"Construe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is a severe strain upon common sense to construe the rules so as to prevent a quorum of the House from taking any proceedings at all required by the Constitution; and it is still more difficult to find any justification for holding that the special resolutions of this House adopted December ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... city was placed under martial law, and every citizen was required to report himself for military duty. So persistent were the detectives in their search for treason, that all the business houses in the town had to be shut up, and it became so frequent a matter to construe thoughtless words into expressions of disloyal sentiment, that it was unsafe to speak any other language than Dutch. Thousands of respectable citizens, nightly left their comfortable homes, to cross the ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... you construe your own contracts according to your consciences. I have one of my own to carry out. Mac Tavish has just handed me a jolt ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... did not construe it so, and, if my notion of serially visiting the piazzas of Rome was not prompted by my chance glimpse of the Campo di Fiori, it was certainly not relinquished because of any mischance in my meditated vision of it. I had merely reflected that I could not hope to carry out my scheme ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... might weave unpleasant gossip did not occur to Samson. That they were together late in the evening, unchaperoned, at a road-house whose reputation was socially dubious, was a thing he did not realize. But Farbish was keenly alive to the possibilities of the situation. He chose to construe the Kentuckian's blank expression as annoyance at being discovered, a sentiment he could readily understand. Adrienne Lescott, following her companion's eyes, looked up, and to the boy's astonishment nodded to the new-comer, and ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... "Let them construe that who can," answered Whitaker; "the fellow who drove them was a west-country man, and only said they came from a friend to help to furnish out your ladyship's entertainment; the man would not stay to drink—I am sorry he would ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... education. He did so under some old-fashioned pedagogue, who no more dreamed of the scientific fame of his pupil than did Trebonius of the approaching celebrity of young Master Martin. Copernicus would there learn to read, to write, to construe Latin, and to commit to memory hymns, prayers, and catechisms. Whether as a lad he studied Greek is uncertain; but, as his parents seem to have been wealthy, he would enjoy greater advantages than his still more illustrious ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... girl, "half-past sixteen," with serious gray eyes and hair which her friends called auburn, had sat down on the broad red sandstone doorstep of a Prince Edward Island farmhouse one ripe afternoon in August, firmly resolved to construe so ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... velvet and ostrich tips, an imitation sealskin sacque and a string of beads as large as hickory nuts, ending near the floor with a silver heart. There was a self-possessed young lady connected with these accessories; and Pitcher was there to construe her. ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... acceptation, acceptance; light, reading, lection, construction, version. equivalent, equivalent meaning &c. 516; synonym; paraphrase, metaphrase[obs3]; convertible terms, apposition; dictionary &c. 562; polyglot. V. interpret, explain, define, construe, translate, render; do into, turn into; transfuse the sense of. find out &c. 480a the meaning &c. 516 of; read; spell out, make out; decipher, unravel, disentangle; find the key of, enucleate, resolve, solve; read between the lines. account for; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of calculation is still practised by the shepherds of the Puna. They explained it to me, and I could, with very little trouble, construe their quipus. On the first branch or string they usually placed the numbers of the bulls; on the second, that of the cows; the latter being classed into those which were milked, and those which ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... skill'd, &c.] Analytick is a part of logic, that teaches to decline and construe reason, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... fresh from Alexander Smith, or Alfred Tennyson's Maud, or the Mystic of Bailey—and we will engage to find him at least ten passages in the first ten pages of Men and Women, some of which, even after profound study, he will not be able to construe at all, and not one of which he will be able to read off at sight. Let us take one or two selections at random from the first volume, and try. What, for instance, is the meaning of these four stanzas from the ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... to illusion; the enemy can form and counterfeit them. Or if they come from a good angel (for God Himself never speaks thus) we may mistake and misapprehend them. They are spoken in a divine manner, but we construe them in a human ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... women of the flock, seemed to him such a comfortable consummation as to have Heaven's especial approval. Thus do we deceive ourselves when the spirit of God has departed from us, even in youth, and construe our dreams of selfishness to be glimmerings of a ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... What the committee fears is that the liberal party may take offence, and also that the town workmen may withdraw their moral support. You may have meant the pamphlet for an attack upon the Sanfedists: but many readers will construe it as an attack upon the Church and the new Pope; and this, as a matter of political tactics, the committee does ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... parliamentary debates. And where is the injury, if the members act upon honest principles? For a public assembly to be afraid of having their deliberations published is monstrous, and speaks for itself. No mortal can construe such a procedure to their advantage; and the practice of locking the doors is sufficient to open the eyes of the blind;—they must see that all is not well within. Not satisfied, however, with shutting the doors, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... proper cost, to build a windmill. What though the world once went hard with me, when I was fain to carry my playing fardel a foot-back; Tempora mutantur, I know you know the meaning of it better than I, but I thus construe it; it is otherwise now; for my very share in playing apparel will not be sold for two hundred pounds.' 'Truly' (said Roberto) 'it is strange that you should so prosper in that vain practise, for that it seems to ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... jurisprudence, such a Report is considered an authoritative statement of the meaning and intention of the instrument which it explains, and that consequently foreign Governments and Courts, and no doubt also the International Prize Court, will construe and interpret the provisions of the Declaration by the light of the Commentary given in the Report." (Miscell. 1909, No. ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... sincerely; and he was very sensible to my approbation, for I was not accustomed to greet him with "Good; very good," on all occasions. It is true, knowing his character as I did, I avoided saying anything that was calculated to offend him; but when I said nothing, he knew very well how to construe my silence. Had I flattered him I should have continued ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the duty of citizens to submit to the powers that be, and to maintain lawful authority even to the shedding of blood, are vigorously set forth. But Parson West is not a political parson, and there is not a word in his sermon which his hearers, watchful for anything of the kind, can construe into a reference to the existing events of the past week. It is his practice to keep several sermons on hand, and this might just as well have been prepared a thousand years before. It was upon the subject of the ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... transcend the sphere of sense, or attain a real objective existence. "Colour, hardness, figure, and so forth," he will say, "are generated within the sphere of sense, in obedience to its own original laws. They form integral parts of the sphere; and he who endeavours to construe them to his own mind as embodied in extrinsic independent existences, must for ever be foiled in the attempt." This man declines giving any answer to the problem. We ask, how can our sensations be embodied in distinct permanent realities? And he replies, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... colours of the nosegay instantly attracted the girl's hand—perhaps before there had been time for thought to thoroughly construe the position; for it happened that when her arm was stretched into the air she steadied it quickly, and stood with the pose of a statue—rigid with uncertainty. But it was too late to refuse: Christopher had put the nosegay within ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... 1803, was an era in the world of English letters. The papers were not merely reviews, but monographs on interesting subjects—a new anatomy of history; it was in a general way an exponent, but quite an independent one, of the Whig party, or those who would liberally construe the Constitution,—putting Churchmen and Dissenters on the same platform; although published in Edinburgh, it was neither Scotch nor Presbyterian. It attacked ancient prescriptions and customs; agitated ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... she entered it. In the further window there stood a deep-seated, venerable arm-chair, covered in worn green leather, the one comfortable chair, Evelyn often thought, in the convent. And in this chair she spent many hours, either learning to construe the Office with Mother Mary Hilda, or reading by herself. The investigation of the shelves was an occupation, and the time went quickly, taking down book after book, and she seemed to penetrate further into the spirit of the convent ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... which I had to address you upon this paper; and having shown you that by the least liberal construction, no criminality of intention can be imputed to the author, how can I doubt of your acquittal? For it is your duty to construe the author's words so as to give them an innocent meaning if they will bear it, and not come to a conclusion of guilt from them unless you shall be convinced that they will not possibly admit of any other ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... translation; for much that is right in poetry is wrong in prose, and the exigencies of readable prose are the first things to be considered in a prose translation. That the reader, however, may see how far I have departed from strict construe, I will print here Messrs. Butcher and Lang's translation of the sixty lines or so of the "Odyssey." Their ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... there is not a syllable in the plan under consideration which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution, or which gives them any greater latitude in this respect than may be claimed by the courts of every State. I admit, however, that the Constitution ought to be the standard of construction for the laws, and that wherever there is ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... ne veulent toucher non plus qu'au feu." Letter of Secretary Bourdin to his brother-in-law Bochetel, the Bishop of Rennes, French ambassador in Germany, Aug. 23, 1561, apud Laboureur, Add. aux Mem. de Castelnau, i. 731. If we are to construe the language of the Histoire eccles. des egl. ref. (i. 307) with verbal strictness, the theological discussions occasionally waxed so hot that the prelates found themselves unable to solve the knotty questions with which they were occupied, without recourse ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Louisiana?" asked Livingston rather naively. "I do not know," replied Talleyrand; "you must take it as we received it." "But what did you mean to take?" Livingston insisted. "I do not know," was the reply. "Then you mean that we shall construe it our own way?" "I can give you no direction," replied the astute Frenchman. "You have made a noble bargain for yourselves, and I suppose you will make ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... have been out like this before. They've been at home. Maw has been getting the Sunday dinner. Paw has been plowing, paying the taxes which this Government has spent for him. But now Paw pays income tax also; and both he and Maw construe this fact to mean that they can at last read their title clear to a rest, and a car, and a vacation. So they have swung out from the lane at last, after forty years of work, and on to the roads that lead to the transcontinental highway. They have crossed the prairies and come up ...
— Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone • Emerson Hough
... and swimming were remarkable; and a better rabbit-dog and more sagacious, courageous watchdog never lived. As to the languages, I will acknowledge he could speak none; but he understood English perfectly, and never failed to construe rightly any of Mr Clare's Latin addresses—much better than ever Walter could do. Indeed, Mr Clare's commands to and conversations with Ugly ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... taken with two verses of Lucan, since I have been able not only, as we do at school, to construe, but understand: ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... the Laureate's "Sejanus." These appear in the folio edition of Jonson's works. Probably this sonnet—it has fourteen lines—is one of the most cryptic things in the whole of Elizabethan literature. No member of our family or any other family has ever been able to construe it. Yet it is a pleasure to me to gather from the concluding couplet that the author had ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... that 'it is indeed a strange disposed time?' and inserts the statement that 'men may construe things after their fashion, clean from the purpose of the things themselves.' But this is too disturbed a sky for him to walk in, so exit Cicero, and enter one of another kind of mettle, who thinks ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... hermit, "here come other guests. I would not for my cowl that they found us in this goodly exercise. All men have enemies, sir knight; and there be those malignant enough to construe the hospitable refreshment I have been offering to you, a weary traveler, into drinking and gluttony, vices alike alien to my profession ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... construe this bill, it authorizes the Court of Claims to give judgment in favor of the contractor with the United States for the construction of the vessels named (Agawam and Pontoosuc) for the difference between the contract ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... main issue as far as he can, and whose chief aim has been to make as many loopholes as possible for himself to escape through in case of his being called to account. Or, again, to that of one who has to construe an Act of Parliament which was originally framed so as to throw dust in the eyes of those who would oppose the measure, and which, having been since found unworkable, has had clauses repealed and inserted up and ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... surface of the proposition but the senator perceived in it all the opportunity their two modest accomplices of the boiler deck asked. That pair and their adherents—not followers—you wouldn't catch them leading—they and their gathering adherents would construe the landing of the players as an attempt to deliver them out of their hands and would undertake to seize and maltreat the actor, at least, the moment he should be off the boat. That they were likely to fail was little to the senator; there would be a tumult, ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... He looked like a little Jesu in a picture of Annibal Carraci's listening to the Doctors. He has been reading to-day speeches in Livy, with the French translation. We gave him sentences this evening to construe. It was wonderful how well he did them. The weather grows fine, and I shall desire leave to carry him back till the 25th of next month, for he is very well; the cough which (he) has is trifling. He has ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... that you will repay my trouble by a specimen of your own verses, not in the fashion of the present day,—something which I can construe. I defy you ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thirteen thousand pounds at one sitting to Lord Carlisle, who offered to take three thousand pounds down. Nothing was paid. But ten years afterwards, when Lord Carlisle pressed for his money, he complained that an attempt was made to construe the offer into a remission of the ten thousand pounds:—'The only way, in honour, that Lord Ilchester could have accepted my offer, would have been by taking some steps to pay the L3000. I remained ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... revered monarch, George IV) must have cost him no little study and correspondence. Walter Scott was called in council, and offered one miscorrection which still blots the page. In spite of all this pondering and filing, there remain pages not easy to construe, and inconsistencies not easy to explain away. I have sought to make these disappear, and to lighten a little the baggage with which my grandfather marches; here and there I have rejointed and rearranged a sentence, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reinforcements, and not to fight Hood at Pulaski, as he (Thomas) had at first ordered. I simply submitted to him the plain record, with the best possible construction I could put upon it, and that only so far as it was necessary for me to construe it to give the general basis of my action. If any official duty remained to be done in that regard, that duty devolved on General Thomas, ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... text of her entire character. It is difficult for those who think very earnestly for their children to know when their children are thinking on their own account. The exercise of their volition we construe as revolt. Our love does not like to be invalided and deposed from its command, and here I think yonder old thrush on the lawn who has just kicked the last of her lank offspring out of the nest to go ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... allowed, that nothing could be justly urged against the English government, with respect to France, except the omission of a mere form, which other nations might interpret into an irregularity, but could not construe into perfidious dealing, as the French had previously violated the peace by their insolence ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... virgin of mean fortunes honestly bred"? Mr. Masson forthwith breaks forth in a paroxysm of what we suppose to be picturesqueness in this wise: "What have we here? Surely nothing less, if we choose so to construe it, than a marriage advertisement! Ho, all ye virgins of England (widows need not apply), here is an opportunity such as seldom occurs: a bachelor, unattached; age, thirty-three years and three or four months; height [Milton, by the way, would ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... inclose in the book left for her last Saturday. She desires me to say that, though she has a very great regard for you as her clergyman and friend, she cannot be your wife, and she regrets exceedingly if she has in any way led you to construe the interest she has always manifested in you ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... I remember I said at the time, 'you must not construe this that I was any way connected with the rattening.' But some are ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... even among what the world calls friends at his own board. In proportion as a man is witty and humorous, there will always be about him and his a widening maze and wilderness of cues and catchwords, which the uninitiated will, if they are bold enough to try interpretation, construe, ever and anon, egregiously amiss—not seldom into arrant falsity. For this one reason, to say nothing of many others, I consider no man justified in journalizing what he sees and hears in a domestic circle where he is not thoroughly at home; and I think ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... question is known to have proved itself in many cases of much less speculative difficulty—seeing, too, that even now "the philosophy of the condition proves that things there are which may, nay must, be true, of which nevertheless the mind is unable to construe to itself the possibility;"[9] and seeing, on the other hand, that the substance of Mind, whatever it is, must necessarily be unknowable;—seeing these things, if any question remains as to whether the ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... helping in this, too, by the fact that the present warden would furnish the men with only the same outfit as in summer, the under-clothes they might happen to have on at the time, added. And, in making out this summer suit, he would construe the letter of the law in the superlative degree, which says, "A suit of cheap clothing,"—he obtaining the cheapest, the most miserably poor. To illustrate, a man left prison in one of those suits, and, before ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... not consist of distinct faculties, but that what we choose to call so are only different activities of the same power. Each one is just as essential as the other, on which account Education must grant to each faculty its claim to the same fostering care. If we would construe correctly the axiom a potiori fit denominatio to mean that man is distinguished from animals by thought, and that mediated will is not the same as thought, we must not forget that feeling and representing are ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... as I do, that inconceivability is no criterion of impossibility. "There is no ground for inferring a certain fact to be impossible, merely from our inability to conceive its possibility." "Things there are which may, nay must, be true, of which the understanding is wholly unable to construe to itself the possibility."(98) Sir William Hamilton is, however, a firm believer in the a priori character of many axioms, and of the sciences deduced from them; and is so far from considering those axioms ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... is difficult to construe. Tatah means 'inconsequence of the pain that attends the gratification of the senses.' Sarvasya refers to vivekinah; jyayase phalartham is 'for the sake of the highest fruit,' which, of course, is Emancipation. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... had the right, upon all doubtful points, to construe the charter in that manner which was most favorable to himself. But no interpretation was allowed inconsistent with the "Sacrosancta Dei" and the "Vera Christiana Religio"—the former implying a prohibition of the most wicked kind of blasphemy, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... lecture in the Hall, I could not bear Meeke's superiority, and I tried to sit as far from him as I could, that I might not hear him construe." ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... issue with you, maintaining that all such occasions are covered by the general authority bestowed at Ordination with the laying-on of hands—'Whose sins thou dost forgive they are forgiven,' etc. To construe an open exhortation in one of her offices as a silent denunciation in all the rest ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... vessels in distress, and to deviate for the purpose of saving life and property.'' The nature and extent of the liberty will depend on the words of the contract. The inclination of English courts has been to construe clauses giving a liberty to deviate somewhat strictly against the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to construe the words mentioned above, "Call on Me, and I will deliver thee," in a different sense from what I had ever done before; for then I had no notion of anything being called DELIVERANCE, but my being delivered from the captivity ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... whose authority I had much rather justly construe than unjustly resist, meant not in general of poets, in those words of which Julius Scaliger saith, "qua authoritate, barbari quidam atque insipidi, abuti velint ad poetas e republica exigendos {71}:" but only meant to drive out those wrong opinions of the Deity, whereof now, without ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... and so lightly heard, And yet, strange word, who shall thy sense construe? What sage hath yet fit designation dared? Yet I have sought the dictionaries through, And of thy meaning found me not a clue; Blessing and breaking still the firmest heart, So fairy false, yet so divinely true: A woman—and yet ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... no small share of casuistry to construe this declaration into an acceptance of the bargain, but the Saracens, having heard the offer of their sovereign, deliberately counted out the stipulated sum on the mantle of Sir Isumbras; took possession of the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... fourth guard to wrangle the remuda, I sent Levering up the creek with my brother's horses and to recover our loaned saddle stock; even Bob Quirk was just thoughtless enough to construe a neighborly act into a horse trade. About two miles out from the creek and an equal distance from the trail, I found the best bed-ground of the trip. It sloped to the northwest, was covered with old dry grass, and would catch any vagrant breeze except an eastern one. The wagon was ordered ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... was always to be regarded with suspicion by the extreme believers in state sovereignty and by those who were sullenly convinced that the burdens of the war were unfairly distributed. And there were not wanting men who were ready to construe each emergency measure as a ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... dispositions of very young children. If properly checked in time, evil propensities may be eradicated; but this should not extend to anything but serious defects; otherwise, the intuitive perceptions which all children possess will construe the act into "spying" and "informing," which should never be resorted to in the case of children, nor, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... not for us to see that which you, worthy seignior, deem it proper to conceal: But why swear by Saint Quentin, if you would not have me construe your meaning?—We know the good Count of Saint Paul, who lies there at present, wishes ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... Constitution and laws of the United States in this respect as a nullity. Nor has the State made the proper appeal to public opinion and to the remedy of amendment; for without waiting to learn whether the other States will consent to a convention, or if they do will construe or amend the Constitution to suit her views, she has of her own authority altered the import of that instrument and given immediate effect to the change. In fine, she has set her own will and authority above the laws, has made ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... demand for satisfaction, I construe it to mean either that I must apologize to you for the language used by me on the battlefield, or that I must grant you a hostile meeting. If the first interpretation be correct, I will state that I will make full, public, ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... intensive method of one-pointedness. "Wisdom is not assimilated with the eyes, but with the atoms," he said. "When your conviction of a truth is not merely in your brain but in your being, you may diffidently vouch for its meaning." He discouraged any tendency a student might have to construe book-knowledge as a necessary step ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... From where he stood on slightly higher ground he looked down at her curiously, for in more than one sense she was a puzzle to him. There was a certain indefiniteness in her manner toward him which he felt a passionate desire to construe. She seemed at once merciful and merciless, sympathetic and hard. Then, as he looked at her, he almost forgot all this wilderness of suffering and doubt. All his intense love for physical beauty, ministered to by the ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Since I construe from your Excellency's letter that Harber and his corps are recognised as attached to His Majesty's forces, His Majesty's officers must be held responsible for the acts of the said Harber and his ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... O tempora! can pedantry compel Musicians who write choruses to construe them as well? Is this (I ask) the way to deal with genius great and high? Why fetter it with Latin ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... flag with the thirteen stripes. Previously the colonies had used different devices, in the South a rattlesnake flag with the motto, "Don't tread on me," and for the Connecticut troops the colony arms and the motto Qui transtulit sustinet, "which we construe thus: 'God, who transplanted us hither, will support us.'"[142] Massachusetts had used the pinetree flag and the motto "Appeal to Heaven," and the little navy had a sign by which its ships were known to each other, "the ensign up to the main topping-lift." Now for the first time the thirteen ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... such a declaration, there was a pride about her manner, a certain restraint which she ever seemed to exercise over me, that effectually sealed my lips. Her very presence was a moral tonic, and I felt it would be easier to tear out my tongue than to utter anything which she could construe into possible insult. The very depth of her perfect womanhood was itself protection, and, until the veil was finally lifted, my lips ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... I mean by this phrase, "right to property in man," a right to hold man as property; and I do not see with what propriety certain writers construe it to mean, a property in the mere ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... that young lady to something worse than supporting you by the labour of her hands, had she worked herself dead. These are my fears, and these fears I found upon your own demeanour. Your conscience will tell you, sir, whether I construe ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... 'I began to construe the words that I had read—"Call upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me"—in a different sense from what I had done before. For then I had no notion of any deliverance but my deliverance from the captivity I was in. But now ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... a more elastic creed, to fling his life's allegiance into a communion whose tenets were so framed as to adjust themselves to the strain of purely individual interpretation. One must have tenets to interpret. What happened, when they became untenable? One might construe the Nicene Creed into a round dozen different 'ologies. A mere framework, a skeleton of belief such as the Apostles' Creed was capable of no such reconstruction. One either believed it, or one did not. Unless—Did anybody ever believe any one thing in ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... misjudging me," said Diggle regretfully. "As Cicero says in the play, you construe things after your fashion, clean from the purpose of the things themselves. My interest in you is undiminished; nay rather, it is increased and mixed with admiration. My offers still hold good: join hands ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... now invaded the frontier of the Colony, and as I construe my instructions from the government, it is my duty to march forward ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... as he believed, that beautiful girl's high thoughts had tended toward him; there had been looks, gestures, even words, that had this effect to him, or that seemed to have had it; and Beaton saw that he might easily construe Mrs. Horn's confidential appeal to him to get Margaret interested in art again as something by no means necessarily offensive, even though it had been made to him as to a master of illusion. If Mrs. Horn had to choose between him and the life of good works to which ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Americans were snobs—and that thus Mr. Jerome would have the saving grace to admire and toady him. But Mr. Jerome showed no signs of doing anything of the sort; he treated him with an austere and distant politeness that Lord Ashbridge could not construe as being founded on admiration and a sense of his own inferiority, for it was so clearly founded on dislike. That, however, did not annoy Lord Ashbridge, for it was easy to suppose that poor Mr. Jerome knew no better. But Barbara annoyed him, for not only had she shown herself a renegade in marrying ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... naturally mixt with redd, Either because she thinks pale-lookes moves most: Or of an answereable nice affect To other of her modest qualities; Because she wood not with the outward blaze Of tempting beauty tangle wanton eies; And so be troubled with their tromperies: Which construe as thou wilt, I make it knowne, That thy free comment may examine it, As willinger to tell truth of my Neece, Then in the least ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... benign influence, "it was not to sympathize with Hector, but to conquer with Achilles, that Alexander of Macedon kept Homer under his pillow. Such should be the use of books to him who has the practical world to subdue; let parsons and women construe it otherwise as ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Nebraska Bill finds an early occasion to make a speech at this capital indorsing the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently denouncing all opposition to it. The new President, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman letter to indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to express his astonishment that any different view had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... Professor Bury, and Mr. E. M. Antoniadi. The meaning of [Greek: teleutaioi krotoi] is not clear. Various interpretations have been suggested; to read [Greek: brotoi], mortals, instead of [Greek: krotoi], and to construe [Greek: teleutaioi] adverbially, 'finally, O mortals!'; to understand a reference to the judgment day, 'O applauses given at the final judgment'; to take the phrase as equivalent to, 'O celebrities ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... that it has been attempted to construe these declarations concerning the right of the people to reassume their delegations of power—especially in the terms employed by Virginia, "people of the United States"—as having reference to the idea of one people, in mass, or "in the aggregate." ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... overpowered her reason. So, on this occasion, she ordered the coachman to stop near the Rue du Helder, and she reached the street just in time to betray her secret to Victor Chupin, and receive a foul insult from M. Wilkie. The latter's cruel words stabbed her to the heart, and yet she tried to construe them as mere proofs of her son's honesty of feeling—as proof of his scorn for the depraved creatures who haunt the boulevards each evening. But though her energy was indomitable, her physical strength was not equal to her will. On returning home, she felt so ill that ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... of the pony, her anxious gaze on the dimly revealed, slender figure trudging sturdily in front, Beth Norvell began to dread the necessity of again having to meet Winston under such conditions. What would he naturally think? He could scarcely fail to construe such action on his behalf as one inspired by deep personal interest, and she instinctively shrank from such revealment, fearing his glance, his word of welcome, his expressions of surprised gratitude. The awkwardness, the probable ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... the first look into Alice Greggory's blue-gray eyes had taught him the fallacy of that idea. In that very first meeting with Alice, he feared that he had revealed his secret, for she was plainly so nervously distant and ill at ease with him that he could but construe her embarrassment and chilly dignity as pity for him and a desire to show him that she had nothing but friendship for him. Since then he had seen but little of her, partly because he did not wish to see her, and partly because his time was so ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... and Ardentio pulling a cracker. Burn your little fingers, children! Blaze out little kindly flames from each other's eyes! And then draw close together and read the motto (that old namby-pamby motto, so stale and so new!)—I say, let her lips read it, and his construe it; and so divide the sweetmeat, young people, and crunch it between you. I have no teeth. Bitter almonds and sugar disagree with me, I tell you; but, for all that, shall not bonbons ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... expectation of Coleridge not a little unhinges me, and, still more, the number of visitors we have had; but winter is approaching, and I have good hopes. I mentioned Michael Angelo's poetry some time ago; it is the most difficult to construe I ever met with, but just what you would expect from such a man, shewing abundantly how conversant his soul was with great things. There is a mistake in the world concerning the Italian language; the poetry of Dante and Michael Angelo proves, that if there be little majesty and strength ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... culture of letters. A taste for letters was prevalent among the upper class, and indeed was fashionable among both ladies and gentlemen of rank. In this the court of Elizabeth set the fashion. The daughter of the duchess was taught not only to distill strong waters, but to construe Greek. When the queen was translating Socrates or Seneca, the maids of honor found it convenient to affect at least a taste for the classics. For the nobleman and the courtier an intimacy with Greek, Latin, and Italian was essential to "good form." But the taste for erudition ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... indeed—things which touched even the life of his master. So it is no wonder that at this time of day he rather resented pains being taken with his education. It was like setting a double-first to construe the ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... back again, And pray her to a fault for which I chid her. What a fool is she, that knows I am a maid, And would not force the letter to my view! Since maids, in modesty, say 'no' to that 55 Which they would have the profferer construe 'ay.' Fie, fie, how wayward is this foolish love, That, like a testy babe, will scratch the nurse, And presently, all humbled, kiss the rod! How churlishly I chid Lucetta hence, 60 When willingly I would have had her here! How angerly ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... tumult of my feelings, during this day; ever since you left me. You cannot conceive any thing more forlorn, more vacant, more anxious, than this weak heart has been and still is. I was terrified at my own sensations, and, with my usual folly, began to construe them into omens of evils; so inadequate, so disproportioned was my distress to the ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... the physical needs of the multitude that appealed to Jesus. "Man's Unhappiness, as I construe," says Teufelsdroeckh in "Sartor Resartus", "comes of his Greatness, it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite. Will the whole Finance ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... her trampled fields, You have taken your toll, you have set your seal; Her women are homeless, her men are dead, Her children pitifully cry for bread; Perchance they will drink with you—"To the Day!" Let each man construe it as he may. What shall it be? They, too, have but one enemy; Whose work is this? Belgium has but one word to ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... To construe the expression "managing all their affairs," into a surrender of self government, would be, we think, a perversion of their necessary meaning, and a departure from the construction which has been uniformly put on them. The great ...
— Opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States, at January Term, 1832, Delivered by Mr. Chief Justice Marshall in the Case of Samuel A. Worcester, Plaintiff in Error, versus the State of Georgia • John Marshall
... we must construe its nomenclature into, the language of the present day. What, then, is the modern synonym for the "ideas," "representations," "phantasms," and "species," which the theory in question declares to be vicarious of real objects? There ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... you construe the hierograph, the door must be demolished before you get out. Across the door is written: Hope. It is a very hard door to crack. When you succeed you are covered with splinters. They cling to you and pierce you. Joiners, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... and I should have told you; but I write without any manner of connection, just as things come uppermost: but don't, my dear papa, construe this, too, as an instance ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... no Yoshitsugu, Fujiwara no Momokawa, and Fujiwara no Uwona. It was with the Fujiwara families that the responsibility rested chiefly, and the general conduct of the Fujiwara at that period of history forbids us to construe their apparent indifference in a wholly bad sense. Probably the simplest explanation is the true one: Koken ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... persons of color, delivered from on board vessels seized in the prosecution of the slave trade by commanders of the United States armed vessels." The sum of $100,000 was appropriated for carrying out the provisions of the Act. President Monroe determined to construe it as broadly as possible in aid of the project of colonization. After giving Congress, in his message, December 20, 1818, fair notice of his intention, no objection being made, he proceeded to appoint two agents, the Rev. Samuel Bacon, already in the service ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson
... undertake to tell me so with any circumlocution, for I understand all about the delicacy of these Transatlantic connections. I only fear that the very length of this letter will convey to you an undue impression of the importance which I give to the subject of it. Pray construe it not so, but set it down as one of the involuntary consequences of the pleasure I have in ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... bookish. Let me tel you in few words. I went to school, forsooth, both at Polle's and also at St. Antonie's; (was) in the fifth forme, past Esop's Fables, readd Terence, Vos isthaec intro auferte; and began with my Virgil, Tityre tu patulae. I could say my rules, could construe and pars with ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... not let me add to your uneasiness," he resumed, "while I am attempting to alleviate it. Instruct me what I can do to show my esteem and respect, rather than permit me thus unguided, to rush upon what you may construe into insult ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... is brutal and tyrannical, and prefers a tussle with an inoffensive person who is no match for him. That is a piece of cowardice, and protest is more than justifiable. There is a fine true story of a famous head-master, who disliked a weakling, putting on a stupid, shy, and ungainly boy to construe, and making deliberate fun of him. There was a boy present, of the stuff of which heroes are made, who got up suddenly in his place and said, "You are not teaching that boy, sir; you are bullying him." The head-master had the generosity to bear his censurer no grudge for his outspokenness. But ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... independent thought and so to enable him to revise his inherited opinions. A certain stimulus no doubt is given to his mental activity by setting him mathematical problems to solve and passages in the classical authors to construe; but his thought on political and social questions remains a thing apart, unstirred, atrophied. What else is this but political propaganda? And when it is reinforced by a thousand subtle hints in and out of the classroom, hints suggesting that, of course, there can be ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... plea of insanity, with its vague test of responsibility, whose terms the juryman may construe for himself (or which his fellow-jurors may construe for him) offers an unlimited and fertile field for the "reasonable" doubt and an easy excuse for the conscientious talesman who wants to acquit if he can. Juries take the little ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... every season. In consequence of his poor character and political bias, has never been recognized by me as a chief, nor honored with the marks of one. He said that he was poor, and did not come to trouble me often, and hoped I would show him charity. I told him he must not construe my charity into approbation of his conduct, particularly his visits to D.I., which were displeasing to me and had been forbidden by his American ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... di on ta panta kai di ou ta panta pollous vious eis doxan agagonta ton archegon tes sotepias auton dia pethematon teleiosai. The English translators take agagonta as referring to the same person as auto, but it seems grammatically preferable to construe it as a ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake
... He bungled through the Latin in a grating, irresolute sort of way, with several false quantities, for each of which the next boy took him up. Then he began to construe;—a frightful confusion of nominatives without verbs, accusatives translated as ablatives, and adverbs turned into prepositions, ensued, and after a hopeless flounder, during which Mr Gordon left him entirely to himself, Barker came to a full ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... this, that the first volume contains all the facts, and the second volume contains His interpretation and application of the facts in the understandings and hearts of His people. We have no more facts from which to construe God than these which belong to the earthly life of Jesus Christ, and we never shall have, here at all events. But whilst the first volume to the bottom of the last page is finished and tolerates and needs no additions, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... of the determination by Judge Forbes reached this colony, Mr., now Sir Alfred Stephen, brought the question before the court in a similar manner. He argued that it was the duty of the court to construe the act of parliament in a form the most favorable to the subject. On the other side it was maintained, that the colony was too small to furnish civil juries, and the parliament had superseded them. The act itself which instituted the ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... attitude toward religion was in his earlier work one of more pronounced antagonism or, at least, of more complete agnosticism than in later days he found requisite to the maintenance of his scientific freedom and conscientiousness. Both of these men represent the effort to construe the world, including man, from the point of view of the natural and also of the social sciences, and to define the place of religion in that view of the world which is thus set forth. The fact that there had been no such philosophical readjustment in Great Britain as in Germany, made the acceptance ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... what we mean by "this doctrine"; if we construe immanence to signify "allness," we may as well admit first as last that there is no way of escape from the difficulties which these queries suggest. In that case it is not for us to pick and choose—to say that God is the beauty of the beautiful, but not the ugliness ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer |
