"Inaccurate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "rule" was always handy in a special pocket, but in cases where a rough guess was sufficient he would hazard it by what he called "scowl of brow" (intently regarding it). The agricultural labourer is inclined, both with weights and measures, to be inaccurate, "reckoning it's near enough." I found soon after I came to Aldington that the weighing machine which had been in use throughout the whole of my predecessor's time, and had weighed up hundreds of pounds of wool at 2s. and 2s. 6d. a pound, cheese at 8d., and thousands of sacks ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... have his attention, he began by despatching a courier to Robespierre at Chartres—where he knew the Incorruptible to be. That done, he resorted to measures for La Boulaye's detention. But this proved a grave matter. What if, after all, that half-hysterical girl's story should be inaccurate? In what case would he find himself if, acting upon it in the meantime, he should order Caron's arrest? The person of a Deputy was not one to be so lightly treated, and he might find himself constrained to answer a serious charge in consequence. Thus partly actuated by patriotism and the fear ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... did reverence England as once we reverenced her, this is what I would say:—"Upon my country do not visit my sins. Upon my country's fame let me fasten no blot. Wherever I am wrong, inelegant, inaccurate, provincial, visit all your reprobation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... Stratford (if he attended it), he should have gained his wide knowledge of the literatures of Greece and Rome. To these arguments, the orthodox Stratfordian is apt to reply, that he finds in the plays and poems plenty of inaccurate general information on classical subjects, information in which the whole literature of England then abounded. He also finds in the plays some knowledge of certain Latin authors, which cannot be proved to have been translated at the date when ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... was justified in the rejection. Forster does not seem to have cared about the thing—he refers lightly to "the reader curious in such matters"—when once he had received his explanation from Dickens. His memory, in the space of five years, may have been inaccurate: he probably neither knew nor cared who Datchery was; and he may readily have misunderstood what Dickens told him, orally, about the ring, as the instrument of detection. Moreover, Forster quite overlooked one source of evidence, as ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... hundreds of feet; or as in the case of the earth's spheroidal axis, Bessel's measurement differs from Newton's by fully eleven miles." See Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. 1, p. 7, 156. "The smaller measures are proportionally inaccurate." All these irregularities and imperfections in science are overlooked, considered not in the least objections to the use of language which would, upon the most rigid application, cut them out as fables on the one hand or destroy science ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... 1916, Lola learnt the big multiplication-table, doing so easily and quickly. She was at first slightly inaccurate in the higher numbers, for rapping out the "hundreds" with the right paw and the "tens" with the left—and then again the "ones" with the right gave her some trouble in the beginning. Yet such questions as: 3 14, 2 17, 4 20, were given without hesitation, since these ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... note: hyperinflation and the plunging value of the Zimbabwean dollar makes Zimbabwe's GDP at the official exchange rate a highly inaccurate statistic (2007 est.) ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Library, and in numerous other public and private collections, and we have come to the conclusion that instead of having done any service to American History by his editions of Morris, Franklin, and Washington, Mr. Sparks has done positive and scarcely reparable injury; since by his incomplete, inaccurate and injudicious publications, he has prevented the preparation of such as are necessary for the illustration of the characters of these persons and the general history of their times. We shall not at present enter into any particulars for the vindication of our dissent from the very common estimation ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... experience; but could not know it a priori. It must, however, be confessed, that the animal nisus, which we experience, though it can afford no accurate precise idea of power, enters very much into that vulgar, inaccurate idea, which ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... after it was fought. It is, however, constantly averred by the tradition of the country, and a stone where the deed was done is called Leck-a-Mhinisteir, the Minister or Clerk's Flagstone. The MacGregors, by a tradition which is now found to be inaccurate, impute this cruel action to the ferocity of a single man of their tribe, renowned for size and strength, called Dugald, Ciar Mhor, or the great Mouse-coloured Man. He was MacGregor's foster-brother, and the chief committed the youths to his charge, with directions ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... confidence growing within him. He was now a man of experience. He had been out among the dragons, he said, and he assured himself that they were not so hideous as he had imagined them. Also, they were inaccurate; they did not sting with precision. A stout heart often defied, and ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... untruss [that is, satirist], of the time (Joseph Hall being by his own boast the first, and Marston's work being entitled "The Scourge of Villainy"). Apparently we must now prefer for Carlo a notorious character named Charles Chester, of whom gossipy and inaccurate Aubrey relates that he was "a bold impertinent fellow...a perpetual talker and made a noise like a drum in a room. So one time at a tavern Sir Walter Raleigh beats him and seals up his mouth (that is his upper and nether beard) with hard wax. From ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... Condorcet).] So comprehensive a scheme was not without danger to those classes which claimed an exclusive right to direct men's minds. As for the double nature of the book, we have the words of two of the men most concerned in its preparation. First there is an anecdote by Voltaire, certainly inaccurate, probably quite imaginary, but setting forth most clearly one cause of the interest which the ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... saving money for travel. He wrote small letters to Istra and read the books he believed she would approve—a Paris Baedeker and the second volume of Tolstoi's War and Peace, which he bought at a second-hand book-stall for five cents. He became interested in popular and inaccurate French and English histories, and secreted any amount of footnote anecdotes about Guy Fawkes and rush-lights and the divine right of kings. He thought almost every night about making friends, which he intended—just as much as ever—to do as soon ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... conceived the notion that she must know her own language well—how to spell it, how to pronounce it, and, still more, how to use it simply, honestly, and effectively in the expression of her thought. Her over-mastering devotion to truth would not let her rest content with any loose or inaccurate expression. "No," she would say, "that isn't the word I want. It doesn't say just what I mean," and she would never be satisfied until she found the ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... the king. The amount at first brought in proved insufficient, and the officers who collected it were suspected of peculation, possibly with justice, but possibly also because the original calculation had been inaccurate, so that a second and a third levy were found necessary. It was near the end of the year 1193 before the sum raised was accepted by the representatives of the emperor as sufficient for the preliminary payment which would secure the ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... charming novelist, the successful dramatist, and the witty essayist," wrote a popular history of Greece, in two volumes, 8vo, 1774, embracing a period from the earliest date down to the death of Alexander the Great. It is an attractive work, elegantly written, but is superficial and inaccurate. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... of the town, the hills sloping gently down to the foot of the walls. In later times the first care of a general commanding the defence would have been to construct formidable works upon this commanding position. But the cannon of that period were so cumbrous and slowly worked, and so inaccurate in their aim, that the advantage of occupying a position that would prevent an enemy from firing down into a town was considered to be more than counterbalanced by the weakening of the garrison by the abstraction of the force required to man the detached work, and by the risk of their ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... Dutch expedition of 1598. I am now able to state that the supposed proof of the discovery of Bourbon by the Portuguese in 1545, on the authority of a stone pillar, the figure of which Leguat has copied {411} from Du Qesne, who copied it from Flacourt, turns out to be inaccurate. On referring to Flacourt's Histoire de la Grande Isle Madagascar, 4to., Paris, 1658, p. 344, where the original figure of this monument is given, I find that the stone was not found in Bourbon at all, but in "l'Islet des Portugais," a small island at the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 26. Saturday, April 27, 1850 • Various
... memory of his painful disappointment. The general statement, "Lenau war stets verlobt, fand aber stets in sich selbst einen Widerstand und unerklaerliche Angst, wenn die Verbindung endgiltig gemacht werden sollte,"[89] is inaccurate and misleading, inasmuch as it fails to take into proper account the causes, mediate and immediate, of his hesitation to marry. Lenau was only once "verlobt," and it was the stroke of facial paralysis[90] which announced ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... all through; but his aim and object have been to fix, upon a solid basis, the fundamental principles of his art. The subject, as treated in the Dictionary of Arts and Trades by the French Academy, is equally scanty and inaccurate. The author wishes that all arts were described by artists, as the reader would gain in information what he would lose in style. "I here repeat (says he) what I have elsewhere said in bad verse. There are amateur collectors who know more about ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... and his London Associates, p. 61. There is, I think, no truth in the statement made by the inaccurate annotator of the Phillipps copy of Stow's Annals, that the Globe was built "at the great charge of King James and many noblemen and others." (See The Academy, October 28, 1882, p. 314.) The Witter-Heminges documents sufficiently disprove that. We may well believe, however, that the King ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... the line, will be a way of testing this: if all is correct, the line will be perfectly straight and not bent. Should the latter be the case, the measurements, or fitting, in some respects, will have been inaccurate. It would be very provoking to find it so after all the trouble undertaken, and many instances are to be seen where the work has been left in this condition, and the stringing up and regulation has been, not only under great disadvantages, but absence of comfort in playing, and indeed ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... his College; for there, in 1789, he became the originator and chief author of a periodical paper called The Loiterer, modelled on The Spectator and its successors. It existed for more than a twelvemonth, and in the last number the whole was offered to the world as a 'rough, but not entirely inaccurate Sketch of the Character, the Manners, and the Amusements of Oxford, at the close of the eighteenth century.' In after life, we are told, he used to speak very slightingly of this early work, 'which he had the better right to do, as, whatever ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... polytheism, for they usually conduct us, as we have already indicated, to nothing more than a (sometimes) personified force of nature, principle of order, or abstract conception—not a God. Take away the inaccurate and misleading terms by which the original Greek is rendered in most of the English versions, in which the enthusiasm of the student of comparative religions has taken the place of the careful and accurate translator, ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... of description of scenery and manners, couched in an easy and elegant style, has rendered these volumes extremely popular, notwithstanding they do not display much learning or knowledge, and are even sometimes superficial and inaccurate. ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... that our system has been squandering it persistently from the first moment until now. Although the doctrine of the conservation of energy is, we have every reason to believe, a fundamental law affecting the whole universe, yet it would be wholly inaccurate to say that any particular system such as our solar system shall invariably preserve precisely the same quantity of energy without alteration. The circumstance that heat is a form of energy indeed negatives ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... technical errors in admitting testimony which should have been affirmed. As time goes on, however, the rule against hearsay evidence, instead of losing its force, is demonstrating its usefulness. The error and injustice that are committed in the public press by inaccurate, garbled and sometimes false statements of facts are increased in their injurious effect by the wider publication that newspapers have today, and the requirement that when a fact is to be proven in court it should be proven by those who ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... languor of mind: you must be alert, energetic, in your thought. Then doubt: you must have decision of will, must be able to make up your mind. Then carelessness: this is one of the greatest difficulties with beginners; they read a thing carelessly, they are inaccurate. Sloth: a lazy man cannot be a Yogi; one who is inert, who lacks the power and the will to exert himself; how shall he make the desperate exertions wanted along this line? The next, worldly-mindedness, is obviously an obstacle. Mistaken ideas is another great obstacle, thinking wrongly about things. ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... Certifico a vuestras altezas que en el mundo creo que no hay mejor gente ni mejor tierra: ellos aman a sus projimos como a si mismo. Like most generalisations, these were found, upon closer acquaintance with native character and customs, to be too comprehensive as well as inaccurate.] ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... preachment of Fra Cipolla (an amusing specimen of the patter-sermon of the mendicant friar of the middle ages, that ecclesiastical Cheap Jack of his day) are all names of streets or places of Florence, a statement which, it is evident to the most cursory reader, is altogether inaccurate.] ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... there is such a phenomenon as habit, that can only be because he trusts his memory, when it assures him that there have been other times. And the same applies to images. If we are to know as it is supposed we do—that images are "copies," accurate or inaccurate, of past events, something more than the mere occurrence of images must go to constitute this knowledge. For their mere occurrence, by itself, would not suggest any connection with anything that had ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... interest. To think of the military as a guardian class apart, like Lynkeus "born for vision, ordained for watching," rather than as a strong right arm, corporately joined to the body and sharing its every function, is historically false and politically inaccurate. It is not unusual, however, for those whose task it is to interpret the trend of opinion to take the line that "the military" are thinking one way and "the people" quite another on some particular issue, as if to imply that the two are quite separate and of different nature. This is usually ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... made a face as one that drinketh verjuice suddenly. "For pity's sake, doctor, don't be so inaccurate. Say a spot on the brilliancy, or a crevice in the armour; but not a crevice in the brilliancy. My good friend here, gentlemen, deals in conjectural certificates and broken metaphors. He dislocates ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... helped to prevent bloodshed, and I, the Benjamin of these lords of the ocean, was for the hundredth time protected by them. The assertion, however, made by our enemies, that the English had directly favored and assisted our landing at Marsala, was inaccurate. The British colors, flying from the two men-of-war and the English consulate, made the Bourbon mercenaries hesitate, and, I might even say, impressed them with a sense of shame at pouring the fire of their imposing batteries into a handful of men armed only with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... dislocation reduced. Indeed I took a strange kind of interest in witnessing and aiding in the various operations, and was in a fair way to become a good practical surgeon, when I was discharged, and found myself a poor sailor, friendless, penniless, and lame. But the surgical knowledge, inaccurate and desultory as it was, which I acquired in the Liverpool Infirmary, and the power to preserve coolness and presence of mind, and minister relief in cases of wounds and dangerous diseases, when no medical adviser could be applied to, has often since been of valuable service ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... and suggestions of poetry lurked in the shadows of her hair; and at once my breast was full of stirrings to write for her—only for her—a book full of beauty and happiness and sunshine, and, oh! such false views of life, such inaccurate pictures of the pleasures of a society she would never know. The hero should be handsome and brave and good, with a curling moustache; and the heroine should be beautiful and true, with an extensive wardrobe; and the clouds would come only to roll by, and the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... to the French movements appeared to them to be inaccurate in view of the formal assurances which had been given by France, and were still quite recent; that Belgium, which since the establishment of her kingdom, has taken every care to assure the protection of her dignity and of her interests, and has devoted all her efforts to peaceful development ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... Darcey. She was a poor music student, and Jessie Darcey was a popular and petted professional. Mrs. Priest, whatever one held against her, had a fine, big, showy voice and an impressive presence. She read indifferently, was inaccurate, and was always putting other people wrong, but she at least had the material out of which singers can be made. But people seemed to like Jessie Darcey exactly because she could not sing; because, as ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... of this kind never comes with absolute simplicity of application into the life of man; growth in particular is a complex thing, and all generalisations must needs be a little inaccurate. But the general law of the Food would seem to be this, that when it could be taken into the system in any way it stimulated it in very nearly the same degree in all cases. It increased the amount of growth from six to seven times, and it did ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... not show him to be either careless or inaccurate. On the contrary, they bear witness to his watchfulness, to his methodical habits, and to his attention to details; although at the same time they are full of speculations, and of the thoughts which followed ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... usual to censure Burnet as a singularly inaccurate historian; hut I believe the charge to be altogether unjust. He appears to be singularly inaccurate only because his narrative has been subjected to a scrutiny singularly severe and unfriendly. If any Whig thought it worth ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... over and under and all around it before you can grasp its every implication. It's only because I've had a lot of experience that I can draw inferences a shade faster than the average man—and often quite as inaccurate!" ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... of lands scattered about over all parts of the kingdom. The tenant in chief had his castle or capital mansion, [Footnote: Experts will object to the use of this term and other terms as strictly inaccurate. I am not writing for experts.]which was supposed to be his abode; but as far as the larger portion—immensely the larger portion—of his possessions, he was necessarily a non-resident landlord, getting what he could out of them either by ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... of 'em. I didn't want to remain here in durance vile an hour longer than I could help, I can assure you. But naturally my answers were—well, 'inaccurate,' to say the least. I had to word them very carefully, though, or the fellow would have caught me out. He suspected that I might be misleading him, I think, for once or twice he put questions which might have unmasked me if I had not ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... Australia, which was omitted to be surveyed by Captain King, on the ground that it had been visited by the French in the expedition of Captain Baudin: the result of that visit, however, is so unsatisfactory, and so very inaccurate, that we are rather surprised that Captain King should have passed over so interesting a portion, geographically considered, as the south-western angle of this great country. Captain Stirling arrived at Cape Leuwin ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 368, May 2, 1829 • Various
... I am to hear it! I can talk to you without being tripped up at an incorrect date, or an inaccurate scientific or historical fact. You can warrant yourself safe to ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... of the thought within those limits than a man's name tells about his character. It is usually easy to tell "what a page is about"; but it usually requires keen thinking to word its principal idea sharply in a full sentence. Many students are inaccurate in the interpretation of authors and in their own thinking, not so much because they lack mental ability as because they lack the energy to continue their thinking to this point of wording the central idea accurately in a ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... this work, equally contain nothing but inaccurate or fabulous reports, with regard to the abdication of Napoleon. Certain historians have been pleased, to represent Napoleon in a pitious state of despondency: others have depicted him as the sport of the threats of M. Regnault St. Jean d'Angely, and of the artifices of the Duke ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... grey-headed with the work. He had during the same period three Writing Masters, of whom one was most cantankerous, another stayed twenty-four years, and the third—John Langhorne—was not wholly a success. He managed the School Accounts from 1839-1845, but they were found to be "so inaccurate and confused" that Mr. Robinson had to enter them ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... information. No person shall encode a digital musical recording of a sound recording with inaccurate information relating to the category code, copyright status, or generation status of the source material for ...
— Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code, Circular 92 • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... managers set out to ruin certain performers, including herself, Mrs. Clive accuses them of putting on "a better Face to the Town" by publishing (inaccurate) salary figures—a ploy to get public sanction for lower salaries. Mrs. Clive alludes to salaries published ostensibly by Fleetwood in the papers (e.g., Gentleman's Magazine, XIII, October 1743, 553), where the pay of such lights as Garrick, Macklin, Pritchard, and Clive in ...
— The Case of Mrs. Clive • Catherine Clive
... the wrong way. He hurried on across Canal Street. Marguerite had not been, as he had construed the inaccurate statement, in the city for two weeks. Resemblances need delude him no longer. He went on into Carondelet Street and was drawing near the door and stairway leading to his friend's studio and his own little workroom above it, when suddenly from that very stairway and door issued she ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... let them tell us which; for there are almost as many texts as copies. But if the truth is to be sought from many, why should we not go back to the original Greek and correct the mistakes introduced by inaccurate translators, and the blundering alterations of confident and ignorant men, and further, all that has been added or altered by sleepy copyists? I am not discussing the Old Testament, which was turned into Greek by the Seventy Elders, and has reached ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... could penetrate my subjects, one after another, even to the number of a billion, verifying the size and distance of each by the sense of FEELING: How much time and energy would be wasted in this clumsy and inaccurate method! Whereas now, in one moment of audition, I take as it were the census and statistics, local, corporeal, mental and spiritual, of every living being in Lineland. ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... spent years striving to be accurate, we must spend as many more in discovering when and how to be inaccurate. ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... D. L. Yulee, of Florida, in the United States Senate, on the admission of California, August 6, 1850, for a careful and correct account of the compromise. That given in the second chapter of Benton's "Thirty Years' View" is singularly inaccurate; that of Horace Greeley, in his "American ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... take her vacation in June, and she arranged that Miss Milligan should do O'Mally's work while she was away. Miss Milligan was blunt and noisy, rapid and inaccurate. It would be just as well for O'Mally to work with a coarse instrument for a time; he would be more appreciative, perhaps, of certain qualities to which he had seemed insensible of late. Ardessa was to leave for East Hampton ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... judgment will necessarily produce conflict in the very act of emerging from the preceding state of ignorance and restraint. The state of transition cannot be one of tranquillity, although it is the inevitable path to a higher and more complete harmony. But it is inaccurate and philosophically untrue, as we think, to characterize the intellect as 'disturbing,' or 'disrupting.' It is disturbing only to ignorance, and disrupting only to the systems ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... is here inaccurate: It will be seen in the sequel, that Bartholomew Columbus did not accompany his brother in this voyage, being ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... p. 192) that he said 'a long time after my poor mother's death, I heard her voice call Sam.' She is so inaccurate that most likely this is merely her version of the story that Boswell has recorded above. See also ante, i. 405. Lord Macaulay made more of this story of the voice than it could well bear—'Under the influence of his disease, his senses became morbidly torpid, and his imagination morbidly active. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... of remark that the tax-list of the town furnish no other data of reliable value, or even of suggestion, being obviously inaccurate and uneven in their reports of the values of land, and of the holdings of ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... confirmed by a statement in Theopompus' forty-fourth book, to which Harpocration (s.v. [Greek: dekadarchia]) refers. Harpocration states that Philip did not establish a decadarchy in Thessaly; and if he is right, then either (a) Demosthenes purposely used an inaccurate word, in order to suggest to the Messenians the idea of a government like that of the Councils of Ten established some sixty years before by Sparta in the towns subject to her; or (b) the text is wrong, and [Greek: ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... to different persons and utterly failing to define colors. The terms used for a single hue, such as pea green, sea green, olive green, grass green, sage green, evergreen, invisible green, are not to be trusted in ordering a piece of cloth. They invite mistakes and disappointment. Not only are they inaccurate: they are inappropriate. Can we imagine musical tones called lark, canary, cockatoo, crow, cat, dog, or mouse, because they bear some distant resemblance to the cries of those ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... language of those who distrust comprehensive thinking, without having any clear notion why or where it ought to be distrusted. We have avoided the use of these expressions purposely, because we deem them superficial and inaccurate. The error, when there is error, does not arise from generalizing too extensively; that is, from including too wide a range of particular cases in a single proposition. Doubtless, a man often asserts of an entire class what is only true ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... and brilliance with my own inefficiency. Somehow, the massacre was beginning to have a bad effect on my character. My self-respect was ebbing. A little more of this, and I should become crushed—a mere human jelly. It was my turn to serve. Service is my strong point at tennis. I am inaccurate but vigorous, and occasionally send in a quite unplayable shot. One or two of these, even at the expense of a fault or so, and I might be permitted to retain at least ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... around a truck, then shrugged expressively. "We'd like to know. Columnists have their sources of information. Usually the source isn't close to the inside dope, so most of the columns are pretty inaccurate. A good thing, too, otherwise the enemy would be getting our top-secret information in print all the time. Probably this leak came from someone in the hospital where the team ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... of Mexico and Peru? How is the future reader of Dr. Cook's interesting account of the ascent of Mount McKinley to know that it has been discredited? And how is he to know whether other interesting and well-written histories and books of travel have not been similarly proved inaccurate? At present, there is no way except to go to one who knows the literature of the subject, or to read as many other books on the subject as can be obtained, weighing one against the other and coming to one's own conclusions. ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... perform miracles. He was a man, or let us rather say a lad, of unusual projective power. Give him the faintest hint of any speculation, and the figures flowed from him by the page. A lively imagination, and a ready, though inaccurate memory, supplied his data; he delivered himself with an inimitable heat that made him seem the picture of pugnacity; lavished contradiction had a form of words, with or without significance, for every form of criticism; and the looker-on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Brder. For the external fortunes of the Brethren, Gindely's narrative is excellent; but his account of their inner life is poor and inaccurate. ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... can begin the study of brain development in men and animals guided by a correct system without being delighted with the uniform accuracy of the science; for even the incomplete and inaccurate science of Gall and Spurzheim, marred in its application by misconceptions of anatomy, has proved sufficiently correct and instructive to maintain its hold upon the minds of all students of nature, by giving them more truth than error, and sometimes giving ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... belong to Middle Minoan I., and are painted in a scheme of black and white, red and orange), but still more interesting—'with their open corsage, wide-standing collars, high shoe-horn hats, elaborate crinolines, and their general impression of an inaccurate attempt at representing Queen Elizabeth'—as evidence of how utterly unlike was the costume of prehistoric woman in the AEgean area to the stately and simple lines ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... questions, for just then Margaret Elizabeth turned and gave him her hand, explaining that they were so much stiller when they sat on the floor. She added that it was very good of him to come—a purely conventional and entirely inaccurate statement. He was also instructed to sit on the sofa ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... in some points she had been inaccurate in her idea of the style of living of those who form the best society of Edinburgh. The circle is so confined that its members are almost universally known to each other; and those various gradations of gentility, from the city's snug party to the duchess's most crowded assembly, all ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Jupiter and Saturn in August, 1563, and found the Prutenic Tables several days in error, and the Alphonsine a whole month. He provided himself with a cross-staff for determining the angular distance between stars or other objects, and, finding the divisions of the scale inaccurate, constructed a table of corrections, an improvement that seems to have been a decided innovation, the previous practice having been to use the best available instrument and ignore its errors. About this time war broke out between Denmark and Sweden, and Tycho returned ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... CAVALAZZI) appearing on the scene, the good man informs him that his wife and child are dead, "driven to an untimely grave by his (the intemperate but natty artisan's) desertion and cruelty." The effect of this inaccurate statement is startling. To quote once more from the argument, "incontinently the now penitent ruffian falls fainting to the ground." But he is brought back to himself, his better self, by his child whispering "Father!" The situation is full of pathos, even when ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... had two fatal gifts: a capacious but inaccurate memory, and an extraordinary fluency of speech. There was nothing she did not remember— wrongly; but her halting facts were swathed in so many layers of rhetoric that their infirmities were imperceptible to her friendly critics. ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... more inaccurate method, the attraction of the earth has been compared with that of a mountain—a very indefinite method indeed. A better method was that of Astronomer Airy and Mr. Dunkin, who went down into the Harton coal pit 1,260 feet to see how much difference that depth would make in ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... the pebbly beach on a night when the moon never showed herself. But most of these were fiction and little else. Even Marryat, though he was for some time actually engaged in Revenue duty, is now known to have been inaccurate and loose in some of his stories. Those who have followed afterwards ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... inaccurate popular phrases blind us in these matters; "Captives owe their lives, and all to the purchasers, say they. Just in the same manner, we, our nobles, and princes, often owe our lives to midwives, chirurgeons, physicians," &c. one who was the means of preserving a man's life, ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... the first page. The right-hand column was devoted to a detailed description of the scene of the crime, while the rest of the page was occupied by a picture of the Don, by a hastily written and highly inaccurate account of his career, and by statements from prominent citizens concerning the great loss which the state had suffered in the death of this, one of its oldest and ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... quite a number of orchards and trees claimed to be from 150 to 200 years of age, although we found, after travelling a short time and inquiring from the Chinese farmers, that the figures they gave to us were probably inaccurate. We finally ceased to ask the Chinese farmers for figures of that sort. It was very interesting to note the difference in Chinese and American methods. For instance, in China, the land may be owned by one ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... together some time since, from Photograph and Sketches taken in the year 1852; and inaccurate, but useful in giving a ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... redoubled his attention; he stretched himself, as far as his safety would permit, out of the window; the lamps, agitated by the wind, which swept by in occasional gusts, refused to grant to his straining sight more than an inaccurate and unsatisfying survey. Presently, a blast, more violent than ordinary, suspended as it were the falling columns of rain and left Clarence in almost total darkness; it rolled away, and the momentary calm which ensued enabled him to see that one of the men was stooping by the gate, and the other ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and no doubt these were extensively copied and lent or sold to students. At Bologna and Padua, there were regulations as to the price of these MSS. The university controlled the production of them, and stationers were liable to fines for inaccurate copies. The trade must have been extensive in those early days, as Rashdall mentions that in 1323 there were twenty-eight sworn booksellers in Paris, besides keepers of bookstalls in ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... the beauties of Pellerin's hidden life and mysterious taking off would have been to guard him from the fingering of anecdote; but biographers like Howland Wade were born to rise above such obstacles. He might be vague or inaccurate in dealing with the few recorded events of his subject's life; but when he left fact for conjecture no one had a firmer footing. Whole chapters in his volume were constructed in the conditional mood and packed with hypothetical ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... join in this search, but started early, with Mike, to carry out his own mission. He had been furnished with reports, sent in by the provincial and local juntas, as to the state of the roads, but, as he had expected, he soon found these to be grossly inaccurate. The roads marked as excellent, and fit for the passage of artillery and trains, were found to be mere bridle roads. Others, marked as highroads, were almost impassable lanes. The bridges across the streams were, for the ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... places of concealment. Instantly the serpent was down again, persistent if inaccurate. It struck the place of their ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... she followed him," added Patty; "I think our quotations are a bit inaccurate, but we have the ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... diamonds, taken from the writings of the fair Mrs. Phillips, the once celebrated Orinda. Some of these seem to have been inscribed by lovers; and others, in a delicate and unsteady hand, and a little inaccurate in the spelling, have evidently been written by the young ladies themselves, or by female friends, who had been on visits to the Hall. Mrs. Phillips seems to have been their favourite author, and they have distributed the names of her heroes ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... nor Knight, nor even Craik, had sufficient means of testing the accuracy of Rutherford's story. Unfortunately there are many points on which the narrative is not only inaccurate but misleading. Craik concludes that Poverty Bay, where Cook first landed in New Zealand, is the scene of the capture of the "Agnes." Rutherford, however, gives the name as "Tokomardo." This corresponds ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... figures goes side by side with a general want of finish and occasional lapses into solecism. His literary gift is so small, and his knowledge of the religion he professes to defend so slight and so excessively inaccurate, that theologians and men of letters for once agree that his main value consists in the fragments of antiquarian information which he preserves. But he has a further claim to notice as the master ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... about Mr. Irving's manner of life. The impression given by Thackeray, in his notice (genial enough, and well-meant, doubtless) of Irving's death, is absurdly inaccurate. His picture of the "one old horse," the plain little house, etc., would lead one to imagine Mr. Irving a weak, good-natured old man, amiably, but parsimoniously, saving up his pennies for his "eleven nieces," (!) and to this end stinting himself, among other ways, to "a single ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... atmosphere does surround the moon, although of small density when compared with that of our earth. M. Schroeter has observed a small twilight in the moon, such as would arise from an atmosphere capable of reflecting the rays at the height of about one mile." [446] Dr. Brinkley is inaccurate in saying that astronomers are agreed as to the lunar atmosphere. Like students in every other department of inquiry, spiritual as well as physical, they fail at present to see "eye to eye"; which is not surprising, seeing ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... symbol; but, as a rule, these expressions are generally the wild fancies of the author himself." Hence, in dealing with plant language, one is confronted with a host of handbooks, many of which are not only inaccurate, but misleading. But in enumerating the recognised and well-known plants that have acquired a figurative meaning, it will be found that in a variety of cases this may be traced to their connection with some particular event in years past, and not to some chance or caprice, ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... Natural enough: I ought to have thought of it before. At any rate, I can set it right now. Suppose I begin with myself, so as to get done with that part of the subject as soon as possible? My name is Marian Halcombe; and I am as inaccurate as women usually are, in calling Mr. Fairlie my uncle, and Miss Fairlie my sister. My mother was twice married: the first time to Mr. Halcombe, my father; the second time to Mr. Fairlie, my half-sister's father. ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... must inevitably be softer, less clear, less isolated, less gigantic. I do not wish, and I shall not try, to deface Borrow's portrait of himself; I can only hope that I shall not do it by accident. There may be a sense in which that portrait can be called inaccurate. It may even be true that "lies—damned lies" {1} helped to make it. But nobody else knows anything like as much about the truth, and a peddling biographer's mouldy fragment of plain fact may be far more dangerous than the manly lying ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... was rather more than I could bear, even from an angel; so, plucking up courage, I seized a salt-cellar which lay within reach, and hurled it at the head of the intruder. Either he dodged, however, or my aim was inaccurate; for all I accomplished was the demolition of the crystal which protected the dial of the clock upon the mantelpiece. As for the Angel, he evinced his sense of my assault by giving me two or three hard, consecutive raps upon the forehead as before. ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... several inaccurate efforts to introduce her needle at the exact point desired, and when that endeavor was accomplished broke the silence by saying, "Speaking of 'October,' have you read the novel? ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... premeditation, 'at such a period I was five years old, at another ten years old, at another twelve,' and I, induced by curiosity, which kept me alive to these details, have compared the dates, and never found him inaccurate. The age of this singular man, who is of no age, is then, I am certain, thirty-five. Besides, mother, remark how vivid his eye, how raven-black his hair, and his brow, though so pale, is free from wrinkles,—he ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... nature resembling one of those fundamental instincts, whose very existence points to a necessary fulfilment, first quickened into life in the thought of Christopher Columbus. To him the vision, dimly seen through the scanty and inaccurate knowledge of his age, imaged a close and facile communication, by means of the sea, that great bond of nations, between two ancient and diverse civilizations, which centred, the one around the Mediterranean, the birthplace of European commerce, refinement, and culture, the other upon the shores ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... However, none did. I picked my way through the trench, littered with scraps of clothing and sacks and blankets, with tins and cooking things, and broken bottles and all sorts of rags and debris littered about. The descriptions of the place sent home after the battle are necessarily very inaccurate. Those I have seen all introduce several lines of trenches and an elaborate system of barbed wire entanglements. There is only one trench, however, and no barbed wire, except one fence along a ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... it is pretty nearly as I state it: if I have fallen into any error or inaccuracy, it is easily rectified; for here is the state of the transaction given by the parties themselves. On this inaccurate memory of Mr. Hastings, not venturing, however, to say positively that he was not the interpreter, or that he was not present, he is discharged from being an accomplice,—he is removed from the ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke |
