts, even those relating to the most common and best known species, without the indications to which I have referred. The tendency belittles our calling and is generally misleading and confusing, especially for bibliographic work, and cannot ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... It was confusing, for she was uncertain whether to say double c or double r, or whether both those letters were single. Then, like a flash, came to her mind the way her father had taught her to spell macaroni. The words might not be alike, but more likely they were, so before ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... the gate of the senses drew the life within him, that when three gray-coated figures on snow-shoes went silently past on his old trail, he never saw them. His eyes were filled with a blur of snow, and shadows, and unsteady trunks, and confusing ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... always two dangers that must be avoided: the danger, in the first place, of thinking of the old as essentially bad; and, on the other hand, the danger of thinking of the new and strange and unknown as essentially bad; the danger of confusing a sound conservatism with a blind worship of established custom; and the danger of confusing a sound radicalism with the blind worship of the new ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... we know, she was confused and confusing; the girl had not yet had an opportunity to ascertain the principles on which her mother's limpness was liable suddenly to become rigid. This phenomenon occurred when the vapours of social ambition mounted to her brain, when she extended an arm from which a crumpled dressing-gown ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... lifeless forms copied technically and without inspiration from debased patterns. Pictures became symbolically connected with the religious feelings of the people, formulas from which to deviate would be impious in the artist and confusing to the worshipper. Superstitious reverence bound the painter to copy the almond eyes and stiff joints of the saints whom he had adored from infancy; and, even had it been otherwise, he lacked the skill to imitate the natural forms he saw ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... in quite as embarrassing a position as Paul, and before long she began to feel that she had lost herself in a sort of labyrinth of new sensations. She hardly trusted herself to think or to reflect, so confusing were the questions which constantly presented themselves to her mind. It seems an easy matter for a woman to say, I love this man, or, I love that man, and to know that she speaks truly in so saying. With some natures ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... is better, as the legal terms might be confusing. The gist of the matter is this, Miss Doane. Our client, the late Elias Doane, left the bulk of his money to the many charities in which he is interested, but he left you his home at Brookvale, near New York City, to be kept up fittingly ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... magnetic pole of the compass needle which turns to the north must be unlike the north and like the south magnetic pole of the earth. Instead of calling it the "north," it would be less confusing to call it the "north-seeking" pole of ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... Nick Carter to the others, as it discovered them to him, and, although it burned but a moment, it was a revelation to all the parties concerned. It was Phil, the bartender, who acted more quickly than the others in this somewhat confusing moment of the encounter, for, with admirable presence of mind, he stepped quickly forward, and, reaching out his hands, managed to pull the others toward him until their heads were so close together that the faintest whisper could be heard, and ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... different set of men from those whom I have already introduced to the reader in a former chapter. There are many tribes of Indians in the wilderness of Rupert's Land, and some of the tribes are at constant war with each other. But in order to avoid confusing the reader, it may be as well to divide the Indian race into two great classes—namely, those who inhabit the woods, and those who roam over the plains or prairies. As a general rule, the thick wood Indians are a more peaceful set of men than the prairie Indians. They are few in number, ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... ranger almost returned to boyhood as he faced the marble-topped table, the cabinet organ, and the enlarged family portraits on the walls, for of such quality were his mother's adornments in the old home at Circle Bend. Something vaguely intimate and a little confusing filled his mind as he listened to the voice of the woman before him. Only by an effort could he connect her with the cabin in the high valley. She was becoming each moment more alien, more aloof, but at the same time more desirable, like the girls he ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... was really very pretty and comfortable, Maggie thought, only she hoped they would soon set out the teacups. Everything would be quite charming when she had taught the gypsies to use a washing basin, and to feel an interest in books. It was a little confusing, though, that the young woman began to speak to the old one in a language which Maggie did not understand, while the tall girl, who was feeding the donkey, sat up and stared at her without offering any salutation. At ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... to explain that University was a college and not the whole place, and she replied that she knew so much more about Cambridge than Oxford, and complained that our colleges had very confusing names. "Oriel!" she said scornfully, "it reminds me of a window, and then you have no originality. Exeter, Worcester, Lincoln, why they are just names of towns, you can find ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... foot, a table, an empty chair, the gas-globe luminous against a dark-green blind, and Hilda in black, alert and erect beneath the down-flowing light. The rest of the chamber seemed to stretch obscurely away into no confines. Not for several seconds did he even notice the fire. This confusing excitement was not caused by anything external such as the real or supposed peril of the child; ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the fat man, who was being assisted by Eradicate had reached the top of the gang plank. He must have been expected, for several friends rushed to greet him, and for a moment there was a confusing little throng at the place where the passengers came abroad. Tom and Ned hurried up, intent on getting a closer view of the man and youth who seemed so anxious ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton
... three angry notes from people who thought they loved her, and who were bitterly incensed that she had refused to see them when they had rushed to hear her account of an adventure which might so easily have happened to them. She made the mistake of confusing Coxeter ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Williams,' says the lady, smiling sweetly, and pretty nigh confusing my brains by the beautiful look she gave me, 'would a vessel like ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... cool enough now, and my heart steady, and I listened with an intensity that postponed fear, though my predicament was not a pleasant one, and the rippling water below me was confusing. ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... movement. It forges a static conception of it, and destroys it by arresting it under pretext of seeing it better. To define movement as a series of positions, with a generating law, with a time-table or correspondence sheet between places and times, is surely a ready-made presentation. Are we not confusing the trajectory and its performance, the points traversed and the traversing of the points, the result of the genesis of the result; in short, the quantitative distance over which the flight extends, and the qualitative ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... assertion, leaving the hearer to point the inference, is, as a rule, to be preferred. The one great argument with most people is that another should think this or that. The reasons of the belief are details and, in nine cases out of ten, best omitted as confusing and weakening the ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... universal habit of batsmen of shouting "Heads!" at whatever height from the ground the ball may be, is not a little confusing. The average person, on hearing the shout, puts his hands over his skull, crouches down and trusts to luck. This is an excellent plan if the ball is falling, but is not much protection against a ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... said that this was the most difficult resolve of her life, but it was also one of the best, since it removed us from the motley, confusing impressions of the city, and the petting we received at home, and transferred us to the surroundings most suitable for boys ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the passengers. The crowd pushed toward the door, carrying the startled child with them as they surged down the aisle, and all at once—as she stepped off the train—she found herself in the depths of her dreaded jungle. It was so confusing she did not know which way to turn. The roar and clang of a great city smote on her ears as she stood in the big Union depot, helpless, bewildered, and as lost as a stray kitten in the midst of that noisy, pushing crowd. Sharp elbows jostled her this way and that; ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... young lady had hoped. To her, accustomed for so many years to a regular routine of life and the continual companionship of girls of her own age, the fashionable mode of existence in her father's house was confusing and unpleasant. Her slight illness did not confine her to her room. On the contrary, the doctors had prescribed much open-air exercise, together with early hours. These things not being in the least in her mother's line of occupations, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... he had returned thus soon the more willingly once again to argue the question with me: for that he felt himself very highly interested in the future employment of talents of which he had conceived extraordinary hopes; and that he thought it impossible they should be devoted to such a confusing study, were there no other objection to it, as that of the law, without being, not only perverted and abused, but, in a ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... putting together the confusing records of this period I must revert to the events of the year ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... fear and horror and sickening suspicion should possess me, but possessed I was by sensations hitherto unexperienced, and for a moment the gaslight from the lamp on the opposite street corner wavered and circled in a confusing, bewildering way. Sudden revelations, sudden realizations, were unsteadying me. Was Selwyn really some one I did not know? Was his life less single than I believed it? Hateful, ugly, disloyal questions surged tumultuously for a half-minute; then reason returned, and shame that ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... and as time went on drew more and more within himself. The life of Edgar the Dreamer became more and more secret. So often however, did the warning against his idle habit fall upon his ears that the plastic conscience of childhood made note of it—confusing the will of a blind human guardian with that of God. The Eden of his dreams, guarded by the flaming sword of his foster-father's wrath, began to assume the aspect (because by parental command denied him) ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... to be so satisfactory as where the calorimeter is small, partly from the propensity of the smoke in such cases to pass through a few of the tubes instead of the whole of them, and partly from the deposit of soot which takes place when the draught is sluggish. It is a very confusing practice, however, to speak of nominal horse power in connection with boilers, since that is a ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... of the National Assembly was the establishment of a new and uniform administrative system in France. The ancient and confusing "provinces," "governments," "intendancies," "pays d'etat" "pays d'election" "parlements," and "bailliages" were swept away. The country was divided anew into eighty- three departments, approximately uniform in size and population, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... long tormented itself over the obscure words of the Psalmist, and with a great effort he had striven to blot it out of his memory, and now the words danced again before his weary eyes, growing larger and larger. Those confusing black signs seemed to become a sneering doubt hovering round him: "A thousand years are but as a ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... showy properties of magic, easily materialised, even by beginners, at will. It must be confusing for such an orderly animal as the cat to exist in this intermittent way, never knowing, so to speak, whether it is there or not there, ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... chamber Sept overtook them and conversed with Ghek for a brief period, then her keeper led her through a confusing web of winding tunnels until they came ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... comfortable words that save modern people the toil of reasoning have one particular aspect in which they are especially ruinous and confusing. This difficulty occurs when the same long word is used in different connections to mean quite different things. Thus, to take a well-known instance, the word "idealist" has one meaning as a piece of philosophy and quite another as a piece of moral rhetoric. In the ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... Priscilla as she unscrewed the top of her fountain-pen and settled down to work. In the course of the lecture, however, he had occasion to refer to Swedenborg, and, pausing a moment, he casually asked a girl on the front seat for a resume of Swedenborg's philosophy. She, unfortunately confusing him with Schopenhauer, glibly attributed to him doctrines which would have outraged his soul could he have heard them. It is written that the worm will turn, and the professor's bland smile deserted ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster |
