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More "Overrate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you overrate my poor merit!—Some persons are happy in a life of comforts, but mine's a life of joy!—One rapturous instance follows another so fast, that I know not ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... tempered enthusiasm. But he throws no dust in his own eyes: his is a healthy rapture, a torch lighted by the feelings, but which the reason holds upright and steady. His native favorites he enjoys as no Englishman or German could, but he does not overrate them. Nor does he overrate Voltaire, whom he calls "the Frenchman par excellence," and of whom he is proud as the literary sovereign of his age. At the same time, in articles directly devoted to Joubert, as well ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... [them]. I think they are as good as many old poems that have been preserved with more care; and, under that feeling, I was tempted to send them, thinking they might find a corner from oblivion in your entertaining literary paper, the 'Iris;' but if my judgment has misled me to overrate their merit, you will excuse the freedom I have taken, and the trouble I have given you in the perusal; for, after all, it is but an erring opinion, that may have little less than the love of poesy to ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... by William's appearance, which seemed to him to indicate profound feeling resolutely held in check. No doubt, he reflected, Katharine had been very trying, unconsciously trying, and had driven him to take up a position which was none of his willing. Mr. Hilbery certainly did not overrate William's sufferings. No minutes in his life had hitherto extorted from him such intensity of anguish. He was now facing the consequences of his insanity. He must confess himself entirely and fundamentally other than ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... participation in government, and hence appreciating citizenship here, are among the most alert. These are they who crowd the halls during the recurring canvasses, and who are always early at the polls. And is it possible to overrate the instruction they get at meetings where they hear great questions discussed by master minds, when issues are torn open and riddled with light? Thus universal suffrage is itself a normal ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... Robert Dowland, who gained some fame as a composer. Modern critics have judged that Dowland's music was somewhat overrated by his contemporaries, and that he is wanting in variety and originality. Whether these critics are right or wrong, it would be difficult to overrate the poetry. In attempting to select representative lyrics one is embarrassed by the wealth of material. The rich clusters of golden verse hang so temptingly that it is difficult to cease plucking when once ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... the mental screw, to be careful how you allow it to dwell too constantly upon any one topic. If you allow yourself to think too much of any subject, you will get a partial craze upon that; you will come to vastly overrate its importance. You will make yourself uncomfortable about it. There once was a man who mused long upon the notorious fact that almost all human beings stoop consider ably. Few hold themselves as upright as they ought. And this notion took such hold upon the poor man's ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... King: but before we examine his statements, let us inquire who he was, lest we underrate or overrate his testimony; lest we unjustly require proof, in addition to the witness of a thoroughly pure and wise man; or, what is more dangerous, lest we remain content with the unconfirmed statements of a bigot ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... overrate you," said the old man, smiling, "but you seem to me pretty well worth while any girl's taking. Not that you can't become more so—and will, I thoroughly believe. It's not so much what you've done this last ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... Tristrams burst into a peal of merry laughter. "Oh Mags!" they cried, "we never did think before that you were conceited. You certainly overrate even your powers when you imagine that you will get Mr. ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... hat, no middle-class school in his scheme of things. He calls the shopman "Sir," and makes no struggle against his native accent. In his heart he despises the middle class, the mean tip-givers, and he is inclined to overrate the gentry or big tippers. He is much more sociable, much noisier, relatively shameless, more intelligent, more capable, less restrained. He is rising against his tradition, and almost against his will. ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... stupid refuges of lies and ignominious wrappages, and of intimating to it afar off that there is still a Veracity in Things, and a Mendacity in Sham Things,' and so forth, in the well-known strain.[17] It is impossible to overrate the truly supreme importance of the violent break-up of Europe which followed the death of the Emperor Charles VI., and in many respects 1740 is as important a date in the history of Western societies as 1789. Most of us would probably find the importance of this ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... impossible to overrate the importance of Count de Rayneval's report, or the influence which it exercised over the public mind of Europe, when, at length, through the agency of the British and Belgian press, it obtained publicity. ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... necessary for the development of the ovarium; and that this development takes place not only long before the pollen-tubes have reached the ovules, but even before the placentae and ovules have been formed; so that with these orchids the pollen acts directly on the ovarium. On the other hand, we must not overrate the efficacy of pollen in the case of hybridised plants, for an embryo may be formed and its influence excite the surrounding tissues of the mother- plant, and then perish at a very early age and be thus overlooked. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... skilled, methinks, in the secrets of the more deadly herbs; thou knowest those which arrest life, which burn and scorch the soul from out her citadel, or freeze the channels of young blood into that ice which no sun can melt. Do I overrate thy skill? ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... self-seeking and hypocritical. It is the natural product of the political spirit, which is incessantly thinking of present consequences and the immediately feasible. There is nothing in the mere dread of losing it, to hinder influence from being well employed, so far as it goes. But one can hardly overrate the ill consequences of this particular kind of management, this unspoken bargaining with the little circle of his fellows which constitutes the world of a man. If he may retain his place among them as preacher or teacher, he is willing to ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... is, in itself, nothing. If he makes a poor figure in life, his having been Senior Wrangler or University scholar is never mentioned but with derision. If he makes a distinguished figure, his early honours merge in those of a later date. I hope that I do not overrate my own place in the estimation of society. Such as it is, I would not give a halfpenny to add to the consideration which I enjoy, all the consideration that I should derive from having been Senior Wrangler. But I often regret, and even acutely, my want of a Senior Wrangler's knowledge ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... grip of her fingers, and led her back to her chair. "You overrate my danger, sweet mistress, and under rate our need. Without money, we might as well lie under the nearest hedge and leave Jack Frost to settle matters his way, and a cold, nasty way it would be. Your guinea is a good fighter, and we need his help. It must be done, and, never fear, I'll ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... thank you, but I can't let you overrate that. Any help I have given was merely by the way. You must remember I was in need of some occupation, and I assure you it has been very much of ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... usual one. In this one exceptional instance, simplicity and symmetry were kept before the eyes of a society whose influence on mankind was destined to be prodigious from other causes, as the characteristics of an ideal and absolutely perfect law. It is impossible to overrate the importance to a nation or profession of having a distinct object to aim at in the pursuit of improvement. The secret of Bentham's immense influence in England during the past thirty years is his success in placing such an object before the country. He gave us a clear rule of reform. English ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... His titles are all in the superlative, and his addresses full of wondering interjections. His object is more to please than to speak the truth. His art is nothing but delightful trickery by means of smoothing words and complacent looks. He would make men fools by teaching them to overrate their abilities. Those who walk in the vale of humility amid the modest flowers of virtue and favoured with the presence of the Holy One, he would lift into the Utopian heights of vanity and pride, that they might fall into the condemnation of the Devil. He gathers all good opinions and ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... to reproach her with exaggerated timidity, it became more and more evident that her personal fears were due simply to that nervous susceptibility which even men of reputed courage have often displayed in situations of sudden and wholly unfamiliar peril. Her tendency to overrate all dangers, not merely as they affected herself, but as they might involve others, and above all her husband, I ascribed to the ideas and habits of thought now for so many centuries hereditary among a people ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... consider our behaviour to our inferiors, in which condescension can never be too strongly recommended; for, as a deviation on this side is much more innocent than on the other, so the pride of man renders us much less liable to it. For, besides that we are apt to overrate our own perfections, and undervalue the qualifications of our neighbours, we likewise set too high an esteem on the things themselves, and consider them as constituting a more essential difference between us than they really do. The qualities of the mind do, in reality, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... classical models. The work is essentially original. It is also essentially popular. Indeed, it is something of a party pamphlet; and in one place we see the Emperor and his cabinet doing duty as a conclave of the damned. It would be easy to overrate the artistic value of the Chloudof Psalter, but as a document it is of the highest importance, because it brings out clearly the opposition between the official art of the iconoclasts that leaned on the Hellenistic tradition and borrowed bluntly from Bagdad, and the vital art that ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... err indeed were I to dwell exclusively on science as lending interest and charm to our leisure hours. Far from this, it would be impossible to overrate the importance of scientific training on ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... protested, 'I fear you overrate my poor ability. It is quite true that if I had been called in on the night of the robbery, my chances of success would have been infinitely greater ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... who allege that we Incline to overrate the Sea, I answer, "We do not; Apart from being coloured blue, It has its uses not a few— I cannot think what we should do If ever ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... been living in Germany during the war I would have felt a powerful tendency to defend the cause of the Allies, to excuse their misdeeds, to overrate their ability, while being highly critical and censorious ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... "I think you overrate those advantages. You are substantially a well educated man; and you can now command leisure to add to your information. If you should be in want of any books which it may not be convenient for you to purchase, it will give me ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... "You overrate my abilities," said Lancelot, with the whimsical expression that sometimes flashed across his face even in his most unamiable moments. "You must deduct the Thalers I made in exhibitions. As for living in cheap lodgings, I am not at all certain it's an economy, for every now and again it occurs ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... I not a friend here who is only too much inclined to overrate the little I am able to do? Lenore, you have permitted me to draw nearer to you than would have been possible under ordinary circumstances. Do you reckon it nothing that I should have won some of a brother's privileges with regard ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... "Jasper has the gift of honesty; and it is too rare a gift to be trifled with, like a Mingo's conscience. No, no; off hands, or we shall see which can make the stoutest battle; you and your men of the 55th, or the Sarpent here, and Killdeer, with Jasper and his crew. You overrate your force, Lieutenant Muir, as much as ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... there are any real and peculiar sources of trial and difficulty in this pursuit, that they should be distinctly known and acknowledged at the outset. Count the cost before going to war. It is even better policy to overrate than to underrate it. Let us see, then, what the real difficulties ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... all overrate our own acquirements. I dare say that even I am not as good a seaman as I fancy myself ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... work point to an acquaintance with the Apostle's writings. His leanings, like those of Marcion and Valentinus, were generally in the opposite direction to Judaism. His tendency would be not to underrate but to overrate St Paul. At the same time such passages as 1 Tim. iv. 3, where the prohibition of marriage is denounced as a heresy, were a stumbling-block. They must therefore be excised as interpolations, or the Epistles containing them ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... is it, that they could seriously promise themselves, from the conservative virtue of all the ignorance, that can henceforward be retained among the people of this part of the world? It is true, the remaining ignorance is so great that they cannot well overrate its general amount; but how can they fail to perceive the importance of those particulars in which its dominion has been broken up? There is indeed a hemisphere of "gross darkness over the people;" it may be possible to withhold from it long ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... you, at Cohasset, of a Mr. —— staying with us, when I was fifteen, and all that passed? Well, I have not seen him since, till, yesterday, he came here. I was pleased to find, that, even at so early an age, I did not overrate those I valued. He was the same as in memory; the powerful eye dignifying an otherwise ugly face; the calm wisdom, and refined observation, the imposing maniere d'etre, which anywhere would give him an influence ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... me the object of your invective, when I say that it is extremely doubtful if the public at large, to which I am ready at all times to pay homage, ever saw a general officer in his native buff. And this I hold to be the reason why it is so prone to overrate the mightiness of some of those warriors who dash up Broadway on parade days, decked out in such a profuseness of feathers. Indeed it has come to my knowledge that the greatest of generals, when presented with that natural uniform in which their worthy mothers gave them to the world, are in no one ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... nor have stammering lips and shambling figure prevented the rise of orators and actors, determined to give utterance to the power within. But, in our approval of the energy that can so vanquish the injuries of fortune, we are apt to overrate its quality, and to forget how much more exquisite the endowment would be if allied with those outward resources which complete the full largess of Heaven's favoritism. In the latter case we yield our unqualified affection to beings who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... — N. overestimation &c. v.; exaggeration &c. 549; vanity &c. 880; optimism, pessimism, pessimist. much cry and little wool, much ado about nothing,; storm in a teacup, tempest in a teacup; fine talking. V. overestimate, overrate, overvalue, overprize, overweigh, overreckon[obs3], overstrain, overpraise; eulogize; estimate too highly, attach too much importance to, make mountains of molehills, catch at straws; strain, magnify; exaggerate &c. 549; set too high a value upon; think much of, make much ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... his clever Sketches of Paris, observes, "It is certainly of much value in the life of an American gentleman to visit these old countries, if it were only to form a just estimate of his own, which he is continually liable to mistake, and always to overrate without objects of comparison; 'nimium se aestimet necesse est, qui se nemini comparat.' He will always think himself wise who sees nobody wiser; and to know the customs and institutions of foreign countries, which ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... a more advanced civilization. We meet with them again, however, in Palestine, but we must traverse many miles before we find other examples at Peshawur and in the valley of Cabul. It is difficult to overrate the importance of these facts, or to explain these gaps. Are they, however, so complete as has been supposed? The few travellers who have crossed Afghanistan and Daghestan have seen tumuli which may have served as points of union between the monuments of India ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... papers, and instruments of such like order, that Sybel's reliability was chiefly due. Once admit the value of these vouchers (and their corroborative weight none can deny), and it becomes difficult to overrate the importance of Sybel's still ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... Mr. Monday felt any very profound spiritual relief from the reading of Captain Truck, we should both overrate the manner of the honest sailor, and the intelligence of the dying man. Still the solemn language of praise and admiration had an effect, and, for the first time since childhood, the soul of the latter was moved. God and ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... literary ideas, and do the best I can, very gladly," said Van Berg. "But you greatly underrate yourself and overrate my ability. I am still but on the edge of this wilderness of knowledge myself, and in crossing a ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... who are not gluttons, but epicures, in literature, whether they do not wish to see the bill of fare? I appeal to monthly critics, whether a preface that gives a view of the pretensions of the writer is not a good thing? The author may overvalue his subject, and very naturally may overrate the manner in which it is treated; but still he will explain his views, and facilitate the useful and necessary art which the French call reading with the thumb. We call this hunting a book, a term certainly invented by a sportsman. I leave the reader to choose which he pleases, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... day or two to devise some means; let me look round and take the measure of this gaol. Some way there must be. I have not come so far and so successfully to be beaten now. Still," he continued, "if you think that I overrate my strength or my resource, if you would sooner that I sought men and made an assault upon Condillac, endeavouring to carry it and to let the Queen's will prevail by force of arms, tell me so, and I am ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... Pastoral Care, which contains instruction in conduct and doctrine for all bishops, was a work that Alfred could not afford to leave untranslated. For this translation Alfred wrote a Preface, the historical value of which it would be hard to overrate. In it he describes vividly the intellectual ruin that the Danes had wrought, and develops at the same time his plan for ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... retain them. The greater the nature of the man, the greater is this temptation. His thoughts are greater, and in consequence the greater is his tendency to prize them, the more extreme is his tendency to overrate them. This pride, too, goes side by side with a want of sympathy. Being aloof from others, such a mind is unlike others; and it feels, and sometimes it feels bitterly, its own unlikeness. Generally, however, it is too wrapped up in its own exalted thoughts ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... "There is a grain of truth in what you say, although you overrate it a little. A great artist I certainly am not, nor even a little one, but I have always observed much and painted a good deal myself, and originally I thought of devoting myself to an artist's career; and if I have nothing in common with Indian princes, and am merely a plebeian ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... relatives as to a man's powers are very commonly of little value; not merely because they sometimes overrate their own flesh and blood, as some may suppose; on the contrary, they are quite as likely to underrate those whom they have grown into the habit of considering like themselves. The advent of genius is like what florists style the BREAKING ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... always overrate my services, and forget that they are but the consequence of the kindness that you have shown to me. But I have no intention of going. It was but a passing thought. I have but one friend who could procure me a berth as a volunteer, and as it is to him I must look for ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... here they are!" exclaims Caroline. "I am your wife: you don't seem to care to please me any more. And as to the expenses, you greatly overrate them, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... dear, kind friend," said Haldane cheerily to Mrs. Arnot while Laura was writing; "you overrate the danger. I feel that I shall return again, and if I do not, there are many worse ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... youth—unless, indeed, he was simply an old friend, and the degree of Salemina's attachment had been exaggerated; something that is very likely to happen in the gossip of a New England town, where they always incline to underestimate the feeling of the man, and overrate that of the woman, in any love affair. 'I guess she'd take him if she could get him' is the spoken or unspoken attitude of the public in rural or provincial ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... held against the rush of the three regiments, the Devons, the Royal Irish, and the Royal Scots, who were let loose upon it. The artillery supported the attack admirably. 'They did nobly,' said one who led the advance. 'It is impossible to overrate the value of their support. They ceased also exactly at the right moment. One more shell would have hit us.' Mountain mists saved the defeated burghers from a close pursuit, but the hills were carried. The British losses on this day, September 8th, were thirteen killed ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... enough, Alice," said Julian, with sparkling eyes; "you have said enough in deprecating my urgency, and I will press you no farther. But you overrate the impediments which lie betwixt us—they ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... afraid your kindness leads you to overrate my importance," Austen replied, with mingled feelings. Victoria's confidence in her father made the situation all the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... him skilfully and left him in a fair way to recovery. That's all that we really know about it. Yes, I know," the officer continued as I made signs of disagreement, "you think that a crime is possibly going to be committed and that we ought to prevent it. But you overrate our powers. We can only act on evidence that a crime has actually been committed or is actually being attempted. Now we have no such evidence. Look at your statement, and tell me ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... possible to overrate the hardness of the first close struggle with any natural passion," said my aunt earnestly; "but indeed the easiness of after-steps is often quite beyond one's expectations. The free gift of grace with which GOD perfects our efforts may come ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... Broad Church; a few retreated into the cloudy refuge of transcendental idealism. The two extreme parties, the Broad Church and the Sacerdotalists, were at bitter feud with each other; yet they both denounced the common enemy. Arnold 'agreed with Carlyle that the Liberals greatly overrate Bentham, and the political economists generally; the summum bonum of their science is not identical with human life ... and the economical good is often, from the neglect of other points, a social evil.' Newman held that to allow the right of private judgment was to enter upon the path ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... by yourself, count," Fergus said slowly. "You overrate my qualities, and forget the fact that I am, after all, but a soldier ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... think it would be impossible to overrate the gain that might follow if we had about us only what gave pleasure to the maker of it and gives pleasure to its user, that being the simplest of all rules about decoration. One thing, at least, I think ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... would give her one of your musical scholarships. I understand her name has already been suggested to you, with a recommendation from her teacher. I do not know what he has said of her voice, but I do know he could hardly overrate it. If you send her abroad for training, you will not make ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... large, it turns adrift, as it were, the innumerable habitues who, according to their different degrees of intimacy, or the accidents of their social habits, made Holland House their regular and constant resort. It is impossible to overrate the privation, the blank, which it will make to the old friends and associates, political and personal, to whom Holland House has always been open like a home, and there cannot be a sadder sight than to see the curtain suddenly fall upon a scene so brilliant and apparently ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... controversy can she have read?' cried I. 'It does not occur to me that I ever put such books into her hands: you certainly overrate her merit.'—'Indeed, papa,' replied Olivia, 'she does not; I have read a great deal of controversy. I have read the disputes between Thwackum and Square; the controversy between Robinson Crusoe and Friday, the savage; and I am now ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... answers certain purposes every now and then to send people to represent particular interests to England; and, in nearly all these cases, John Bull receives them with open arms, and, with his national gullibility, is often apt to overrate them. ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... might have been puffed up to his future injury, had not his father thus unceremoniously taken the wind out of his sails. There was little danger now, however. After such a severe handling, he was not likely to overrate his poetical talents. It had the effect also to turn his attention to prose writing, which is more substantial and remunerative than poetry, and in this he became distinguished, as we ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... critique which you like to send of new Scottish works. If I had been aware of it in time I certainly would have invited your remarks on "Mannering." Our article is not good and our praise is by no means adequate, I allow, but I suspect you very greatly overrate the novel. "Meg Merrilies" is worthy of Shakespeare, but all the rest of the novel might have been written by Scott's brother or ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... Sir Cuthbert," Sir Baldwin said, "that you overrate the chivalry of our master's enemies. Had we been thrown on the shores of France, Philip perhaps would hesitate to lay hands upon the king; but these petty German princelings have no idea of the observances of true chivalry. They are coarse and brutal in ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... of the critics who named Quintilian as a candidate for the honour of this elegant composition. Can it be imagined that a writer of fair integrity, would in his great work speak of Bassus as he deserved, and in the Dialogue overrate him beyond all proportion? Duplicity was not ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... you make yourself miserable for nothing. You expect too much. She is a petted, pampered, feted young lady of fortune, the daughter of a Croesus; do you think she can always think of you? Who are you that she should spare you so much time? You overrate yourself; you—you idiot." People stopped in the streets to look at the old man, who was walking so rapidly and gesticulating so excitedly. When Von Barwig saw that he was observed, he calmed down. "It's all right," he said. "To-morrow! I shall see ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... Constantinople,—were mainly through the press, in which he was eminently useful. He had a clear conviction, in devoting his life to giving the Armenians an evangelical literature, that he was doing the work to which his Master called him. Nor did he overrate the importance of this branch of the work. His missionary experience in another field was of much value in guarding him against mistakes. At Pera, in addition to his literary labors, he preached statedly in modern Greek to a ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... alongside of a count-colonel of hussars,[4323] can appreciate his companion or his interlocutor, weigh his ideas, test his merit and esteem him at his correct value, and I am sure that he does not overrate him.—Now that the nobles have lost their special capacities and the Third-Estate have acquired general competence, and as they are on the same level in education and competence, the inequality which separates them has become offensive because it has become useless. Nobility ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... truth is this: you will be victorious over temptation as the new Master has sway. Your new Master will attend to that. Great and cunning and strong is the tempter. Do not underrate him. But greater is He that is in you. You cannot overrate Him. He got the victory at every turn during those thirty-three years, and will get it for you as many years and turns as shall make out the span of your life. Your one business will be to let ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... were well, I should call that extravagant. But it is permitted to flatter the sick—it is kind. Me you overrate, I fear; but you do well to honor music. Ay, I, who lie here wounded and broken-hearted, do thank God for music. Our bodies are soon crushed, our loves decay or turn to hate, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... troops of the States. As to the famous regiments of Sicily, and the ancient legions of Naples and Milan, a distinguished Venetian envoy, who had seen all the camps and courts of Christendom, and was certainly not disposed to overrate the Hollanders at the expense of the Italians, if any rivalry between them had been possible, declared that every private soldier in the republic was fit to be a captain in any Italian army; while, on the other hand, there was scarcely an Italian captain who would be accepted ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... they will run without difficulty on their present lines until you have mastered the working thoroughly, and are able, if you should wish it, to make your own plans for future greatness. I say this, because it seems to me you are inclined to overrate the difficulties of your position. I do not say, mind you, matters could go on indefinitely as they are, but you are a young man of intellect and capacity, you have only to step into the place of one who has set everything in order for you, and before two ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... unceasingly add to their roominess and resource. In all time to come he can cause them to continue to exceed breadth after breadth. Oh, who can conceive how great his mental being is able to become? Who can comprehend how elevated a life it is possible for him to live? Who can be liable to overrate the vastness of the destiny for which he ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... best therefore, if there are any real and peculiar sources of trial and difficulty in this pursuit, that they should be distinctly known and acknowledged at the outset. Count the cost before going to war. It is even better policy to overrate, than to underrate it. Let us see then what the real ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... a feeling of pride and patriotism naturally disposed to overrate the productions of their own literature, are far from being deficient in critical judgment or in exalted ideas on the theory of the beautiful. The count Stanislaus Potocki and Ossolinski, L. Osinski, Golanski, and others, maintain a high ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... industry. He has fought his way under cruel hardships to wealth and fame: and he is well satisfied with his success. He has had millions of readers; he has been well paid; he has had good friends; he has enjoyed life. He is happy in telling us how he did it. He does not overrate himself. He believes some of his work is good: at least it is honest, pure, sound work which has pleased millions of readers. Much of his work he knows to be poor stuff, and he says so at once. He makes no pretence to genius; ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... not stated) met Chauvelin on his way from London to Dover; but it produced no change whatever in his plans. He proceeded on his way to Paris, passing Maret in the night near Abbeville. To assign much importance to his "despatch" is to overrate both his errand and his position at Paris. Maret was only one of the head clerks at the French Foreign Office and had no right to sign official despatches. If he really was charged by Lebrun to tender the olive-branch, why was not that despatch sent to London in a form and manner ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... men.' The fact is, that the ingenuity or judgment of no one man is equal to that of the world at large, which is the fruit of the experience and ability of all mankind. Even where a man is right in a particular notion, he will be apt to overrate the importance of his discovery, to the detriment of his affairs. Action requires co-operation, but in general if you set your face against custom, people will set their faces against you. They cannot tell whether you are right or ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... product, very far from encouraging it, it should be abandoned as soon as possible, and, if this same labor results in a net product, it is absurd to add to this net product a gratuitous gift, and thus overrate the value of the service. Applying this principle, I say then: If the merchant service calls only for ten thousand sailors, it should not be asked to support fifteen thousand; the shortest course for the government is to put five thousand conscripts on State vessels, and send them on their expeditions, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... particular. That I love my country dearly I acknowledge, and I am sure every Englishman will respect me the more for loving mine, when he is, with justice, proud of his—but I repeat my disbelief that I overrate my own. ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... praise of Matisse or Picasso. The artist who even appears to have discovered or rediscovered an instrument of expression or to have extended by one semitone the gamut of aesthetic experience is bound to turn the best heads of his age. Were it possible to overrate Cezanne, not to do so would be a mark of insensibility. I was never much impressed by those superior persons of an earlier age who from the first saw through Wagner; there was a time when to dislike Wagner was, in ninety-nine cases out ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... anything that I can do for you or for Godfrey, anything that is in my power, it will be my greatest happiness to do. I have wanted to say this before Godfrey and I sailed together, and I know you will understand, and not overrate my power to help him ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... giant concerns are worked, that they will run without difficulty on their present lines until you have mastered the working thoroughly, and are able, if you should wish it, to make your own plans for future greatness. I say this, because it seems to me you are inclined to overrate the difficulties of your position. I do not say, mind you, matters could go on indefinitely as they are, but you are a young man of intellect and capacity, you have only to step into the place of one who has set everything ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... arm-chair, and I could hardly get him to speak coherently. It was his suggestion that I should come round to you, and of course I at once saw the propriety of it, for certainly the incident is a very singular one, though he appears to completely overrate its importance. If you would only come back with me in my brougham, you would at least be able to soothe him, though I can hardly hope that you will be able to explain this ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... on her own became almost insupportable. I felt that it was wiser not to dwell on it, and yet I could not cast it from me. My only, my great resource was prayer—great and supporting it was. Let any one, placed as I was, try it, and they will find that I in no way overrate it. Whenever I felt the miserable depressing feeling coming on, I fled instantly to that great source of comfort, of all true happiness, and ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... retreated into the cloudy refuge of transcendental idealism. The two extreme parties, the Broad Church and the Sacerdotalists, were at bitter feud with each other; yet they both denounced the common enemy. Arnold 'agreed with Carlyle that the Liberals greatly overrate Bentham, and the political economists generally; the summum bonum of their science is not identical with human life ... and the economical good is often, from the neglect of other points, a social evil.' Newman held that to allow the right of private judgment was to ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... (evening). No, no, no, I did not overrate it. I can no longer attempt to conceal from myself that this woman has conceived a passion for me. It is monstrous, but it is true. Again, tonight, I awoke from the mesmeric trance to find my hand in hers, and to suffer ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of legend. Turning from these, we can rest satisfied with having proceeded upon the clearest data, and having arrived at conclusions as exact as can be expected in matters of such antiquity. To come to this war: despite the known disposition of the actors in a struggle to overrate its importance, and when it is over to return to their admiration of earlier events, yet an examination of the facts will show that it was much greater than the ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... Third-Estate with whom a duke converses familiarly, who sits in a diligence alongside of a count-colonel of hussars,[4323] can appreciate his companion or his interlocutor, weigh his ideas, test his merit and esteem him at his correct value, and I am sure that he does not overrate him.—Now that the nobles have lost their special capacities and the Third-Estate have acquired general competence, and as they are on the same level in education and competence, the inequality which separates them has become offensive because ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Spain. When the Duke found that his arguments and his remonstrances were of no avail, he withdrew from the Congress altogether and left the members of the Holy Alliance to take on themselves the full responsibility of their own policy. Now it would be hardly possible to overrate the importance of the step thus taken by England at a great crisis in the public affairs of Europe. The reign of George the Fourth would be memorable in history if it had been consecrated by nothing but this event. The utter disruption ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... that we really know about it. Yes, I know," the officer continued as I made signs of disagreement, "you think that a crime is possibly going to be committed and that we ought to prevent it. But you overrate our powers. We can only act on evidence that a crime has actually been committed or is actually being attempted. Now we have no such evidence. Look at your statement, and tell me what ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... doctors vindicate by them,—I would say once for all, that it was the fashion of the Arminian court divines of Taylor's age, that is, of the High Church party, headed by Archbishop Laud, to extol, and (in my humble judgment) egregiously to overrate, the example and authority of the first four, nay, of the first six centuries; and at all events to take for granted the Evangelical and Apostolical character of the Church to ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... yourselves[257]." I entreat you to do nothing of the kind. Whatever advantages may result to an advanced student from adopting this practice, to you it must be fraught with unmingled evil. You will be tempted to overrate the importance of everything you discover which suits your present purpose: you will disregard all that looks in a different direction: you will be disappointed if you meet with nothing ad rem: you will get a habit of ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... enlarged and accomplished mind sought in Asiatic learning for new forms of intellectual enjoyment, and for new views of government and society. Perhaps, like most persons who have paid much attention to departments of knowledge which lie out of the common track, he was inclined to overrate the value of his favourite studies. He conceived that the cultivation of Persian literature might with advantage be made a part of the liberal education of an English gentleman; and he drew up a plan with that view. It is said that the University of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... now on the eve of an election the importance of which it would be impossible to overrate. Yet a few days, and it will be decided whether the people of the United States shall condemn their own conduct, by cashiering an Administration which they called upon to make war on the rebellious slaveholders of the South, or support that Administration ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... me, boys. You overrate me. If I have any success in speaking, it is not because I have any greater abilities than you have. I have a taste for such discussions; I love to speak on the questions; and I desire to do it just as well as I can, and ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... extended to the masses. It has been made a reproach to the educated classes that they have followed too exclusively after one or two pursuits, the law, journalism, or school teaching; and that these are all callings which make men inclined to overrate the importance of words and phrases. But even if there is substance in the count, we must take note also how far the past policy of Government is responsible. We have not succeeded in making education practical. It is only now, when the war has revealed the importance of industry, ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... history took its complexion. At a time when books were rare and difficult to be procured, lecturers who had truth to communicate fresh drawn from the fountain, held an influence which in these days it is as difficult to imagine as, however, it is impossible to overrate. Students from all Europe flocked to the feet of a celebrated professor, who became the leader of a party by the mere fact of ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... for me to overrate the value of Mrs Reichardt's assistance. Indeed had it not been for her, circumstanced as I was at this particular period, I should in all probability have perished. Her exhortations saved me from despair, when our position seemed to have grown quite ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... antiquity, with an ounce of truth to a pound of falsehood in the narratives of it that have come down to us from Rome's revolutionary age, in political pamphlets and party orations. Cicero's craze on the subject, and that tendency which all men have to overrate the value of their own actions, have made of the business in his lively pages a much more consequential affair than it really was. The fleas in the microscope, and there it will ever remain, to be mistaken ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... servant, no black coat and silk hat, no middle-class school in his scheme of things. He calls the shopman "Sir," and makes no struggle against his native accent. In his heart he despises the middle class, the mean tip-givers, and he is inclined to overrate the gentry or big tippers. He is much more sociable, much noisier, relatively shameless, more intelligent, more capable, less restrained. He is rising against his tradition, and almost against his will. The serf still bulks large ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... aspirant, who has neither the instinct of the theatre fully developed in his blood, nor such a congenital lack of that instinct as to be wholly inapprehensive of any technical difficulties or problems. The intelligent novice, standing between these extremes, tends, as a rule, to overrate the efficacy of theoretical instruction, and to expect of analytic criticism more ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... development of the ovarium; and that this development takes place not only long before the pollen-tubes have reached the ovules, but even before the placentae and ovules have been formed; so that with these orchids the pollen acts directly on the ovarium. On the other hand, we must not overrate the efficacy of pollen in the case of hybridised plants, for an embryo may be formed and its influence excite the surrounding tissues of the mother- plant, and then perish at a very early age and be ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... of the History of Mental and Physical culture, we much overrate the influence, though we cannot overrate the power, of the men by whom the change seems to have been effected. We cannot overrate their power,—for the greatest men of any age, those who become its leaders when there is a great march to be begun, are indeed separated ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... antagonist. Fortunately for him, Hadley did not know his own power, or he would not have remained in subjection to a man whom he could have overcome had he been so disposed. He did not fully believe Bill Mosely's ridiculous boasts of his own prowess, but he was nevertheless disposed to overrate the man who made so many pretensions. All he asked was a fair share of the booty which the two together managed to secure, and this he had made up ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... presently found. For we found a newly drowned man who had just chanced to miss this great dawn in which we rejoiced. We found him lying in a pool of water, among brown weeds in the dark shadow of the timberings. You must not overrate the horrors of the former days; in those days it was scarcely more common to see death in England than it would be to-day. This dead man was a sailor from the Rother Adler, the great German battleship that—had we but known it—lay not four miles away along the coast amidst ploughed-up ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... I can to impress your views upon her," she said at last, "though I fear they will have little weight if given as my own. And you overrate ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... implanted by the Puritan pioneers, has survived generations of intense absorption in material progress and the distractions that modern life offers to the possessors of newly-acquired wealth; the pride of the people in their independence, and their natural tendency to overrate it in comparison; with the conditions of other countries; the contrasts furnished by a society fond of reproducing European habits, yet retaining a simplicity and freshness of its own: these and other features in the progress of the United States for over a century may be found expressed ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... I am afraid you overrate my abilities. I have no consciousness of any such resources as you suppose me ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... questions in the discussion of the causes of the glacial epochs. Chapter XXIII., discussing the Arctic element in South Temperate floras, was the part he most objected to, saying, 'This is rather too speculative for my old noddle. I must think that you overrate the importance of new surfaces on mountains and dispersal from mountain to mountain. I still believe in alpine plants having lived on the lowlands and in the southern tropical regions having been cooled during glacial periods, and thus only can ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... our ignorance. The weakness is moral, rather than intellectual, that makes us expect that the first flush of a great pleasure, a newly-attained joy or success, will continue unabated. The poor man, probably, does not overrate the gratification of newly-attained wealth; what he fails to allow for is the deadening effect of an unbroken experience of ease and plenty. The author of "Romola" says of the hero and the heroine, in the early moments of their affection, that they could not look forward ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... of relatives as to a man's powers are very commonly of little value; not merely because they sometimes overrate their own flesh and blood, as some may suppose; on the contrary, they are quite as likely to underrate those whom they have grown into the habit of considering like themselves. The advent of genius is like what florists style the BREAKING of a seedling tulip into what we may call high-caste ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... actively and securely virtuous; this is their office, which I trust they will faithfully perform, long after we (that is, all that is mortal of us) are mouldered in our graves. I am well aware how far it would seem to many I overrate my own exertions, when I speak in this way, in direct connexion with the volume I have ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... much about what is before you. You have been sending despatchers' orders for years yourself. You know how many lives are held every minute in the despatchers' hand. Don't overrate your responsibility and grow nervous over it; and don't ever underestimate it. As long as you keep yourself fit for your work, and do the best you can, you may sleep with a clear conscience. Report to Mr. Baxter. Remember you are working with green ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... said, gently and hurriedly, "may it not be that you overrate the obligations of honor? I know that many a noble-hearted man has inexorably condemned himself to a severity of rule that a dispassionate judge of his life might deem very exaggerated, very unnecessary. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... hand tightly pressed on her heart as she spoke, and Albinia exclaimed, 'You shall not see it; you overrate your strength; it is my business to ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Signorelli's executioners, to see what an advance he had already made upon any previous painting. (I limit, of course, this assertion to painting only, for in sculpture Donatello had years before given free gesture and perfect anatomy to his statues.) It would be impossible to overrate the excellence and beauty of drawing in the splendid swing of the bodies, the flexibility of the limbs, the sinewy elasticity of the leg muscles, and above all, the subtle suggestion of muscular movement under the loose skin of the backs. There is here, ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... to the state of public sentiment and feeling. Unless a change to a very considerable extent be affected in the public mind, I think a dissolution would rather strengthen than weaken the ex-Council party. I am confident I do not overrate their strength—and it is a dangerous, though common error, to underrate the strength of an adversary. They are likewise organizing their party, and exciting the public mind to such a degree as to prevent any sentiments or measures from the present administration from being regarded or entertained ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... certain purposes every now and then to send people to represent particular interests to England; and, in nearly all these cases, John Bull receives them with open arms, and, with his national gullibility, is often apt to overrate them. ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... denounced by King: but before we examine his statements, let us inquire who he was, lest we underrate or overrate his testimony; lest we unjustly require proof, in addition to the witness of a thoroughly pure and wise man; or, what is more dangerous, lest we remain content with the unconfirmed statements of a ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... wish, of course, that I could have performed it more to my own satisfaction and that of my readers. This is a feeling which almost every one must have at the conclusion of any work he has undertaken. A common and very simple reason for this disappointment is that most of us overrate our capacity. We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to, in virtue of our endowments. The figurative descriptions of the last Grand Assize must no more be taken literally than the golden crowns, which we do not ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... in his narrative. 'Well, well,' he said, 'I don't want you to think I overrate the ordeal of my visit to Keeb. A man of stronger nerve than mine, and of greater resourcefulness, might have coped successfully with Braxton from first to last—might have stayed on till Monday, making a very favourable impression on every one all the while. Even as it was, ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... you, for your kind and friendly letter. You overrate, I am sure, the value of my speech, it was quite unpremeditated and its merit, if any, consists I presume in its directness and brevity. It mortified me to see that some of the newspaper writers speak ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... witty, proud, and 'fanciful' girl. She afterwards becomes the Christian type of the Bride, in the 'Song of Solomon,' involved with an ideal of all that is purest in the life of a nun, and brightest in the death of a martyr. It is scarcely possible to overrate the influence of the conceptions formed of her, in ennobling the sentiments of Christian women of the higher orders;—to their practical common sense, as the mistresses of a household or a nation, her example ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... be careful, however, not to overrate the points of resemblance which the deep-sea investigations have placed in a strong light. They have been supposed by some naturalists to warrant a conclusion expressed in these words: "We are still living in the Cretaceous epoch;" a doctrine which has ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... expedients. Perhaps she overrated other qualities of his in her admiration of the practical readiness which kept his amiability from seeming weak. But the practical had so often been the unattainable with her that it was not strange she should overrate it, and that she should rest upon it in him with a trust that included all he chose ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... that it is extremely doubtful if the public at large, to which I am ready at all times to pay homage, ever saw a general officer in his native buff. And this I hold to be the reason why it is so prone to overrate the mightiness of some of those warriors who dash up Broadway on parade days, decked out in such a profuseness of feathers. Indeed it has come to my knowledge that the greatest of generals, when presented with that natural uniform in which ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... predicted by a less sagacious observer of human affairs. For it is to be chiefly ascribed to a law as certain as the laws which regulate the succession of the seasons and the course of the trade winds. It is the nature of man to overrate present evil, and to underrate present good; to long for what he has not, and to be dissatisfied with what he has. This propensity, as it appears in individuals, has often been noticed both by laughing and by weeping philosophers. It was a favourite ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that men do not rightly understand either their store or their strength, but overrate the one and underrate the other. Hence it follows, that either from an extravagant estimate of the value of the arts which they possess, they seek no further; or else from too mean an estimate of their own powers, they spend their strength in small ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... Overestimation. — N. overestimation &c. v.; exaggeration &c. 549; vanity &c. 880; optimism, pessimism, pessimist. much cry and little wool, much ado about nothing,; storm in a teacup, tempest in a teacup; fine talking. V. overestimate, overrate, overvalue, overprize, overweigh, overreckon[obs3], overstrain, overpraise; eulogize; estimate too highly, attach too much importance to, make mountains of molehills, catch at straws; strain, magnify; exaggerate &c. 549; set too high a value upon; think much ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... things and the tender-hearted Melanchthon found nothing to blame in it. It is not easy to speak of Calvin with enthusiasm, as it comes natural to speak of the genial, whole-souled, many-sided, mirth-and-song-loving Luther. Nevertheless it would be hard to overrate the debt which mankind owe to Calvin. The spiritual father of Coligny, of William the Silent, and of Cromwell must occupy a foremost rank among the champions of modern democracy. Perhaps not one of the mediaeval popes was more despotic in temper than Calvin; but it is not the less ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... right hast thou. My strength I do not rashly overrate. Slave am I here, at any rate, If thine, or whose, it matters not, ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... our children, when the manufacturer shall find that it no longer pays to make needles, what value will attach to individual specimens! If they were only to be found in occasional bric-a-brac shops or in the collections of some far-seeing hoarder of rarities, it would be difficult to overrate the interest which might attach to them. How, from the prodigal disregard of ages and the mysteries of the past, would emerge, one after another, recovered specimens, to be examined and judged and ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... soil, a respectable man in every sense of the word. Proud of his country, and doubly proud of the wealth he had acquired by honest industry. A little vain and pompous, perhaps, but most self-made men are so: they are apt to overrate the talents which have lifted them out of obscurity, and to fancy that the world estimates their worth and importance by the same standard ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... and not disposed to overrate human nature. 'But there can't be many fellows like Jephson,' he said. 'I wonder how much the six figures run to?' But that question was never answered ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... fulfilling the one or authenticating the other! The truth is that the Spaniard is a proud, independent, and grave personage; possessing many excellent qualities, but quite conscious of their existence, and not unapt to overrate them.... Yet with all this, there was much about the air and manner of the Spaniards to deserve and command our regard. The Portuguese are a people that require rousing; they are indolent, lazy, and generally helpless. We may value these our faithful ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... apostle of English Christianity, and his Pastoral Care, which contains instruction in conduct and doctrine for all bishops, was a work that Alfred could not afford to leave untranslated. For this translation Alfred wrote a Preface, the historical value of which it would be hard to overrate. In it he describes vividly the intellectual ruin that the Danes had wrought, and develops at the same time his plan ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... as a reason for making me doubt of the justice of the part I have taken, yet, until I have other lights than one side of the debate has furnished me, I must see things, and feel them too, as I see and feel them. I think I can hardly overrate the malignity of the principles of Protestant ascendency, as they affect Ireland,—or of Indianism, as they affect these countries, and as they affect Asia,—or of Jacobinism, as they affect all Europe and the state of human society itself. The last is the greatest ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... one of his essays, Carlyle has warned us against giving too much weight to genealogy: but all his biographies, from the sketch of the Riquetti kindred to his full-length Friedrich, prefaced by two volumes of ancestry, recognise, if they do not overrate, inherited influences; and similarly his fragments of autobiography abound in suggestive reference. His family portraits are to be accepted with the deductions due to the family fever that was the earliest form of his hero-worship. Carlyle, says the ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... the prime minister and his predecessor had been growing less and less cordial. Throughout the year 1801 Pitt was still the friend and informal adviser of the ministry, and it is difficult to overrate the value of his support as a ground of confidence in an administration, personally popular, but known to be deficient in intellectual brilliance. In 1802 he generally stood aloof, and though in ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... the refined from the low, better than if she had been brought up under the hundred-handed Briareus of fashionable education. Lady Vargrave, indeed, like most persons of modest pretensions and imperfect cultivation, was rather inclined to overrate the advantages to be derived from book-knowledge; and she was never better pleased than when she saw Evelyn opening the monthly parcel from London, and delightedly poring over volumes which Lady Vargrave innocently believed to be ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his head. "You overrate my powers," he insisted suavely. "I have met Captain Miller as one meets any visitor to this cosmopolitan city. My acquaintance extends no further than our meeting at Miss Grey's dinner at the Chevy Chase Club ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... Peers sufficient to carry this, and who, he would answer for it, were ready to make the concession. Lord John, however, was too wise to listen to such impudent nonsense, and, though very reluctantly, it was settled that the Commons should give way. Both parties probably overrate the value of the disputed clauses, and it is to be regretted that the two Houses will not part amicably. Government takes the Bill under a sort of engagement to consider it as an instalment, and that they shall try and get the difference next year. This is mere humbug, and ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... delight, in many instances, may be traced to the one source, quaintness, must have worn in the days of their construction a very commonplace air. This is, of course, no argument against the poems now—we mean it only as against the poets then. There is a growing desire to overrate them. The old English muse was frank, guileless, sincere and although very learned, still learned without art. No general error evinces a more thorough confusion of ideas than the error of supposing ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... practice. The fabrication of imposing and lovely facades at Orvieto, at Siena, at Cremona, and at Crema, glorious screens which masked the poverty of the edifice, and corresponded in no point to the organism of the structure, taught them to overrate mere surface-beauty. Their wonderful creativeness in all the arts which can be subordinated to architectural effect seduced them further. Nothing, for instance, taken by itself alone, can be more satisfactory ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... my dear fellow; you ought to talk about it—it will do you good. And really, I'm not at all sure, after all, that we have not both of us had a fortunate escape. One is very apt to—er—overrate the fascinations of persons one meets abroad. Now, neither ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 20, 1892 • Various
... changed when you wrote, though the war-cry raised for political purposes in 1840 deceived you. At the same time, I will not deny that military glory would, more than any other merit, even now strengthen a Government, and that military humiliation would inevitably destroy one. Nor must you overrate the unpopularity of the last war. Only a few even of the higher classes understood its motives. "Que diable veut cette guerre?" said my country neighbour to me; "si c'etait contre les Anglais—mais ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... cause or its effect, but either one of a set of conditions, which together are its cause, or an occasional effect of its cause. Now, persons (usually from poverty, not from luxuriance, of imagination) often overrate the weight of true analogies; but the fallacy specially consists in inferring resemblance in one point from resemblance in another, when the evidence is not only not in favour of, but even positively against ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... trick, but I credited them with a better knowledge of my hand than they chose to show. On the other hand I hugged the axiom that in all conflicts it is just as fatal to underrate the difficulties of your enemy as to overrate your own. Their chief one—and it multiplied a thousandfold the excitement of the contest—was, I felt sure, the fear of striking in error; of using a sledge-hammer to break a nut. In breaking it they risked publicity, and publicity, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... who made this singular address and eulogium was the celebrated dancer, Mr. Slingsby His testimony proves that my father did not overrate his powers as a dancer; but it was not to boast of a frivolous excellence that he told this anecdote to his children; it was to express his satisfaction at having, after the first effervescence of boyish ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... what controversy can she have read?' cried I. 'It does not occur to me that I ever put such books into her hands: you certainly overrate her merit.'—'Indeed, papa,' replied Olivia, 'she does not; I have read a great deal of controversy. I have read the disputes between Thwackum and Square; the controversy between Robinson Crusoe and Friday, the savage; and I am now employed in reading ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... this happy faculty than the little paper entitled "Night Sketches," included among the Twice-Told Tales. This small dissertation is about nothing at all, and to call attention to it is almost to overrate its importance. This fact is equally true, indeed, of a great many of its companions, which give even the most appreciative critic a singular feeling of his own indiscretion—almost of his own cruelty. They are ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... "and though I fear you overrate the hidden powers of activity in my people, you have made me still more anxious for a direct answer to my question—what would you do ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... tragic and comic vein; but he ought to be cited as a proof, how dangerous it is to rely on these advantages alone for attaining an excellence in the finer arts.[*] And there may even remain a suspicion, that we overrate, if possible, the greatness of his genius; in the same manner as bodies often appear more gigantic, on account of their being disproportioned and misshapen. He died in 1616, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... than the regions sacred to "Blue Books"? Whereas it was to the certificates vouchsafed by state papers, and instruments of such like order, that Sybel's reliability was chiefly due. Once admit the value of these vouchers (and their corroborative weight none can deny), and it becomes difficult to overrate the importance of Sybel's still unconcluded "Begruendung des ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... in his clever Sketches of Paris, observes, "It is certainly of much value in the life of an American gentleman to visit these old countries, if it were only to form a just estimate of his own, which he is continually liable to mistake, and always to overrate without objects of comparison; 'nimium se aestimet necesse est, qui se nemini comparat.' He will always think himself wise who sees nobody wiser; and to know the customs and institutions of foreign countries, which one cannot know well without residing there, ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... serves up his rich offerings to that goddess, great would be the reward of that fishmonger, in blessings poured down upon him from the goddess, as great would his merit be towards the high-priest, who could never be thought to overrate such ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... surprising effects Pettish, pouting conduct is a great deal too young Reason, which always ought to direct mankind, seldom does Singularity is only pardonable in old age Smile, where you cannot strike To govern mankind, one must not overrate them Too like, and too exact a picture of human nature Vanity, interest, and absurdity, always display Warm and young thanks, not old and cold ones Writing anything that may deserve to be read Young men are as apt to think themselves wise enough Young people are very apt to ...
— Widger's Quotations from Chesterfield's Letters to his Son • David Widger
... civil and military, of the Greeks and Romans, will readily be allowed to have been at least equal to those of any modern nation. Our prejudice is perhaps rather to overrate them. But except in what related to military exercises, the state seems to have been at no pains to form those great abilities; for I cannot be induced to believe that the musical education of the Greeks could be of much consequence in forming them. Masters, however, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... which condescension can never be too strongly recommended; for, as a deviation on this side is much more innocent than on the other, so the pride of man renders us much less liable to it. For, besides that we are apt to overrate our own perfections, and undervalue the qualifications of our neighbours, we likewise set too high an esteem on the things themselves, and consider them as constituting a more essential difference between us than they really do. The qualities ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... a man does at Cambridge is, in itself, nothing. If he makes a poor figure in life, his having been Senior Wrangler or University scholar is never mentioned but with derision. If he makes a distinguished figure, his early honours merge in those of a later date. I hope that I do not overrate my own place in the estimation of society. Such as it is, I would not give a halfpenny to add to the consideration which I enjoy, all the consideration that I should derive from having been Senior Wrangler. But I often ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... you remember my telling you, at Cohasset, of a Mr. —— staying with us, when I was fifteen, and all that passed? Well, I have not seen him since, till, yesterday, he came here. I was pleased to find, that, even at so early an age, I did not overrate those I valued. He was the same as in memory; the powerful eye dignifying an otherwise ugly face; the calm wisdom, and refined observation, the imposing maniere d'etre, which anywhere would give him an influence among men, without his taking ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... feeling resolutely held in check. No doubt, he reflected, Katharine had been very trying, unconsciously trying, and had driven him to take up a position which was none of his willing. Mr. Hilbery certainly did not overrate William's sufferings. No minutes in his life had hitherto extorted from him such intensity of anguish. He was now facing the consequences of his insanity. He must confess himself entirely and fundamentally other than Mr. Hilbery thought him. Everything ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... German has at least very obligingly fallen in with our error. The safest, most effective place for the German fleet at the present time is the Baltic Sea. On this side of the Kiel Canal, unless I overrate the powers of the waterplane, there is no safe harbor for it. If it goes into port anywhere that port can be ruined, and the bottled-up ships can be destroyed at leisure by aerial bombs. So that if they are on this side of the Kiel Canal they must keep the sea and fight, if we ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... secretly inclined to reproach her with exaggerated timidity, it became more and more evident that her personal fears were due simply to that nervous susceptibility which even men of reputed courage have often displayed in situations of sudden and wholly unfamiliar peril. Her tendency to overrate all dangers, not merely as they affected herself, but as they might involve others, and above all her husband, I ascribed to the ideas and habits of thought now for so many centuries hereditary among ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... unguarded word or inconsiderate action on our part towards them. 2. Keep your hearts as full as possible of Christian love. The more abundant your love, the less will be your liability either to give or take offence. 3. And do not overrate the importance of men's misconduct towards you. We are not so much in the power of others as we are prone to imagine. The world is governed by God, and no one can hurt us against His will. Do that which is right, and ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... signed by Lebrun is not stated) met Chauvelin on his way from London to Dover; but it produced no change whatever in his plans. He proceeded on his way to Paris, passing Maret in the night near Abbeville. To assign much importance to his "despatch" is to overrate both his errand and his position at Paris. Maret was only one of the head clerks at the French Foreign Office and had no right to sign official despatches. If he really was charged by Lebrun to tender ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... themselves,—for being able to think and to retain them. The greater the nature of the man, the greater is this temptation. His thoughts are greater, and in consequence the greater is his tendency to prize them, the more extreme is his tendency to overrate them. This pride, too, goes side by side with a want of sympathy. Being aloof from others, such a mind is unlike others; and it feels, and sometimes it feels bitterly, its own unlikeness. Generally, however, it is too wrapped up in its own exalted thoughts to be sensible of the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... infirmities are, however, at most only calculated to excite a smile; there is no turpitude in them, and they merit notice but as indications of the humour of character. It was his Lordship's foible to overrate his rank, to grudge his deformity beyond reason, and to exaggerate the condition of his family and circumstances. But the alloy of such small vanities, his caprice and feline temper, were as vapour compared with ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... therefore, if there are any real and peculiar sources of trial and difficulty in this pursuit, that they should be distinctly known and acknowledged at the outset. Count the cost before going to war. It is even better policy to overrate than to underrate it. Let us see, then, what the real ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... following the disaster of Bull Run. He was an admirable organizer and a good theoretical strategist; his care for his men won their affection; and sometimes in the field he struck heavy and effective blows. But he was always prone to overrate the enemy's resources and underrate his own; he was slow to follow up a success; and he lacked the bulldog grip by which Grant won. Right on the heels of his failure in the seven-days' fight in the Peninsula, he ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... at least a day or two to devise some means; let me look round and take the measure of this gaol. Some way there must be. I have not come so far and so successfully to be beaten now. Still," he continued, "if you think that I overrate my strength or my resource, if you would sooner that I sought men and made an assault upon Condillac, endeavouring to carry it and to let the Queen's will prevail by force of arms, tell me so, and I ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... that we Incline to overrate the Sea, I answer, "We do not; Apart from being coloured blue, It has its uses not a few— I cannot think what we should do If ever 'the deep ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... note of the 5th instant, just as I was about to accompany General Loring's command on an expedition to the enemy's works in front, or I would have before thanked you for the interest you take in my welfare, and your too flattering expressions of my ability. Indeed, you overrate me much, and I feel humbled when I weigh myself by your standard. I am, however, very grateful for your confidence, and I can answer for my sincerity in the earnest endeavour I make to advance the ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... fame: and he is well satisfied with his success. He has had millions of readers; he has been well paid; he has had good friends; he has enjoyed life. He is happy in telling us how he did it. He does not overrate himself. He believes some of his work is good: at least it is honest, pure, sound work which has pleased millions of readers. Much of his work he knows to be poor stuff, and he says so at once. He makes no pretence ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... between the "teachers" of the Board Schools and the "masters" of the public schools. Too much is put in, not enough drawn out from the child's own mind. The teacher cannot think much of individual natures, when faced with a class of sixty. Yet it would be difficult to overrate the service of the Board Schools as training grounds for manners, and anyone who has known the change in our army within twenty-five years will understand what I mean. At fourteen the boy has often reached his highest mental and spiritual development. When he leaves school, shades ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... think Blanco White's sonnet difficult to overrate in thought—probably in this respect unsurpassable, but easy to overrate as regards its workmanship. Of course there is ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... not overrate the impression which she had made on the people; and her faithful attendant, Madame Campan, has preserved more minute details of the events of the 7th than she herself reported to the embassador. She was ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... the conservative virtue of all the ignorance, that can henceforward be retained among the people of this part of the world? It is true, the remaining ignorance is so great that they cannot well overrate its general amount; but how can they fail to perceive the importance of those particulars in which its dominion has been broken up? There is indeed a hemisphere of "gross darkness over the people;" it may be possible to withhold from it long the illumination of the sun; but in the ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... while they were in the Government, and then unluckily retain the habit after they come home and live, or ought to live, in peace and quietness among their friends here. That is another of our difficulties. Still, when all such difficulties are measured and taken account of, it is impossible to overrate the courage, the patience and fidelity, with which the present House of Commons faces what is not at all an easy moment in Indian Government. You talk of democracy. People cry, "Oh! Democracy cannot govern remote dependencies." I do not know; ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... my literary ideas, and do the best I can, very gladly," said Van Berg. "But you greatly underrate yourself and overrate my ability. I am still but on the edge of this wilderness of knowledge myself, and in crossing a wilderness ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... not even in these; it is in his temper. It is in the hopeful, serene, beautiful temper wherewith these, in Emerson, are indissolubly united; in which they work and have their being.... One can scarcely overrate the importance of holding fast to happiness and hope. It gives to Emerson's work an invaluable virtue. As Wordsworth's poetry is, in my judgment, the most important done in verse, in our language, during the present century, so Emerson's Essays are, I think, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... in England State of the Fine Arts State of the Common People; Agricultural Wages Wages of Manufacturers Labour of Children in Factories Wages of different Classes of Artisans Number of Paupers Benefits derived by the Common People from the Progress of Civilisation Delusion which leads Men to overrate the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Complete Contents of the Five Volumes • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... feeling of pride and patriotism naturally disposed to overrate the productions of their own literature, are far from being deficient in critical judgment or in exalted ideas on the theory of the beautiful. The count Stanislaus Potocki and Ossolinski, L. Osinski, Golanski, and others, maintain a ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... would be impossible to overrate the gain that might follow if we had about us only what gave pleasure to the maker of it and gives pleasure to its user, that being the simplest of all rules about decoration. One thing, at least, I think it would do for us: there is no surer test ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... known an experiment of it. The fear that these professors may be disappointed in their expectations, has determined me not to meddle in the business at all. Knowing how much people going to America overrate the resources of living there, I have made a point never to encourage any person to go there, that I may not partake of the censure which may follow their disappointment. I beg you, therefore, not to alter your ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... and keep open a bridge from the mother country to those continents." Let us reflect that "the economical advantages of commerce are surpassed in importance by those of its effects, which are intellectual and moral. It is hardly possible to overrate the value, for the improvement of human beings, of things which bring them in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar. Commerce is now what war once was—the principal source of this contact. ...
— A Letter from Major Robert Carmichael-Smyth to His Friend, the Author of 'The Clockmaker' • Robert Carmichael-Smyth
... an armed pursuit. I am, however, happy to acknowledge that you appear to have made every practicable exertion for the prevention of similar calamities in future, and I approve the measures adopted by you for that purpose. You cannot overrate the solicitude of Her Majesty's Government on the subject of the Aborigines of New Holland. It is impossible to contemplate the condition and the prospects of that unfortunate race without the deepest commiseration. I am well aware of the many difficulties which oppose themselves ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... before Poe were in a few months ruthlessly blighted. Perhaps he relied too much on his genius and reputation. It is easy for men of ability to overrate their importance. Regarding himself, perhaps, as indispensable to the Messenger, he may have relaxed in vigilant self-restraint. It has been claimed that he resigned the editorship in order to accept a more lucrative offer in New York; but the ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... story-teller, whose name is associated with all that is extravagant and marvellous, and has long been established in the hunter's vocabulary as a perfect synonym for liar, and is bandied about as a familiar proverb. If a hunter or warrior, in telling his exploits, undertakes to embellish them; to overrate his merits, or in any other way to excite the incredulity of his hearers, he is liable to be rebuked with the remark, "So here we have Iagoo come again." And he seems to hold the relative rank in oral narration which our written literature ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... rather paradoxical theory to the effect that, just as the long-faced Boer horse soon evolved in the mountains of Basutoland into a round-headed pony, so it is in a few generations with human mountaineers, irrespective of their breed. This is almost certainly to overrate the effects of environment. At the same time, in the present state of our knowledge, it would be premature either to affirm or deny that in the very long run round-headedness ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... the Neckar, and the Altmuehl, all of which conduct an invader to the regions east of Ulm. Indeed, it passes belief how even the Aulic Council could have ignored the dangers of that position. Possibly the fact that Ulm had been stoutly held by Kray in 1796 now induced them to overrate its present importance; but at that time the fortified camp of Ulm was the central knot of vast operations, whereas now it was but an advanced outpost.[24] If Francis and his advisers were swayed by historical reminiscences it is strange that they forgot the fate of Melas in Piedmont. The ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... publican shuts up shop and ceases to diffuse liquid poison, he does not invite the world to put up the shutters; neither will I. Actors overrate themselves ridiculously," added she; "I am not of that importance to the world, nor the world to me. I fling away a dirty old glove instead of soiling my fingers filling it with more guineas, and the world loses in me, what? another old glove, ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... appealing to the compromises of the Constitution, would sacrifice the Union before it would give up slavery, and in fear of this menace he begged the North to conquer its prejudices. We are not liable to overrate his influence as a compromising pacificator from 1832 to 1852. History will no doubt say that it was largely due to him that the war on the Union was postponed to a date when ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... inflated by the sale of his ballads, and he might have been puffed up to his future injury, had not his father thus unceremoniously taken the wind out of his sails. There was little danger now, however. After such a severe handling, he was not likely to overrate his poetical talents. It had the effect also to turn his attention to prose writing, which is more substantial and remunerative than poetry, and in this he became distinguished, as we shall ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... Miss Bentley, thank you, but I can't let you overrate that. Any help I have given was merely by the way. You must remember I was in need of some occupation, and I assure you it has been very ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... a peal of merry laughter. "Oh Mags!" they cried, "we never did think before that you were conceited. You certainly overrate even your powers when you imagine that you will get Mr. ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... of slow-breeding animals, which unite for each birth, we must not overrate the effects of intercrosses in retarding natural selection; for I can bring a considerable catalogue of facts, showing that within the same area, varieties of the same animal can long remain distinct, from haunting different stations, from breeding at slightly different seasons, ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... friend," said Haldane cheerily to Mrs. Arnot while Laura was writing; "you overrate the danger. I feel that I shall return again, and if I do not, there are many ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... capable of shaking it a little out of its stupid refuges of lies and ignominious wrappages, and of intimating to it afar off that there is still a Veracity in Things, and a Mendacity in Sham Things,' and so forth, in the well-known strain.[17] It is impossible to overrate the truly supreme importance of the violent break-up of Europe which followed the death of the Emperor Charles VI., and in many respects 1740 is as important a date in the history of Western societies as 1789. Most of us would probably find the importance of this epoch ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... "You darling, darling! You overrate me, dear, but that does me good: makes me work harder. What a pity it is, May, that one can't add a cubit to his stature. I'd be a giant then.... But never fear; it'll be all right. You wouldn't wish me, I'm sure, to run away from a conflict I have provoked; but now I must see ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... and it is too rare a gift to be trifled with, like a Mingo's conscience. No, no; off hands, or we shall see which can make the stoutest battle; you and your men of the 55th, or the Sarpent here, and Killdeer, with Jasper and his crew. You overrate your force, Lieutenant Muir, as much as you underrate ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... than Rome, being founded by the Euganeans who gave their name to the adjoining hills. 'Fortified' is was once, assuredly, and the walls still surround it most picturesquely though mainly in utter ruin, and you even overrate the population, which does not now much exceed 900 souls—in the city Proper, that is—for the territory below and around contains some 10,000. But we are at the very top of things, garlanded about, as it were, with a narrow line of ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... communicated with him, and we expect him back tonight. In his absence it falls to me to thank you most unreservedly both on behalf of the Government and the nation for what you have done. It would be difficult to overrate its importance." ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... affection for me caused him to overrate the progress that I made and the aptitude I showed; it may even be that what he said was no more than the good-natured flattery of one who loved me and would have me take pleasure in myself. And yet when I look back at the lad I was, I incline to think that he spoke no more than ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... is possible to overrate the hardness of the first close struggle with any natural passion," said my aunt earnestly; "but indeed the easiness of after-steps is often quite beyond one's expectations. The free gift of grace with ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... all know, is the Latin translation of the Holy Scriptures, and that, instead of saying "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity"—Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas—the wise and witty king really said:"Sanitas sanitatum, omnia sanitas." Gentlemen, it is impossible to overrate the importance of the subject. After all the first consideration of a minister should be the health of the people. A land may be covered with historic trophies, with museums of science and galleries of art, with universities and with libraries; the people may ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... erected, and bore witness to a more advanced civilization. We meet with them again, however, in Palestine, but we must traverse many miles before we find other examples at Peshawur and in the valley of Cabul. It is difficult to overrate the importance of these facts, or to explain these gaps. Are they, however, so complete as has been supposed? The few travellers who have crossed Afghanistan and Daghestan have seen tumuli which may have served as points of union between the monuments of India and those of the Caucasus. The ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... one truth. Its companion truth is this: you will be victorious over temptation as the new Master has sway. Your new Master will attend to that. Great and cunning and strong is the tempter. Do not underrate him. But greater is He that is in you. You cannot overrate Him. He got the victory at every turn during those thirty-three years, and will get it for you as many years and turns as shall make out the span of your life. Your one business will be to let Him have ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... You overrate my power, which is a pageant. This Cap is not the Monarch's crown; these robes Might move compassion, like a beggar's rags; Nay, more, a beggar's are his own, and these But lent to the poor puppet, who must play Its part with all its empire in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... University possessed the legal knowledge, which the monarchs liked to have on their side, and was therefore favoured by them. Thus, in 1231 (Wood, Annals, i. 205), "the King sent out his Breve to the Mayor and Burghers commanding them not to overrate their houses"; and thus gradually the University got the command of the police, obtained privileges which enslaved the city, and became masters where they had once been despised, starveling scholars. The process was always the same. On the feast of ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... indeed there be any profit in our knowledge of the past, or any joy in the thought of being remembered hereafter, which can give strength to present exertion, or patience to present endurance, there are two duties respecting national architecture whose importance it is impossible to overrate: the first, to render the architecture of the day, historical; and, the second, to preserve, as the most precious of inheritances, ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... literary critic and the installment of a fresh censor on the completion of each issue. To place a man in permanent absolute control of a certain number of pages, in which to express his opinions, is to place him in a position of great personal danger, It is almost inevitable that he should come to overrate the importance of those opinions, to take himself with far too much seriousness, and in the end adopt the dogma of his own infallibility. The liberty to summon this or that man-of-letters to a supposititious bar of ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... to overrate the value of the services rendered to the exposition by the special commissioner for history, Miss Florence Hayward, who not only secured the special exhibit of the Queen's jubilee presents, but ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... wishes to have trained. She is poor, so I came to ask you if you would give her one of your musical scholarships. I understand her name has already been suggested to you, with a recommendation from her teacher. I do not know what he has said of her voice, but I do know he could hardly overrate it. If you send her abroad for training, you will not make ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... others, and in judging of chances and probability, we must not expect our pupils to proceed very rapidly. There is more danger that they should overrate, than that they should undervalue, the evidence of others; because, as we formerly stated, we take it for granted, that they have had little experience of falsehood. We should, to preserve them from credulity, excite them in all cases where it can be obtained, never to rest satisfied ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... said she, "to see my obligations to Sir Launcelot Greaves accumulated in such a manner, that a whole life spent in acknowledgment will scarce suffice to demonstrate a due sense of his goodness."—"You greatly overrate my services, which have been rather the duties of common humanity, than the efforts of a generous passion, too noble to be thus evinced;—but let not my unseasonable transports detain you a moment longer on this detested scene. Give me leave to hand you into the coach, and commit ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... and exact comparisons. If the "great elm" and the Cowthorpe oak, if the State-House and St. Peter's, were taken on the same scale, and looked at with the same magnifying power, we should compare them without the possibility of being misled by those partialities which might tend to make us overrate the indigenous vegetable and the dome ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... the same with all contemporary notorieties. In all free governments, especially, it is the habit to overrate the dramatis personae of the hour. How empty to us are now the names of the great politicians of the last generation, as Crawford and Lowndes!—yet it is but a few years since these men filled in the public ear as large a space as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... any favour directly from the King, the answer was, "Have you spoken to my Lord President?" One bold man ventured to say that the Lord President got all the money of the court. "Well," replied His Majesty "he deserves it all." [460] We shall scarcely overrate the amount of the minister's gains, if we put them at thirty thousand pounds a year: and it must be remembered that fortunes of thirty thousand pounds a year were in his time rarer than fortunes of a hundred thousand pounds a year now are. It is probable ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... interest, would be strenuous: but how inadequate are its provisions for the needs of the country! and how much is it to be regretted that, while its zealous friends yield to alarms on account of the hostility of Dissent, they should so much overrate the danger to be apprehended from that quarter, and almost overlook the fact that hundreds of thousands of our fellow-countrymen, though formally and nominally of the Church of England, never enter her places of worship, neither have they communication with her ministers! This deplorable state ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... ago you wished to marry a young lady without fortune. You thought that I had a large one; and you expected me to supply all deficiencies. You did not overrate my parental feeling, but you did my means. I would have done this for you, and with pleasure, but for my own coming misfortunes. As it was, I said 'No,' and when you demanded, somewhat peremptorily, my reasons, I said 'Trust me.' Well, you see I was right: such a marriage would have been ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... THE PHOENICIANS.—We can scarcely overrate the influence of Phoenician maritime enterprise upon the distribution of the arts and the spread of culture among the early peoples of the Mediterranean area. "Egypt and Assyria," says Lenormant, "were the birthplace of material civilization; the Canaanites ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... another important condition regulating this loss. Some soils are very much opener and more porous than others; in such soils, of course, the loss by drainage will be greatest. We are apt at first sight, however, knowing the great solubility of nitrates, to overrate this source of loss. We have to remember that while nitrates are constantly being washed down to the lower layers of the soil, there is likewise an upward compensating movement of the soil-water constantly taking place. ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... Germany during the war I would have felt a powerful tendency to defend the cause of the Allies, to excuse their misdeeds, to overrate their ability, while being highly critical and censorious of every ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... will do that," answered the girl steadily. "Whatever your power over Maurice may be, it is not strong enough for that; you overrate it." ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... thinking that you overrate the importance of the multiple origin of dogs. The only difference is, that in the case of single origins, all difference of the races has originated since man domesticated the species. In the case of ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... misery to private citizens. The Northern invaders had brought want to their boards, infamy to their beds, fire to their roofs, and the knife to their throats. It was natural that a man who lived in times like these should overrate the importance of those measures by which a nation is rendered formidable to its neighbours, and undervalue those which make it ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to those continents." Let us reflect that "the economical advantages of commerce are surpassed in importance by those of its effects, which are intellectual and moral. It is hardly possible to overrate the value, for the improvement of human beings, of things which bring them in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar. Commerce ...
— A Letter from Major Robert Carmichael-Smyth to His Friend, the Author of 'The Clockmaker' • Robert Carmichael-Smyth
... which, as you all know, is the Latin translation of the Holy Scriptures, and that, instead of saying "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity"—Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas—the wise and witty king really said:"Sanitas sanitatum, omnia sanitas." Gentlemen, it is impossible to overrate the importance of the subject. After all the first consideration of a minister should be the health of the people. A land may be covered with historic trophies, with museums of science and galleries of art, with ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... profession require. New and undisciplined forces are often confounded at the evolutions, and strategic and tactical combinations of a regular army, and lose all confidence in their leaders and in themselves. But, when placed behind a breastwork, they even overrate their security. They can then coolly look upon the approaching columns, and, unmoved by glittering armor and bristling bayonets, will exert all their skill in the use of their weapons. The superior accuracy ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... consummate in hypocrisy. The evidence which accompanied this delusion would be irresistible to one whose passion had perverted his judgment, whose jealousy with regard to me had already been excited, and who, therefore, would not fail to overrate the force of this evidence. What fatal act of despair or of vengeance might not ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... impossible for me to overrate the value of Mrs Reichardt's assistance. Indeed had it not been for her, circumstanced as I was at this particular period, I should in all probability have perished. Her exhortations saved me from despair, when our position seemed to have grown quite desperate. But example did ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... it was the custom of the time to do such things and the tender-hearted Melanchthon found nothing to blame in it. It is not easy to speak of Calvin with enthusiasm, as it comes natural to speak of the genial, whole-souled, many-sided, mirth-and-song-loving Luther. Nevertheless it would be hard to overrate the debt which mankind owe to Calvin. The spiritual father of Coligny, of William the Silent, and of Cromwell must occupy a foremost rank among the champions of modern democracy. Perhaps not one of the ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... the regions sacred to "Blue Books"? Whereas it was to the certificates vouchsafed by state papers, and instruments of such like order, that Sybel's reliability was chiefly due. Once admit the value of these vouchers (and their corroborative weight none can deny), and it becomes difficult to overrate the importance of Sybel's still ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... Even the glory of Pushkin's "Evgeny Onyegin," which appeared at about the same time, did not overshadow Griboyedoff's glory. Strange to say, Pushkin, who had magnified Delvig, Baratynsky, and Yazykoff far above their merits, and in general, was accustomed to overrate all talent, whether it belonged to his own friends or to strangers, was extremely severe on Griboyedoff's comedy, and detected ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... sighs, which were so endeared by the love from which they sprang that she would not have banished them if she could—anxieties lest she should be insufficient for Philip's happiness, lest he should overrate the peace of home, which she now knew was not to be looked for in full measure there, any more than in other scenes of human probation. Gentle questionings like these there were; but they tended rather to preserve than to disturb her calmness of spirit. Misery had broken her sleep ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... success during the year following the disaster of Bull Run. He was an admirable organizer and a good theoretical strategist; his care for his men won their affection; and sometimes in the field he struck heavy and effective blows. But he was always prone to overrate the enemy's resources and underrate his own; he was slow to follow up a success; and he lacked the bulldog grip by which Grant won. Right on the heels of his failure in the seven-days' fight in the Peninsula, he wrote a letter to the President, from Harrison's ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... never lost sight of that object, and never neglected any of the means that I thought led to it. I succeeded to a certain degree; and, I assure you, with great ease, and without superior talents. Young people are very apt to overrate both men and things, from not being enough acquainted with them. In proportion as you come to know them better, you will value them less. You will find that reason, which always ought to direct mankind, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... diligence alongside of a count-colonel of hussars,[4323] can appreciate his companion or his interlocutor, weigh his ideas, test his merit and esteem him at his correct value, and I am sure that he does not overrate him.—Now that the nobles have lost their special capacities and the Third-Estate have acquired general competence, and as they are on the same level in education and competence, the inequality which ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... We all overrate our own acquirements. I dare say that even I am not as good a seaman as I ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... me, Sir Cuthbert," Sir Baldwin said, "that you overrate the chivalry of our master's enemies. Had we been thrown on the shores of France, Philip perhaps would hesitate to lay hands upon the king; but these petty German princelings have no idea of the observances of true chivalry. They are coarse and brutal in their ways; and though in outward form ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... excellence different from the usual one. In this one exceptional instance, simplicity and symmetry were kept before the eyes of a society whose influence on mankind was destined to be prodigious from other causes, as the characteristics of an ideal and absolutely perfect law. It is impossible to overrate the importance to a nation or profession of having a distinct object to aim at in the pursuit of improvement. The secret of Bentham's immense influence in England during the past thirty years is his success in placing ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... indicate profound feeling resolutely held in check. No doubt, he reflected, Katharine had been very trying, unconsciously trying, and had driven him to take up a position which was none of his willing. Mr. Hilbery certainly did not overrate William's sufferings. No minutes in his life had hitherto extorted from him such intensity of anguish. He was now facing the consequences of his insanity. He must confess himself entirely and fundamentally ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... yourself, count," Fergus said slowly. "You overrate my qualities, and forget the fact that I am, after all, but a ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... afterwards becomes the Christian type of the Bride, in the 'Song of Solomon,' involved with an ideal of all that is purest in the life of a nun, and brightest in the death of a martyr. It is scarcely possible to overrate the influence of the conceptions formed of her, in ennobling the sentiments of Christian women of the higher orders;—to their practical common sense, as the mistresses of a household or a nation, her example may have ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... Alfred, some time ago you wished to marry a young lady without fortune. You thought that I had a large one; and you expected me to supply all deficiencies. You did not overrate my parental feeling, but you did my means. I would have done this for you, and with pleasure, but for my own coming misfortunes. As it was, I said 'No,' and when you demanded, somewhat peremptorily, my reasons, I said 'Trust me.' Well, you see I was right: such a marriage would have ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... points are clear. Every specialist is liable to overrate his own specialty; and the man who thinks of woman only as a wife and mother is apt to forget, that, before she was either of these, she was a human being. "Women, as such," says an able writer, "are constituted for purposes of maternity and the continuation of ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... be difficult to overrate the importance of this question in a national and commercial point of view. If there is one point more fully established than another in the practice of Railways, it is that the inconvenience occasioned by a break upon a line of through-traffic, ...
— Report of the Railway Department of the Board of Trade on the • Samuel Laing
... must not overrate my powers. You must not forget that I am the slave of Justice. You may be asking more than is in my power to grant. What can you advance to show that I should be justified in proceeding ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... that Mr. Monday felt any very profound spiritual relief from the reading of Captain Truck, we should both overrate the manner of the honest sailor, and the intelligence of the dying man. Still the solemn language of praise and admiration had an effect, and, for the first time since childhood, the soul of the latter was moved. God and judgment passed before his imagination, and he gasped for breath in a ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... or which is known to be, not, indeed, its cause or its effect, but either one of a set of conditions, which together are its cause, or an occasional effect of its cause. Now, persons (usually from poverty, not from luxuriance, of imagination) often overrate the weight of true analogies; but the fallacy specially consists in inferring resemblance in one point from resemblance in another, when the evidence is not only not in favour of, but even positively against the connection of the two by ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... gluttons, but epicures, in literature, whether they do not wish to see the bill of fare? I appeal to monthly critics, whether a preface that gives a view of the pretensions of the writer is not a good thing? The author may overvalue his subject, and very naturally may overrate the manner in which it is treated; but still he will explain his views, and facilitate the useful and necessary art which the French call reading with the thumb. We call this hunting a book, a term certainly invented by a sportsman. I leave the reader ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... unacquainted with the attempts of former adventurers is always apt to overrate his own abilities, to mistake the most trifling excursions for discoveries of moment, and every coast new to him for a new-found country. If by chance he passes beyond his usual limits, he congratulates his own arrival at those regions which they who have ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... Ridgeway has put forward a rather paradoxical theory to the effect that, just as the long-faced Boer horse soon evolved in the mountains of Basutoland into a round-headed pony, so it is in a few generations with human mountaineers, irrespective of their breed. This is almost certainly to overrate the effects of environment. At the same time, in the present state of our knowledge, it would be premature either to affirm or deny that in the very long run round-headedness goes ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... Dave. You always overrate my services, and forget that they are but the consequence of the kindness that you have shown to me. But I have no intention of going. It was but a passing thought. I have but one friend who could procure me a berth as a volunteer, and as it ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... self-relying and self-contained; a well-bred gentleman without a jot of effeminacy. Plucky as a mastiff, high-blooded as a racer, enterprising but reflective, cool, keen, and as composed as daring. Few men talk less; few by manner and conduct suggest more. One fault you will pardon, a tendency to overrate the writer of ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... kindness leads you to overrate my importance," Austen replied, with mingled feelings. Victoria's confidence in her father made the situation all ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... condition of our rule), 'nor even that affectionate sympathy with the native population, on which, according to a more amiable, though not, I think, a truer view of the matter, some think our rule ought to rest—though it is hardly possible to overrate the value of such sympathy, where it can by any means be obtained. I believe that the real foundation of our power will be found to be an inflexible adherence to broad principles of justice common to all ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... of lectures, repeated in America the next year, on "the English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century." There was no one better fitted to write such a course; he felt with them and was of them. But if this enabled him to present them sympathetically, it also caused him to overrate them, and in some cases to descend to the standpoint of their own partial views. He is wrong in his estimate of Swift, and too eulogistic of Addison; but he is ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... suffered on my account and on her own became almost insupportable. I felt that it was wiser not to dwell on it, and yet I could not cast it from me. My only, my great resource was prayer—great and supporting it was. Let any one, placed as I was, try it, and they will find that I in no way overrate it. Whenever I felt the miserable depressing feeling coming on, I fled instantly to that great source of comfort, of all true happiness, and it never ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... 'that anything that I can do for you or for Godfrey, anything that is in my power, it will be my greatest happiness to do. I have wanted to say this before Godfrey and I sailed together, and I know you will understand, and not overrate my power to help him and ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... half free. He believed that the South, appealing to the compromises of the Constitution, would sacrifice the Union before it would give up slavery, and in fear of this menace he begged the North to conquer its prejudices. We are not liable to overrate his influence as a compromising pacificator from 1832 to 1852. History will no doubt say that it was largely due to him that the war on the Union was postponed to a date when its ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... tightly pressed on her heart as she spoke, and Albinia exclaimed, 'You shall not see it; you overrate your strength; it is my business to ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... would be difficult to overrate the value of the lessons which might be derived from a faithful study of the history of this strange and mighty city: a history which, in spite of the labor of countless chroniclers, remains in vague and disputable ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... when arriving amongst the natives in the interior. It was an enterprise every way worthy of the British character, and one likely to be productive of future consequences, the importance of which it would be difficult to overrate either in a commercial or in a moral and political point of view. Sir John Tobin of Liverpool was one of its great promoters, and the immediate object of the expedition was to ascend the Niger, to establish a trade with the natives, and to enlarge ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... fully developed in his blood, nor such a congenital lack of that instinct as to be wholly inapprehensive of any technical difficulties or problems. The intelligent novice, standing between these extremes, tends, as a rule, to overrate the efficacy of theoretical instruction, and to expect of analytic criticism more ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... bad pictures), in the services of religion, naturally blunts the delicacy of the senses, by requiring reverence to be paid to ugliness, and familiarizing the eye to it in moments of strong and pure feeling; I do not think we can overrate the probable evil results of this enforced discordance ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... as to a man's powers are very commonly of little value; not merely because they sometimes overrate their own flesh and blood, as some may suppose; on the contrary, they are quite as likely to underrate those whom they have grown into the habit of considering like themselves. The advent of genius is like what florists style the BREAKING of a seedling tulip ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... obliged to you, for your kind and friendly letter. You overrate, I am sure, the value of my speech, it was quite unpremeditated and its merit, if any, consists I presume in its directness and brevity. It mortified me to see that some of the newspaper writers speak of ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... suggestions on the very difficult questions in the discussion of the causes of the glacial epochs. Chapter XXIII., discussing the Arctic element in South Temperate floras, was the part he most objected to, saying, 'This is rather too speculative for my old noddle. I must think that you overrate the importance of new surfaces on mountains and dispersal from mountain to mountain. I still believe in alpine plants having lived on the lowlands and in the southern tropical regions having been cooled during glacial periods, and thus only ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... earth!—vain joys of earth! Sandy your foundations be; Mortals overrate your worth, Sought through life so eagerly. Too soon we know That tears must flow,— That bliss ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... or, if they are not, it is from other causes than our ignorance. The weakness is moral, rather than intellectual, that makes us expect that the first flush of a great pleasure, a newly-attained joy or success, will continue unabated. The poor man, probably, does not overrate the gratification of newly-attained wealth; what he fails to allow for is the deadening effect of an unbroken experience of ease and plenty. The author of "Romola" says of the hero and the heroine, ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... hypocritical. It is the natural product of the political spirit, which is incessantly thinking of present consequences and the immediately feasible. There is nothing in the mere dread of losing it, to hinder influence from being well employed, so far as it goes. But one can hardly overrate the ill consequences of this particular kind of management, this unspoken bargaining with the little circle of his fellows which constitutes the world of a man. If he may retain his place among them as preacher or teacher, he is willing to forego his birthright of free explanation; he ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... made this singular address and eulogium was the celebrated dancer, Mr. Slingsby His testimony proves that my father did not overrate his powers as a dancer; but it was not to boast of a frivolous excellence that he told this anecdote to his children; it was to express his satisfaction at having, after the first effervescence of ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... slow-breeding animals, which unite for each birth, we must not overrate the effects of intercrosses in retarding natural selection; for I can bring a considerable catalogue of facts, showing that within the same area, varieties of the same animal can long remain distinct, from haunting different stations, from ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... he said; "and though I fear you overrate the hidden powers of activity in my people, you have made me still more anxious for a direct answer to my question—what would ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... was abstemious in her living, and in apparel void of all vain ornaments. I must needs say, that her mind had a noble prospect: her eye was to a better and more lasting inheritance, than can be found below. This made her not overrate the honors of her station, or the learning of the schools, of which she was an excellent judge. Being once at Hamburgh, a religious person, whom she went to see for religion's sake, remarked to her, that 'it was too great an honor for him, that a visitant of her quality, who was ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... the three regiments, the Devons, the Royal Irish, and the Royal Scots, who were let loose upon it. The artillery supported the attack admirably. 'They did nobly,' said one who led the advance. 'It is impossible to overrate the value of their support. They ceased also exactly at the right moment. One more shell would have hit us.' Mountain mists saved the defeated burghers from a close pursuit, but the hills were carried. The British losses on this day, ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... date, by converting her to his theories, to add his sister and her "to the list of the good, the disinterested and the free." At first she seems to have been horrified at the opinions he expressed; but in this case at least he did not overrate the powers of eloquence. With all the earnestness of an evangelist, he preached his gospel of freethought or atheism, and had the satisfaction of forming his young pupil to his views. He does not seem to have felt any serious inclination ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... most trivial accidents. There could be no better example of this happy faculty than the little paper entitled "Night Sketches," included among the Twice-Told Tales. This small dissertation is about nothing at all, and to call attention to it is almost to overrate its importance. This fact is equally true, indeed, of a great many of its companions, which give even the most appreciative critic a singular feeling of his own indiscretion—almost of his own cruelty. They are so light, so slight, so tenderly ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... invader to the regions east of Ulm. Indeed, it passes belief how even the Aulic Council could have ignored the dangers of that position. Possibly the fact that Ulm had been stoutly held by Kray in 1796 now induced them to overrate its present importance; but at that time the fortified camp of Ulm was the central knot of vast operations, whereas now it was but an advanced outpost.[24] If Francis and his advisers were swayed by historical reminiscences it is strange that they forgot the fate ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... grain of truth in what you say, although you overrate it a little. A great artist I certainly am not, nor even a little one, but I have always observed much and painted a good deal myself, and originally I thought of devoting myself to an artist's career; and if I have nothing in common with Indian princes, and am merely a plebeian German, I very ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... already made upon any previous painting. (I limit, of course, this assertion to painting only, for in sculpture Donatello had years before given free gesture and perfect anatomy to his statues.) It would be impossible to overrate the excellence and beauty of drawing in the splendid swing of the bodies, the flexibility of the limbs, the sinewy elasticity of the leg muscles, and above all, the subtle suggestion of muscular movement under the loose skin of ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... your fault, and not Mr. Sandford's," said her mother; "though I rather think you overrate the difference." ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... History of Mental and Physical culture, we much overrate the influence, though we cannot overrate the power, of the men by whom the change seems to have been effected. We cannot overrate their power,—for the greatest men of any age, those who become its leaders when there is a great march to be begun, are indeed separated from the average intellects of ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... dollars. In 1834, the value of the imports is stated at 3,088,811 dollars: the exports for the same year at 6,270,197 dollars. For the current year, I am credibly assured that an addition of one-third to these last amounts will not much overrate the enormous increase to which, should peace continue, each year must add for many seasons to come, since the influx of planters to Alabama is clearing the cane-brake with a rapidity unprecedented even in this country: ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... perplexing and exacting problem of the home country, a little glorious, a little too simply bold. They wanted to arm and they wanted to educate, but the habit of immediate necessity made them far more eager to arm than to educate, and their experience of heterogeneous controls made them overrate the need for obedience in a homogeneous country. They didn't understand raw men, ill-trained men, uncertain minds, and intelligent women; and these are the things that matter in England.... There were also the great business adventurers, from Cranber to Cossington ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... on the eve of an election the importance of which it would be impossible to overrate. Yet a few days, and it will be decided whether the people of the United States shall condemn their own conduct, by cashiering an Administration which they called upon to make war on the rebellious slaveholders of the South, or support that Administration in the strenuous endeavors ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... suggested that she, as well as the young man, might eventually discover that he was not of common clay and predestined to be commonplace. But she said, in all sincerity, "Mr. Atwood, I'm sure I wish you twice the success you crave in life, and I've no reason to think you overrate your power to achieve it; but you greatly overrate me. It would be no condescension on my part to give you my friendship; and no doubt if you attain much of the success you covet you will be ready ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... pouting conduct is a great deal too young Reason, which always ought to direct mankind, seldom does Singularity is only pardonable in old age Smile, where you cannot strike To govern mankind, one must not overrate them Too like, and too exact a picture of human nature Vanity, interest, and absurdity, always display Warm and young thanks, not old and cold ones Writing anything that may deserve to be read Young men are as apt to think themselves wise ...
— Widger's Quotations from Chesterfield's Letters to his Son • David Widger
... elegances that distinguish (no matter what the rank) the refined from the low, better than if she had been brought up under the hundred-handed Briareus of fashionable education. Lady Vargrave, indeed, like most persons of modest pretensions and imperfect cultivation, was rather inclined to overrate the advantages to be derived from book-knowledge; and she was never better pleased than when she saw Evelyn opening the monthly parcel from London, and delightedly poring over volumes which Lady Vargrave innocently believed to be ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had their appropriate termination, in five months, in the addition of all the territories of the wretched Francis II., except Gaeta, to the dominions of the Sardinian King. The importance of Garibaldi's undertaking it is quite impossible to overrate; but of what account could it have been, if the Austrians had stood to Italy in the same position that they held at the opening of 1859? Of none at all. Garibaldi is preeminently a man of sense, and he would never have thought of moving against Francis II., if Francis Joseph had been at liberty ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... It is impossible to overrate the difference between such a condition of mind, and that of the modern artist, who either does not know his business at all, or knows it only to recognize his own inferiority to every former ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... not to overrate the points of resemblance which the deep-sea investigations have placed in a strong light. They have been supposed by some naturalists to warrant a conclusion expressed in these words: "We are still living in the Cretaceous epoch;" ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... to be a successful writer, his friends who become then proud of his acquaintance, flatter him, and by soothing his vanity teach him to overrate his importance, and while he grasps at universal fame, he loses by too vigorous an effort, what he had acquired by diligence and application: If he pleases too little, that is, if his works are not read, he is in a fair way of being a great ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... battleship, the German has at least very obligingly fallen in with our error. The safest, most effective place for the German fleet at the present time is the Baltic Sea. On this side of the Kiel Canal, unless I overrate the powers of the waterplane, there is no safe harbor for it. If it goes into port anywhere that port can be ruined, and the bottled-up ships can be destroyed at leisure by aerial bombs. So that if they are on this ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... easily be delusive; we can properly judge what our powers are only by what they have actually accomplished; we know what we have done, and we may infer from having done it, that our power was equal to what it achieved; but it is easy for us to overrate ourselves if we try to measure our abilities in themselves. A man who can leap five yards may think that he can leap six; yet he may try and fail. A man who can write prose may only learn that he cannot write poetry from the badness of the verses which he produces. To the appeal ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... disinclined, however, to believe myself an offender in this particular. That I love my country dearly I acknowledge, and I am sure every Englishman will respect me the more for loving mine, when he is, with justice, proud of his—but I repeat my disbelief that I overrate my own. ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... with a little sob in her throat. His praise is so sweet to her. "You overrate me. Is it for them I would do it or for you? There, take all the thought for yourself. And, besides, are not you and I one, and shall not your people be my people? Come, if you think of it, there is no such great merit ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... Bayard, chap. 61.—"This prince," says Lord Herbert, who was not disposed to overrate the talents, any more than the virtues, of Ferdinand, "was thought the most active and politique of his time. No man knew better how to serve his turn on everybody, or to make their ends conduce to his." Life ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... the one or authenticating the other! The truth is that the Spaniard is a proud, independent, and grave personage; possessing many excellent qualities, but quite conscious of their existence, and not unapt to overrate them.... Yet with all this, there was much about the air and manner of the Spaniards to deserve and command our regard. The Portuguese are a people that require rousing; they are indolent, lazy, and generally helpless. We may value these our ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... letters to me (on which I can rely) speak in a very different tone as to the state of public sentiment and feeling. Unless a change to a very considerable extent be affected in the public mind, I think a dissolution would rather strengthen than weaken the ex-Council party. I am confident I do not overrate their strength—and it is a dangerous, though common error, to underrate the strength of an adversary. They are likewise organizing their party, and exciting the public mind to such a degree as to prevent any sentiments or measures from the present administration from ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... men do not rightly understand either their store or their strength, but overrate the one and underrate the other. Hence it follows, that either from an extravagant estimate of the value of the arts which they possess, they seek no further; or else from too mean an estimate of their own powers, they spend their strength in small matters ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... he might have been puffed up to his future injury, had not his father thus unceremoniously taken the wind out of his sails. There was little danger now, however. After such a severe handling, he was not likely to overrate his poetical talents. It had the effect also to turn his attention to prose writing, which is more substantial and remunerative than poetry, and in this he became distinguished, ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... What is it, that they could seriously promise themselves, from the conservative virtue of all the ignorance, that can henceforward be retained among the people of this part of the world? It is true, the remaining ignorance is so great that they cannot well overrate its general amount; but how can they fail to perceive the importance of those particulars in which its dominion has been broken up? There is indeed a hemisphere of "gross darkness over the people;" it may be ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... urged as a reason for making me doubt of the justice of the part I have taken, yet, until I have other lights than one side of the debate has furnished me, I must see things, and feel them too, as I see and feel them. I think I can hardly overrate the malignity of the principles of Protestant ascendency, as they affect Ireland,—or of Indianism, as they affect these countries, and as they affect Asia,—or of Jacobinism, as they affect all Europe ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a world does the very name convey to one who has never known what it is!—much as Moore's "Peri" regarded Paradise, and as the lost angels may wistfully think of the heaven from which they were expelled. Perhaps they overrate its attributes, imagining, as they do, that it is a blissful state of being, for ever debarred to them; but they do have such feelings—the dregs, probably, of ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... fellow; you ought to talk about it—it will do you good. And really, I'm not at all sure, after all, that we have not both of us had a fortunate escape. One is very apt to—er—overrate the fascinations of persons one meets abroad. Now, neither of those ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 20, 1892 • Various
... my strong impression. It is, in many ways, at variance with some of my most cherished principles; for both you and I are perhaps inclined to overrate the value of education, whether technical or general, in its effect on the individuality. And, of course, a better technical preparation would have saved Isabel Bretherton an immense amount of time; would ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... part played by Rome in the work of civilization, a singular lack of appreciation of the political and philosophical achievements of Greece under Athenian leadership, a strong hostility to the Catholic Church, a curious disposition to overrate semi-barbarous, or abortive civilizations, such as those of the old Asiatic and native American communities, at the expense of Europe, and, above all, an undiscriminating admiration for everything, great or small, that has ever worn the garb of Islam or been associated with the career ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... at least overrate the influence which love produces on men. A little resentment and a little absence will soon cure my cousin of an ill-placed and ill-requited attachment. You do not think how easy it ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "great elm" and the Cowthorpe oak, if the State-House and St. Peter's, were taken on the same scale, and looked at with the same magnifying power, we should compare them without the possibility of being misled by those partialities which might tend to make us overrate the indigenous vegetable and the dome of our ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... instant, just as I was about to accompany General Loring's command on an expedition to the enemy's works in front, or I would have before thanked you for the interest you take in my welfare, and your too flattering expressions of my ability. Indeed, you overrate me much, and I feel humbled when I weigh myself by your standard. I am, however, very grateful for your confidence, and I can answer for my sincerity in the earnest endeavour I make to advance the cause I have so much at heart, ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... pervading life in all its forms, and with these great skill and patience and beauty in expression,—these are the riper qualities to which "Enoch Arden" testifies. They are qualities whose attainment and retention are singularly rare, and whose value we cannot easily overrate. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... my dear Crondall, you surely overrate the thing," said Stairs, warm colour spreading ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... whether she had not been led to selfishly overrate the paramount importance of the exclusive salvation of ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Mr. Stephenson observed at the engineer's meeting: "Mr. Smith had worked from a platform which might have been raised by others, as Watt had done, and as other great men had done; but he had made a stride in advance which was almost tantamount to a new invention. It was impossible to overrate the advantages which this and other countries had derived from his untiring and devoted patience in prosecuting the invention to a successful issue." Baron Charles Dupin compared the farmer Smith with the barber Arkwright: ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... or Moliere, his words flame with a tempered enthusiasm. But he throws no dust in his own eyes: his is a healthy rapture, a torch lighted by the feelings, but which the reason holds upright and steady. His native favorites he enjoys as no Englishman or German could, but he does not overrate them. Nor does he overrate Voltaire, whom he calls "the Frenchman par excellence," and of whom he is proud as the literary sovereign of his age. At the same time, in articles directly devoted to Joubert, as well as by frequent citations of his judgments, he lauds ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... equivocation, or unreasoning dogmatism. The marvellous development of philosophy in Greece, particularly in ancient Greece, was chiefly due, I believe, to the absence of an established religion and an influential priesthood; and it is impossible to overrate the blessing which the fresh, pure, invigorating, and elevating air of that ancient Greek philosophy has conferred on all ages, not excepting our own. I shudder at the thought of what the world would have been without Plato and Aristotle, and I tremble at ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... satisfaction with the kind of good that is praised and sought for in any given time. Such complacency is found in its most extreme form among those reformers or even religious leaders who are {112} devoted to the saving of men; for these come to overrate their wares through the very act of pressing them upon others. Matthew Arnold never tires of illustrating this from the Liberal propaganda of ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... burst into a peal of merry laughter. "Oh Mags!" they cried, "we never did think before that you were conceited. You certainly overrate even your powers when you imagine that you will get Mr. ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... favour directly from the King, the answer was, "Have you spoken to my Lord President?" One bold man ventured to say that the Lord President got all the money of the court. "Well," replied His Majesty "he deserves it all." [460] We shall scarcely overrate the amount of the minister's gains, if we put them at thirty thousand pounds a year: and it must be remembered that fortunes of thirty thousand pounds a year were in his time rarer than fortunes of a hundred thousand pounds a year ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... what he had said to Langdon, there was little doubt in Crane's mind but that the son of Hanover was a better horse than Lucretia. A sanguine owner—even Porter was one at times—was so apt to overrate everything in his own stable, especially if he had bred the animal himself, as Porter had Lucretia. To buy The Dutchman and back him on such short ownership to beat Lucretia would have been the policy of a very ordinary mind indeed; he would simply be fencing, with rapiers of equal length, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... not see Lady Florence again for some weeks; meanwhile, Lumley Ferrers made his debut in parliament. Rigidly adhering to his plan of acting on a deliberate system, and not prone to overrate himself, Mr. Ferrers did not, like most promising new members, try the hazardous ordeal of a great first speech. Though bold, fluent, and ready, he was not eloquent; and he knew that on great occasions, when ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... You expect too much. She is a petted, pampered, feted young lady of fortune, the daughter of a Croesus; do you think she can always think of you? Who are you that she should spare you so much time? You overrate yourself; you—you idiot." People stopped in the streets to look at the old man, who was walking so rapidly and gesticulating so excitedly. When Von Barwig saw that he was observed, he calmed down. "It's all right," he said. "To-morrow! I ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... invective, when I say that it is extremely doubtful if the public at large, to which I am ready at all times to pay homage, ever saw a general officer in his native buff. And this I hold to be the reason why it is so prone to overrate the mightiness of some of those warriors who dash up Broadway on parade days, decked out in such a profuseness of feathers. Indeed it has come to my knowledge that the greatest of generals, when presented with that natural uniform in which ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... "Do not overrate my influence," said Valentine. "You must learn to look your life boldly in the face. Candidly and honestly I think that, from mistaken notions of honor and chivalry, you have done wrong. A man ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... don't mean to overrate you," said the old man, smiling, "but you seem to me pretty well worth while any girl's taking. Not that you can't become more so—and will, I thoroughly believe. It's not so much what you've done this last year as what you show promise of doing—great promise. That's all one can ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... will, that no army in Europe could compare with the troops of the States. As to the famous regiments of Sicily, and the ancient legions of Naples and Milan, a distinguished Venetian envoy, who had seen all the camps and courts of Christendom, and was certainly not disposed to overrate the Hollanders at the expense of the Italians, if any rivalry between them had been possible, declared that every private soldier in the republic was fit to be a captain in any Italian army; while, on the other ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of one,—older far than Rome, being founded by the Euganeans who gave their name to the adjoining hills. 'Fortified' is was once, assuredly, and the walls still surround it most picturesquely though mainly in utter ruin, and you even overrate the population, which does not now much exceed 900 souls—in the city Proper, that is—for the territory below and around contains some 10,000. But we are at the very top of things, garlanded about, as it were, with a narrow line of houses,—some palatial, ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... are! and how well you have worked the primulas. All your facts are new to me. It is likely that I overrate the interest of the subject; but it seems to me that you ought to publish a paper on the subject. It would, however, greatly add to the value if you were to cover up any of the forms having pistil and anther of the same height, and prove that they were fully self-fertile. The occurrence of dimorphic ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... he himself commanded. The declaration made by this officer was thoroughly explicit, and conveys the exact idea of the valour displayed by the Italians in that terrible fight. Those who incline to overrate the advantages obtained by the Austrians on Sunday last must not forget that if Lamarmora had thought proper to persist in holding the positions of Valeggio, Volta, and Goito, the Austrians could not have prevented ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... will wonder that I seem to attach so much importance to the power which mesmerism offers us, of producing at pleasure mere ordinary trance; and, unluckily, it is easy to overrate that importance; because, for any plan we are yet in possession of, the induction of trance, through mesmerism, is, in truth, a very uncertain and capricious affair. It is but a limited number of persons who can be affected by mesmerism; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... Reginald, "you overrate my influence, and underrate the Prince's judgment, if you imagine aught save personal merit would weigh with him. Your son shall have every opportunity of deserving his notice, but whether it be favourable ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... home and live, or ought to live, in peace and quietness among their friends here. That is another of our difficulties. Still, when all such difficulties are measured and taken account of, it is impossible to overrate the courage, the patience and fidelity, with which the present House of Commons faces what is not at all an easy moment in Indian Government. You talk of democracy. People cry, "Oh! Democracy cannot govern remote dependencies." I do not know; it is a hard question. So far, after one Session of the ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... to one of his essays, Carlyle has warned us against giving too much weight to genealogy: but all his biographies, from the sketch of the Riquetti kindred to his full-length Friedrich, prefaced by two volumes of ancestry, recognise, if they do not overrate, inherited influences; and similarly his fragments of autobiography abound in suggestive reference. His family portraits are to be accepted with the deductions due to the family fever that was the ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... diamond on a drinking-glass.[265] The hieroglyphic of the diamond is to show her, that her value is imaginary; and that of the glass to acquaint her, that her condition is frail, and depends on the hand which holds her. This wise design admonishes her, neither to overrate nor depreciate her charms; as well considering and applying, that it is perfectly according to the humour and taste of the company, whether the toast is eaten, or ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... I said, "you overrate your own powers, and over-estimate my vanity. You are flattering yourself now, you can't flatter ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... arguments and his remonstrances were of no avail, he withdrew from the Congress altogether and left the members of the Holy Alliance to take on themselves the full responsibility of their own policy. Now it would be hardly possible to overrate the importance of the step thus taken by England at a great crisis in the public affairs of Europe. The reign of George the Fourth would be memorable in history if it had been consecrated by nothing but this event. The utter ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... list of Peers sufficient to carry this, and who, he would answer for it, were ready to make the concession. Lord John, however, was too wise to listen to such impudent nonsense, and, though very reluctantly, it was settled that the Commons should give way. Both parties probably overrate the value of the disputed clauses, and it is to be regretted that the two Houses will not part amicably. Government takes the Bill under a sort of engagement to consider it as an instalment, and that they shall try and get the difference next year. This is mere humbug, and a poor sop thrown ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... which he had laid aside at the beginning of their discussion. "What you tell me is immensely flattering to my oratorical talent—but I fear you overrate its effect. I can assure you that Miss Van Sideren doesn't have to have her thinking done for her. She's quite capable of ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... Touche was probably the love of her youth—unless, indeed, he was simply an old friend, and the degree of Salemina's attachment had been exaggerated; something that is very likely to happen in the gossip of a New England town, where they always incline to underestimate the feeling of the man, and overrate that of the woman, in any love affair. 'I guess she'd take him if she could get him' is the spoken or unspoken attitude of the public in rural or ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the testimony of others, and in judging of chances and probability, we must not expect our pupils to proceed very rapidly. There is more danger that they should overrate, than that they should undervalue, the evidence of others; because, as we formerly stated, we take it for granted, that they have had little experience of falsehood. We should, to preserve them from credulity, excite them in all cases where it ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... its own product, very far from encouraging it, it should be abandoned as soon as possible, and, if this same labor results in a net product, it is absurd to add to this net product a gratuitous gift, and thus overrate the value of the service. Applying this principle, I say then: If the merchant service calls only for ten thousand sailors, it should not be asked to support fifteen thousand; the shortest course for the ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
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