"Construe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the classics, and particularly Greek, with much higher reputation than any other schoolmaster within a pretty extensive circuit. Two of his pupils read all the Iliad, and all or the greater part of Sophocles. After hearing a long sentence of Greek or Latin distinctly recited, he could generally construe and translate it with little or no hesitation. He was always much gratified by Telford's visits, which were not infrequent, to his ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... have. I have always had a regard for dunces,—those of my own school days were among the pleasantest of the fellows, and have turned out by no means the dullest in life; whereas, many a youth who could turn off Latin hexameters by the yard, and construe Greek quite glibly, is no better than a feeble prig now, with not a pennyworth more brains than were in his head before his ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... there could be no genuine Fairfax; to-night he entertained many doubts of his former deductions. He found it possible to construe Dorothy's actions both ways. She was afraid to have him search out the man who had written her wedding certificate, perhaps because it was a fraud, or perhaps because there was a Fairfax somewhere, concerning whom something must ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... notwithstanding a recent act on the part of the Emperor, which some construe into the expression of unfavorable sentiments toward us. I allude to the appointment of Fronto, Nigridius Fronto, to be chief priest of the temple of the Sun, which has these several years been building, and is now just completed. This man signalized ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... Specio, spectum look despicable, suspect Spiro, spiratum breathe perspire, conspiracy *Spondeo, sponsum promise respond, espouse Sto, steti, statum stand constant, establish Sisto, stiti, statum cause to stand consistent, superstition Stringo, strictum bind stringent, restrict Struo, structum build construe, destruction Tango, tactum touch intangible, tact Tempus, temporis time temporize, contemporary Tendo, tensum stretch distend, intense Teneo, tentuin hold tenure, detention *Tendo try tentative, attempt Terminus end, boundary terminal, exterminate Terra earth territory, inter Torqueo, tortum twist ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... assisted by Sir W. M. Ramsay, Professor Bury, and Mr. E. M. Antoniadi. The meaning of [Greek: teleutaioi krotoi] is not clear. Various interpretations have been suggested; to read [Greek: brotoi], mortals, instead of [Greek: krotoi], and to construe [Greek: teleutaioi] adverbially, 'finally, O mortals!'; to understand a reference to the judgment day, 'O applauses given at the final judgment'; to take the phrase as equivalent to, 'O celebrities at (or to) the very end of time'; to understand it as ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... dared not declare myself the panegyrist of a nation, whose maxims were exactly the reverse of my own. More grieved at the misfortunes of France than the French themselves I was afraid the public would construe into flattery and mean complaisance the marks of a sincere attachment, of which in my first part I have mentioned the date and the cause, and which I was ashamed ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... manner, a certain restraint which she ever seemed to exercise over me, that effectually sealed my lips. Her very presence was a moral tonic, and I felt it would be easier to tear out my tongue than to utter anything which she could construe into possible insult. The very depth of her perfect womanhood was itself protection, and, until the veil was finally lifted, my lips were vowed ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... To construe the expression "managing all their affairs," into a surrender of self government, would be, we think, a perversion of their necessary meaning, and a departure from the construction which has been uniformly put on them. The great subject of the article is the Indian trade. The influence ...
— Opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States, at January Term, 1832, Delivered by Mr. Chief Justice Marshall in the Case of Samuel A. Worcester, Plaintiff in Error, versus the State of Georgia • John Marshall
... person, he tried to get rid of the odor of the pumpkin business; but all to no purpose. Do what he would, go where he would, contribute to what he would, mix with what society he would, be as generous as he would, people were heard to whisper 'pumpkins;' and to construe his motives as prompted by the same spirit which induced him to make a business of cultivating that vegetable. A similar odor, arising from his connection with Pierce, Smooth found clinging to his garments. The world in general viewed him as a dangerous man, for the simple reason that his master ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... conscious of a pair of violet eyes that would have drawn Saint Pyrites from his iron pillar—or whatever the allusion is—and of the lady's smile and look—a little frightened, but a look that, with the ever coward hears of a true lover, he could not yet construe. They were asking his name and bestowing upon him wellbred thanks for his heroic deed, and the Scotch cap was especially babbling and insistent. But the eloquent appeal was in the ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... oath to-day with no mental reservations, and with no purpose to construe the Constitution or laws by any hypercritical rules. And, while I do not choose now to specify particular acts of Congress as proper to be enforced, I do suggest that it will be much safer for all, both in official and private stations, to conform to and abide ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... to throw away the fabulous nor deny the legendary. But it is certainly not wise to construe the fabulous as the actual and maintain the legendary as literally true. Things may be true allegorically and false literally, and to be able to distinguish the one from the other, and prize each in its proper place, is the mark ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... This new and additional proof of the strength of this woman's steadfastness, in her unparalleled fidelity and love, struck me even more forcibly than the previous indications she had given of this extraordinary feature in her character. But I was uncertain yet whether to construe her conduct as salutary or dangerous to her own personal interests—a circumstance depending on the further development of the sentiments of her husband. On that same evening the change suspected took place: the delirium abated, and consciousness, that had been driven forcibly from her ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... came the New Ordinances, which contain a most interesting precedent, hitherto almost unnoted, of the American principle of having the courts construe the Constitution. Section VI: "It is Ordained, That the Great Charter be kept in all its points in such manner, that if there be in the said Charter any point obscure or doubtful, it shall be declared by the said Ordainours, and others whom they will, for that purpose, call to them, ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... another way. Now, suppose a mind of the latter of our two classes, whose imagination is pent in consequently, and who takes its {41} facts 'hard;' suppose it, moreover, to feel strongly the craving for communion, and yet to realize how desperately difficult it is to construe the scientific order of nature either theologically or poetically,—and what result can there be but inner discord and contradiction? Now, this inner discord (merely as discord) can be relieved in either of two ways: The longing to read the facts religiously ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... Helder, and she reached the street just in time to betray her secret to Victor Chupin, and receive a foul insult from M. Wilkie. The latter's cruel words stabbed her to the heart, and yet she tried to construe them as mere proofs of her son's honesty of feeling—as proof of his scorn for the depraved creatures who haunt the boulevards each evening. But though her energy was indomitable, her physical strength was not equal ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... are merely school-boys now, their business is to construe Virgil. Poor Virgil! whose verses, which he took so much pains to polish, have been misscanned, and misparsed, and misinterpreted by so many generations of idle school-boys. There, sit down, ye Latinists. Two or three of you, I fear, are doomed to ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Profoundly skill'd, &c.] Analytick is a part of logic, that teaches to decline and construe reason, as grammar ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... boundaries, he returned evasive answers, and said he did not know, and when pressed to be more explicit, said: "You must take it as we received it." "But what did you mean to take?" asked Livingston. "I do not know," replied Talleyrand. "Then you mean that we shall construe it our own way?" said Livingston again, to which Talleyrand made final reply: "I can give you no direction. You have made a noble bargain for yourselves, and I suppose you will make ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... "choose a virgin of mean fortunes honestly bred"? Mr. Masson forthwith breaks forth in a paroxysm of what we suppose to be picturesqueness in this wise: "What have we here? Surely nothing less, if we choose so to construe it, than a marriage advertisement! Ho, all ye virgins of England (widows need not apply), here is an opportunity such as seldom occurs: a bachelor, unattached; age, thirty-three years and three or four months; height [Milton, by the way, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... "Let them construe that who can," answered Whitaker; "the fellow who drove them was a west-country man, and only said they came from a friend to help to furnish out your ladyship's entertainment; the man would not stay to drink—I am sorry he would not stay to drink—I crave ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... awake a long time that night smoothing Robin's tangled curls, and crying at the thought of the motherless baby away among strangers, with no one to snuggle him up warm or sing him to sleep. Then there was another thought that wounded him deeply. Twist it whichever way he might, he could construe Mr. Dearborn's last remark to mean but one thing. They considered him a burden. How many plans he made night after night before he fell asleep! He would take Robin by the hand in the morning, and they would slip away and wander off to the woods together. They could sleep ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... my young bantam!" said Mr Cupples. "Don't think you're going to break into my privacy and get off with the booty so cheaply. Just you construe the whole sentence ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... said Diggle regretfully. "As Cicero says in the play, you construe things after your fashion, clean from the purpose of the things themselves. My interest in you is undiminished; nay rather, it is increased and mixed with admiration. My offers still hold good: join hands with me, and I promise you that you shall soon be a persona ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... Courtier: this do not please them. He tells me he finds the enmity almost over for my Lord Sandwich, and that now all is upon the Vice-Chamberlain, who bears up well and stands upon his vindication, which he seems to like well, and the others do construe well also. Thence up to the Painted Chamber, and there heard a conference between the House of Lords and Commons about the Wine Patent; which I was exceeding glad to be at, because of my hearing exceeding good discourses, but especially from the Commons; among others, Mr. Swinfen, and a young ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... with every tide from Gravesend to London.' At length on the 6th of May, 1592, the fleet was under sail with him on board. On the 7th, he was overtaken by Frobisher with orders to come back. He was to leave Sir John Burgh, Borough, or Brough, and Frobisher to command as his lieutenants. Choosing to construe the orders as optional in date, Ralegh proceeded as far as Cape Finisterre. Thence, after weathering a terrific storm on May 11, he himself returned. Before his departure he arranged the plan of operations. Half the fleet he stationed under Frobisher off the Spanish ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... next. He bungled through the Latin in a grating irresolute sort of a way, with several false quantities, for each of which the next boy took him up. Then he began to construe;—a frightful confusion of nominatives without verbs, accusatives translated as ablatives, and perfects turned into prepositions ensued, and after a hopeless flounder, during which Mr. Gordon left him entirely to himself, ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... treated too lightly your differences with your brother—which I freely enter into and feel for, but which I rather wished to defer saying much about till we meet. But that which gives me most concern is the way in which I talked about your Mother's illness, and which I have since feared you might construe into my having a doubt of your showing her proper attention without my impertinent interference. God knows, nothing of this kind was ever in my thoughts; but I have entered very deeply into your affliction with regard to your Mother; and while I was wishing, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... citizen was required to report himself for military duty. So persistent were the detectives in their search for treason, that all the business houses in the town had to be shut up, and it became so frequent a matter to construe thoughtless words into expressions of disloyal sentiment, that it was unsafe to speak any other language than Dutch. Thousands of respectable citizens, nightly left their comfortable homes, to cross the river, and shiver ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... to construe. Then I was free. I buried my hands deep into my breeches pockets, for I was ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... looking for Keats (when I happened on Browne) to find the passage you quote {240b}: but (of course) I could not find the Book I wanted. Nor can I construe him any more than so much of Shakespeare: whether from the negligent hurry of both (Johnson says Shakespeare often contented himself with a halfborn expression), or from some Printer's error. The meaning is clear enough to me, if I conjecture the context ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... intending any evil, commit imprudent acts, which are nothing at first, but which often have dangerous consequences. Sometimes carelessly they fasten their eyes on a young man whom they meet at church, at a ball, during a walk, or no matter where ... well! that is enough for him to construe the look as an advance which is made to him, or at least as an encouragement, and to believe himself authorized then to undertake some enterprise. Good Heavens, all seductions begin in the same way. ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... creed, to fling his life's allegiance into a communion whose tenets were so framed as to adjust themselves to the strain of purely individual interpretation. One must have tenets to interpret. What happened, when they became untenable? One might construe the Nicene Creed into a round dozen different 'ologies. A mere framework, a skeleton of belief such as the Apostles' Creed was capable of no such reconstruction. One either believed it, or one did not. Unless—Did anybody ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... possible to construe the development in two ways: the paintings may be regarded as originally totemic or other clan marks, and as afterwards employed as ornaments, or the order of movement may be taken to be in the reverse direction; but when we consider the primitive ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... began to ring at a quarter to eleven, and Tom got in early and took his place in the lowest row, and watched all the other boys come in and take their places, filling row after row; and tried to construe the Greek text which was inscribed over the door with the slightest possible success, and wondered which of the masters, who walked down the chapel and took their seats in the exalted boxes at the end, would be his lord. And then came the closing of the doors, and the Doctor in his robes, and ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... had not been lost on the Provencal, who well knew how to construe the wind by the direction of straws, and saw at once, by the boldness of the populace, that they themselves were conscious of a coming tempest. "Par Dieu," said he, as he saluted Adrian, who, gravely, and without looking behind, had ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... I entreat you, construe my gratitude into any sense of future favors,—no such thing; for whatever may be my success with you hereafter, I am truly deeply grateful for the past. Circumstances, into which I need not enter, have made me for some years past ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... [182]Construe: "But if he hold this feeling and this mind (that is only his own working by custom) to be a ...
— The Cell of Self-Knowledge - Seven Early English Mystical Treaties • Various
... should accept the Democratic nomination for City Attorney. Under the charter, the City Attorney was the legal adviser of all the city and county officials, and it was his business to define and construe this organic law, and the friends of the charter wished some one who was in sympathy with the instrument to ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... way!" grunted Netta. "Latin has a paralysing effect upon my brain. Instead of sharpening me it deadens my faculties. When I've been trying to construe a page of Virgil, my intellect feels ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... sorry to say I am not yet settled to any serious employment. The expectation of Coleridge not a little unhinges me, and, still more, the number of visitors we have had; but winter is approaching, and I have good hopes. I mentioned Michael Angelo's poetry some time ago; it is the most difficult to construe I ever met with, but just what you would expect from such a man, shewing abundantly how conversant his soul was with great things. There is a mistake in the world concerning the Italian language; the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... these. First, What real Use or Advantage can this Translation be to the Publick? As for school-Boys and Learners, Bernard's and Hool's Translations, the great number of Notes, a School-Master, or their own Industry will well enough teach 'em to construe it. Men of Sense and Learning, they read it wholly for the Latin sake; therefore a Translation is of no use to them. Lastly, They won't fit our Stage; and consequently they are impertinent at best. To these we answer; First, As to School-Boys ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... the ready way to the Latin Tongue, containing most plain demonstrations for the regular Translating of English into Latin, with instructions how to construe and parse Authors, fitted for such as would attain to the Latin Tongue, by I. ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... so easy, Saurin being hardly able to restrain his excitement, and Crawley being flushed about the forehead, where the other's fist had struck him; otherwise he was no more discomposed than usual, and, being put on to construe soon after entering the school, acquitted himself very well and with the most perfect sang froid. Fortunately Saurin was not subjected to the same ordeal or he would have been considerably flustered, if not totally unable to fix his mind on the subject; and he might have ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... awkwardness, due to the fact that the muscles are developing faster than the bones, making delicate adjustment impossible. There is painful sensitiveness over this, especially with boys, as hands and feet must be in the open, and they will easily construe any criticism or ridicule into a desire to be rid ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... would come and be smiled upon by herself, be flattered as she thought that she could flatter him, be told that he was a god, and have that passage about the divinity of joining ocean to ocean construed to him as she could construe it, would not the great man become plastic under her hands? And if, while this was a-doing, Felix would run away with Marie, could not forgiveness be made easy? And her creative mind ranged still farther. Mr Broune might ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... because he rose from the populace to his great elevation, they inferred that he was a boor and a bungler, not (as might have seemed equally fair and rather more logical) that he was a capable man; and, with a foregone conclusion, they were quite ready to construe as blundering and grotesque that line of policy and conduct on his part, which, after a war of no immoderate length, resulted in the surmounting of obstacles which they had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... facts of that kind, was always amused by the cold consideration with which he treated her on his rare visits to the parental Towers; and which his sisters could only construe as a sign that "Algy ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... husband) did yesterday go away from him, with all her plate, jewels, and other best things; and is gone to Richmond to a brother of her's; which, I am apt to think, was a design to get out of town, that the King might come at her the better. But strange it is how for her beauty I am willing to construe all this to the best and to pity her wherein it is to her hurt, though I know well enough ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... good intention was apparently evident to him, and pointing to the wondrous design on the wings he said something about "plasmodic" or some such word, just as nonsensical as my name for the species. But in the dream there is a wholly different relation between word and spirit, and one can construe sensible meanings out of nonsense and also interchange thoughts without words, - and I knew very well at the time and also on awaking that my father wanted to make me think about the way in which this butterfly decoration ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... the Duke of Lauderdale's study after he was taken at Worcester. He has made a note in the fly-leaf, "I began this book at Windsor, and finished it during my imprisonment here;" and below are mottoes in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. I can't construe the Hebrew. The Greek is oisteon kai elpisteon (one must bear and hope), the Latin is durate. Will ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Oriental underlay that coating of Grecian manners and modes of thought and act, with which a real admiration of the Hellenic race induced Cyrus to conceal his native barbarism. When he slew his cousins for an act which he chose to construe as disrespect, and when he executed Orontes for contemplated desertion, secretly and silently, so that no one knew his fate, when transported with jealous rage he rushed madly upon his brother, exposing to hazard the success of all his carefully formed plans, and in fact ruining his ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... in the fog. From where he stood on slightly higher ground he looked down at her curiously, for in more than one sense she was a puzzle to him. There was a certain indefiniteness in her manner toward him which he felt a passionate desire to construe. She seemed at once merciful and merciless, sympathetic and hard. Then, as he looked at her, he almost forgot all this wilderness of suffering and doubt. All his intense love for physical beauty, ministered ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... beginning to respect you now. Don't do anything to make him think you're a little soft. That's what he wants to think, and he'd construe any such ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... feelings, during this day; ever since you left me. You cannot conceive any thing more forlorn, more vacant, more anxious, than this weak heart has been and still is. I was terrified at my own sensations, and, with my usual folly, began to construe them into omens of evils; so inadequate, so disproportioned was my distress to ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... councillor, Fujiwara no Matate, and to the privy councillors, Fujiwara no Yoshitsugu, Fujiwara no Momokawa, and Fujiwara no Uwona. It was with the Fujiwara families that the responsibility rested chiefly, and the general conduct of the Fujiwara at that period of history forbids us to construe their apparent indifference in a wholly bad sense. Probably the simplest explanation is the true one: ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... do, that inconceivability is no criterion of impossibility. "There is no ground for inferring a certain fact to be impossible, merely from our inability to conceive its possibility." "Things there are which may, nay must, be true, of which the understanding is wholly unable to construe to itself the possibility."(98) Sir William Hamilton is, however, a firm believer in the a priori character of many axioms, and of the sciences deduced from them; and is so far from considering those axioms to rest on the evidence of experience, that ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... if ever told lies, and never bullied little boys. Those masters or seniors who were kind to him, he loved with boyish ardour. And though the Doctor, when he did not know his Horace, or could not construe his Greek play, said that that boy Pendennis was a disgrace to the school, a candidate for ruin in this world, and perdition in the next; a profligate who would most likely bring his venerable father to ruin and his mother to a dishonoured grave, and the like—yet as the Doctor made ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of blessed memory now for many years, was my ward and pupil after the death of your grandfather. I think I may say without undue self-congratulation that few women of their time have enjoyed as sound a scheme of education as your mother. She had a knowledge of mathematics, could construe both in Latin and Greek, and had acquired a fair mastery of the historic civilization of the Greeks, Egyptians and ancient Babylonians. While these attainments would naturally be insufficient for a man's work in life, yet for a woman they were of ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... the reconciliation of the Greek and Latin Churches, had brought to Florence many a needy Greek scholar. And now the work was completed, the door of the mystical temple lay open to all who could construe Latin, and the [37] scholar rested from his labour; when there was introduced into his study, where a lamp burned continually before the bust of Plato, as other men burned lamps before their favourite saints, a young man fresh from a journey, "of feature and shape seemly and beauteous, ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... pages; and the dedication (to that revered monarch, George IV) must have cost him no little study and correspondence. Walter Scott was called in council, and offered one miscorrection which still blots the page. In spite of all this pondering and filing, there remain pages not easy to construe, and inconsistencies not easy to explain away. I have sought to make these disappear, and to lighten a little the baggage with which my grandfather marches; here and there I have rejointed and rearranged a sentence, always with his own words, ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would require no small share of casuistry to construe this declaration into an acceptance of the bargain, but the Saracens, having heard the offer of their sovereign, deliberately counted out the stipulated sum on the mantle of Sir Isumbras; took possession of the lady, carried the knight with his infant son on shore; ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... revel, east and west] I should not have suspected this passage of ambiguity or obscurity, had I not found my opinion of it differing from that of the learned critic [Warburton]. I construe it thus, This heavy-headed revel makes us traduced east and west, and taxed ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... transference was made from the balance of the Prince to that of the worker. For the machinery of the city could not continue in operation a fortnight, before some accident requiring delicate repair work would put it partially out of commission. And the Yun-Yun was quick to resent anything it could construe as a slight on one ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... golden thigh, "Ay, ay," said he, "he has money enough in his breeches; that is the alderman of our ward." You must know, whatever he read, I found he interpreted from his own way of life and acquaintance. I am glad my readers can construe for themselves these difficult points; but, for the benefit of posterity, I design, when I come to write my last paper of this kind, to make it an explanation of all my former. In that piece you shall have all I have commended with their proper names. The faulty ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... hesitate to take up her defence. Something presses heavily on her mind; what, I cannot surmise. But I will see her and find it out. Till then, wear your willow as gracefully as you do your laurels, and construe nothing to your disadvantage. ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... good-will. What the committee fears is that the liberal party may take offence, and also that the town workmen may withdraw their moral support. You may have meant the pamphlet for an attack upon the Sanfedists: but many readers will construe it as an attack upon the Church and the new Pope; and this, as a matter of political tactics, the committee does ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... the veriest trifle criticise the tactics of Hannibal; whimpering boys store themselves with phrases out of the slaughter at Canna; and blubber over the victories of Scipio, because they are obliged to construe them. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... me, and one I thrashed. I learned to play at cricket, to hate rich people, to cure warts, to write Latin verses, to swim, to recite speeches, to cook kidneys on toast, to draw caricatures of the masters, to construe Greek plays, to black boots, and to receive kicks and serious advice resignedly. Who will say that the fashionable public school was of no ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... against him; his wife is regarded with jealousy; your frankest speech covers in his view some hidden and sinister meaning. You must be careful of your attentions to Mrs. Abercrombie to-night, for he will construe them adversely, and pour out his wrath on her defenceless ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... pace up the steps. 'Leave Me to open the door to him,' said Mrs Wilfer, rising with stately resignation as she shook her head and dried her eyes; 'we have at present no stipendiary girl to do so. We have nothing to conceal. If he sees these traces of emotion on our cheeks, let him construe them as ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... of Jonson's works. Probably this sonnet—it has fourteen lines—is one of the most cryptic things in the whole of Elizabethan literature. No member of our family or any other family has ever been able to construe it. Yet it is a pleasure to me to gather from the concluding couplet that the author had ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... suppose that he should remain unmolested during the remainder of the night. The strange words of the Eurasian he did not construe literally; yet could he be certain that he was secure?... Nay! he could be certain that he ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... the pupil must pass through 'dark defiles,' confiding blindly in his tutor's 'assurance that he will at last emerge into light:' but still contends that in many cases it is possible, and where possible—right, that he should 'catch a glimpse of the promised land.' Thus, for example, to construe the language he is learning—is an act of 'some respectability in his eyes' and its uses apparent: meantime the uses of the grammar are not so apparent until experience has brought him acquainted with the real cases to which ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... with the old languages, not teaching them to read, but to construe, and cramming the little memories with hideous grammatical forms. So the whole process of education becomes a dreary wrestling with the uninteresting and the unattainable; and when we have broken the neck of infantile curiosity with these uncouth burdens, we wonder that life becomes a place ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... like to understand whether we all construe the rule referring to the secrecy of our transactions alike. I am told that different constructions are placed upon it by different members, and would suggest the propriety of the PRESIDENT'S giving his views of ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... were all full to overflowing; and at the only little one he tried the boy lost his temper like a man on being requested to deposit six shillings before proceeding to his room. Pocket had not got it to deposit, and the galling reflection caused him to construe the demand as a deliberate reflection upon his outward respectability—as if he could not have borrowed the money from ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... birth, alliance, &c., ebb and flow with our conceit; please or displease, as we accept and construe them, or apply them to ourselves." Faber quisque fortunae suae, and in some sort I may truly say, prosperity and adversity are in our own hands. Nemo laeditur nisi a seipso, and which Seneca confirms ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... you there residing, as is your duty, upon my arrival, I shall be able to construe the reasons for your absence, and shall ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... approached, the society found itself driven to the necessity of helping in this, too, by the fact that the present warden would furnish the men with only the same outfit as in summer, the under-clothes they might happen to have on at the time, added. And, in making out this summer suit, he would construe the letter of the law in the superlative degree, which says, "A suit of cheap clothing,"—he obtaining the cheapest, the most miserably poor. To illustrate, a man left prison in one of those suits, and, before walking a mile, was obliged to call and borrow sewing implements ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... of Inverlochy, and there met with Ian of Glenroy, who had been out for intelligence. Argyle is moving upon Inverlochy with three thousand chosen men, commanded by the flower of the sons of Diarmid.—These are my news—they are certain—it is for you to construe their purport." ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... lection, construction, version. equivalent, equivalent meaning &c 516; synonym; paraphrase, metaphrase^; convertible terms, apposition; dictionary &c 562; polyglot. V. interpret, explain, define, construe, translate, render; do into, turn into; transfuse the sense of. find out &c 480.1 the meaning of, &c 516 read; spell out, make out; decipher, unravel, disentangle; find the key of, enucleate, resolve, solve; read between the lines. account for; find the cause, tell the cause ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the bye, have you found any friend who can construe That Latin account, t'other day, of a monster? If we can't get a Russian—and that story in Latin Be not too improper, I think ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... not let me add to your uneasiness," he resumed, "while I am attempting to alleviate it. Instruct me what I can do to show my esteem and respect, rather than permit me thus unguided, to rush upon what you may construe ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... Jupiter, a la Salmoneus,— in his attribute of Cloud-Compelling— by blowing a cloud, or to speak in the vernacular, indulging in a cigar; hoisting a frog; tailing a dog or cat, or in any other way acting contrary to the precepts of the Animals' Friend Society; learning to construe on the Hamiltonian system; furtively denuding the birch-rods of their "budding honours." Cum multis aliis quae nunc ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... imagination a polygon with an infinite number of sides (i.e. with a number of sides greater than any given number), but neither can we construe to the imagination a polygon with a million of sides; nevertheless, we understand what is meant by the first description as well as by the second, and can reason upon both. There is, indeed, this difference between the two: That the terms used in describing ...
— Review of the Work of Mr John Stuart Mill Entitled, 'Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy.' • George Grote
... laugh, children, you know what I mean. There's no good in this fellow working his brain. He can't go up again before September, and according to the Bishop's letter to my father, he is safe to pass, if he could not construe a line, after what he did at Wil'sbro'. The Bishop and Co. found they had made considerable donkeys of themselves. Yes, 'tis the ticket for you to be shocked; but it is just like badgering a fellow for his commission by asking him how many facets go to a dragon-fly's eye, instead ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which they affected so much to decry. For after all, it must be allowed, that nothing could be justly urged against the English government, with respect to France, except the omission of a mere form, which other nations might interpret into an irregularity, but could not construe into perfidious dealing, as the French had previously violated the peace by their ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... none wanted it in fee. The grasses and the sweet waters offered accessible and profitable chemistry for all men who had cows to range. The land laws still were vague and inexact in application, and each man could construe them much as he liked. The excellent homestead law of 1862, one of the few really good land laws that have been put on our national statute books, worked well enough so long as we had good farming lands for homesteading—lands of which a quarter section would support a home ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... then, plainly stated, is, that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... ledgers, while others are the poets, the singers, the statesmen, the rulers, and the wealth-controllers of the world! We wish to step out of the trivial experience into that which is significant. Each day brings uneasiness of soul. "Man's unhappiness," says Carlyle, "as I construe it, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... ou ils ne veulent toucher non plus qu'au feu." Letter of Secretary Bourdin to his brother-in-law Bochetel, the Bishop of Rennes, French ambassador in Germany, Aug. 23, 1561, apud Laboureur, Add. aux Mem. de Castelnau, i. 731. If we are to construe the language of the Histoire eccles. des egl. ref. (i. 307) with verbal strictness, the theological discussions occasionally waxed so hot that the prelates found themselves unable to solve the knotty questions ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... letters. The papers were not merely reviews, but monographs on interesting subjects—a new anatomy of history; it was in a general way an exponent, but quite an independent one, of the Whig party, or those who would liberally construe the Constitution,—putting Churchmen and Dissenters on the same platform; although published in Edinburgh, it was neither Scotch nor Presbyterian. It attacked ancient prescriptions and customs; agitated ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Lucinda and Ardentio pulling a cracker. Burn your little fingers, children! Blaze out little kindly flames from each other's eyes! And then draw close together and read the motto (that old namby-pamby motto, so stale and so new!)—I say, let her lips read it, and his construe it; and so divide the sweetmeat, young people, and crunch it between you. I have no teeth. Bitter almonds and sugar disagree with me, I tell you; but, for all that, shall not bonbons melt in ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... theology of that nation stood not upon such dreams, which the poets superstitiously observed, and truly, (sith they had not the light of Christ,) did much better in it than the philosophers, who, shaking off superstition, brought in atheism. Plato therefore, (whose authority I had much rather justly construe, than unjustly resist,) meant not in general of poets, in those words of which Julius Scaliger saith qua auctoritate barbari quidam atque hispidi abuti velint, ad poetas e republica exigendos: ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... might tend to revive their animosities,—and a very slight occasion would be sufficient to effect it. They will instantly take fire on such a declaration, proclaim the judgment of the Company in their favor, demand a reparation of the acts which they will construe wrongs with such a sentence warranting that construction, and either accept the invitation to the proclaimed scandal of the Nabob Vizier, which will not add to the credit of our government, or remain in his dominions, but not under his authority, to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... regard it as a true myth, which, in materialistic language, sets forth the close of the day and the extinction of the light. May we not construe the maiden as the Evening Twilight, the child of the Day at the close of its life? The black lover with whom she is fatally enamored, is he not the Darkness, in which the twilight fades away? The countless crowds ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... resistance to her orders, she has invariably turned them out of her fold, so that they should not infect and contaminate the good and the loyal. It was in this sense that St. Paul, the inspired Apostle, in the very first century of the Christian era, instructed Titus to construe and administer the law committed to his charge. After warning Titus that there are "many vain talkers and deceivers," St. Paul commands him "to rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in faith". He adds further: "These things speak, and exhort, ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... construe it so, and, if my notion of serially visiting the piazzas of Rome was not prompted by my chance glimpse of the Campo di Fiori, it was certainly not relinquished because of any mischance in my meditated vision of it. I had merely reflected that I could not ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... favour Wood, and keep my pension; And, fourthly, 'tis to play an odd trick, Get the great seal and turn out Broderick; And, fifthly, (you know whom I mean,) To humble that vexatious Dean: And, sixthly, for my soul to barter it For fifty times its worth to Carteret. Now since your motto thus you construe, I must confess you've spoken once true. Libertas et natale solum. You had good reason ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... cultivated languages, on almost all subjects and sciences; farther, as man is ever the prime object to man, already it was my favorite employment to read character in speculation, and from the Writing to construe the Writer. A certain groundplan of Human Nature and Life began to fashion itself in me; wondrous enough, now when I look back on it; for my whole Universe, physical and spiritual, was as yet a Machine! However, such a conscious, recognized groundplan, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... beads," said the hermit, "here come other guests. I would not for my cowl that they found us in this goodly exercise. All men have enemies, sir knight; and there be those malignant enough to construe the hospitable refreshment I have been offering to you, a weary traveler, into drinking and gluttony, vices alike alien to my profession and ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... the Witch of Endor!" I cried, "if you can construe all that from his appearance you are dealing in nothing ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... confidence for their value, and are at a sad discount in hard times of fraud and corruption. Unprincipled men find means of evading the written agreement upon their face by ingenious subterfuges or downright repudiation. An arbitrary majority will construe the partnership articles to suit their own interests, and stat pro constitutione voluntas. It is true that the litera scripta remains, but the meaning is found ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... thrashed bullies at school; his fear that he should be sent home in disgrace for bad scholarship; and how at last, after seven years of dulness, at the age of fourteen, "the mental fog broke away suddenly, and before the term ended I could construe the Latin in less time than it took to recite it, and the demonstrations of Euclid were as plain and clear as a fairy story. My memory came back so distinctly that I could recite long poems after a single reading, and no member of the class passed a more brilliant examination at the end of the ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... which I had to address you upon this paper; and having shown you that by the least liberal construction, no criminality of intention can be imputed to the author, how can I doubt of your acquittal? For it is your duty to construe the author's words so as to give them an innocent meaning if they will bear it, and not come to a conclusion of guilt from them unless you shall be convinced that they will not possibly admit of any other than a criminal sense. That he had no criminal design, is apparent enough, even ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... Scholar," cried Captain Westbury, laughing; and he called to a trooper out of the window—"Ho, Dick, come in here and construe." ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Law doctrine was grounded upon unshakable authority; that, considering the fact that the entire phraseology of the constitutional clause regarding treason comes from an English statute of Edward III's time, it was reasonable, if not indispensable, to construe it in the light of the Common Law; and that, certainly as to a procurer of treason, such as Burr was charged with being, the Common Law doctrine was the only just doctrine, being merely a reaffirmation of the even more ancient principle that "what one does through another, ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... ignorance as the supremest virtue, he who does not make himself familiar with Biblical ideas and phraseology finds himself in after-life with an incomplete medium of expression. It used to be said of the typical English gentleman that all he needed to know was to ride after the hounds and to construe Horace. This is not so absurd, after all, as it appears to be to most moderns. To construe Horace, of course, meant that he should have at least a speaking acquaintance with one of the masterpieces of Roman ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... who was to be my tutor, and finding I was not yet fixed in that particular, I was requested to construe one of the easiest passages in the AEneid; my next task was to read a few paragraphs of monkish Latin from a little white book, which I found contained the university statutes: having acquitted myself in this to the apparent satisfaction of the doctor, he next proceeded to ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... addressing himself to George, "my companions and I feel that, before we proceed further, or place ourselves altogether in your power, it is very necessary that we should know what acts you would be likely to construe as ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... nosegay instantly attracted the girl's hand—perhaps before there had been time for thought to thoroughly construe the position; for it happened that when her arm was stretched into the air she steadied it quickly, and stood with the pose of a statue—rigid with uncertainty. But it was too late to refuse: Christopher had put the nosegay within her fingers. Whatever pleasant expression of thanks may have appeared ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... quantity, is a blunder which serves to show his utter ignorance of prosody. But, even as a version of the sense, with every allowance for a poet's license of compression and expansion, Pope's translation is defective, and argues an occasional inability to construe the text. For instance, at the council summoned by Jupiter, it is said that he at his first entrance seats himself upon his starry throne, but not so ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... bilious-looking man with hair long and greasy and a face expressive of extraordinary sullenness. Handing Ikonin a copy of Cicero's Orations, he bid him translate. To my great astonishment Ikonin not only read off some of the Latin, but even managed to construe a few lines to the professor's prompting. At the same time, conscious of my superiority over such a feeble companion, I could not help smiling a little, and even looking rather contemptuous, when it came to a question of analysis, and ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... He returned to his room and made another frantic search—but they were nowhere to be found; and as he could not bring himself to receive his guests in his ordinary morning costume—which the Professor would probably construe as a deliberate slight, and which would certainly seem a solecism in Mrs. Futvoye's eyes, if not in her daughter's—he decided to put on the Eastern robes, with the exception of a turban, which he could not manage to ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... believed then, though I had afterwards proof to the contrary, a coward; and matching myself against him I knew I would do the king's navy more credit than he. But I kept my thought to myself—and next day made a sad bungle, I remember, of my construe of Thucydides' account of the sea ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... had been her first confidence to Linda. She was so aggrieved at that moment that she could have told unanswering walls her tribulations. It would have been better if she had done so. She might have been able to construe silence as sympathy. Linda's laughter she knew exactly how to interpret. "Served you right," was what ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... is still practised by the shepherds of the Puna. They explained it to me, and I could, with very little trouble, construe their quipus. On the first branch or string they usually placed the numbers of the bulls; on the second, that of the cows; the latter being classed into those which were milked, and those which were not milked; on the next string were numbered ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... sarcasm," retorted Rameau, "I construe it as a compliment. A Frenchman who is contented to study the masterpieces of modern literature need learn no language and read no authors but ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... yield blind and unquestioned obedience to another code, comprising what are officially styled the "Family Statutes" of the dynasty to which they belong. These are administered by the head of the family, who is free to construe them as he sees fit, and while they are binding upon the members of his house, they in no way can be said to constitute any limitation to the exercise of his authority. In fact, the latter is absolutely unrestricted, and extends to every phase of the life of a royal personage. ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... of one who has to act on the advice of a lawyer who has obscured the main issue as far as he can, and whose chief aim has been to make as many loopholes as possible for himself to escape through in case of his being called to account. Or, again, to that of one who has to construe an Act of Parliament which was originally framed so as to throw dust in the eyes of those who would oppose the measure, and which, having been since found unworkable, has had clauses repealed and inserted up and down it, till it is in an inextricable ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... Modern Europe, its Inner Life; so Shakespeare, we may say, embodies for us the Outer Life of our Europe as developed then, its chivalries, courtesies, humours, ambitions, what practical way of thinking, acting, looking at the world, men then had. As in Homer we may still construe Old Greece; so in Shakespeare and Dante, after thousands of years, what our Modern Europe was, in Faith and in Practice, will still be legible. Dante has given us the Faith or soul; Shakespeare, in a not less noble way, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... England, to a gentleman at Avignon. Of this piece five editions were sold; it is written in the manner of a Lady to a Gentleman, whose principles obliged him to be an exile with the Royal Wanderer. The great propension of the Jacobites to place confidence in imaginary means; and to construe all extraordinary appearances, into ominous signs of the restoration of their king ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... pearl of price? That too may be purchased—by steady application, and long solitary hours of study and reflection. Bestow these, and you shall be wise. "But" (says the man of letters) "what a hardship is it that many an illiterate fellow who cannot construe the motto of the arms on his coach, shall raise a fortune and make a figure, while I have little more than the common conveniences of life." Et tibi magni satis!—Was it in order to raise a fortune that you consumed the sprightly hours of youth in study and retirement? Was it to be rich that ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... publication of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor, and therefore could not have been guilty of the heartless allusion to it in the Dedicatory Epistle, he there said, "If anything occurred to me that might seem to look that way, I referred to the mind,"—a phrase which it is difficult to construe otherwise than as an admission that he had written the Dedicatory Epistle, but had employed the familiar quotation there ("monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum") only metaphorically. All in all, then, the authorship of the Dedicatory Epistle, as well as the editorship and adoption ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... convulsed, familiar with Teuton naivete. Then he dubiously shook his head. To Jim's unexpected discomfort the affair was regarded seriously. If he had not ejaculated this affront, something could be done. But now he had been guilty of what the Germans might rightfully construe as a voluntary indignity offered to the Imperial Secret Service in the performance of its highly responsible duties. If he wanted to avoid important trouble, the only simple and effective course would be to quit the country. He could leave that ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... should have gone back to school, had I been a hundred years younger. My most frequent dream nowadays—or nowanights I suppose I should say—is that I am back at school, and trying to construe difficult passages from Greek authors unknown to me. That they are unknown is my own fault, as will be pointed out to me sternly in a moment. Meanwhile I stand up and gaze blankly at the text, wondering ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... I'm back in the lower fifth; for we don't get through more than we used to do there; and if you were to hear the men construe, it would make your hair stand on end. Where on earth can they have come from? Unless they blunder on purpose, as I often think. Of course, I never look at a lecture before I go in, I know it all nearly by heart, so it would be sheer waste of time. I hope ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Because the conception of capturing fishes in the Sea is at one time in the Lord's discourses employed to indicate the benevolent labour of the Gospel ministry, it does not follow that you are compelled to construe that conception in the same way wherever it occurs, although the circumstances manifestly render ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... characterized by the spirit of compromise, so valuable in vulgar politics, but so perilous in embodying ideals. Anxious to reach unanimous decisions even when unanimity was lacking, the principal statesmen boldly had recourse to ingenious formulas and provisional agreements, which each party might construe in its own way, and paid scant attention to what was going on outside. I ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... only clue we possess,' he said. 'I cannot construe it, but I can tell you the story. We have had our agents working in Persia and Mesopotamia for years—mostly young officers of the Indian Army. They carry their lives in their hands, and now and then one disappears, ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... mon cher. You have a way of getting off with a jest, but I always feel that if I say a word they'll construe it into a proposal. Et ca ne m'arrange pas du tout, du tout. Mais du ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... now, however, able to affirm that the interior is all one immense elevated plateau. Information which I obtained from an elderly missionary at Hopedale, together with numerous indications that an intelligent naturalist would know how to construe, enabled P—— to determine this fact with confidence. It is a table-land "varying from five to twenty-five hundred feet in height." Here not a tree grows, not a blade of grass, only lichens and moss, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... languages." As he lived precisely five years, all he did was done at that little age, and it comprised this: "He got by heart almost the entire vocabulary of Latin and French primitives and words, could make congruous syntax, turn English into Latin, and vice versa, construe and prove what he read, and did the government and use of relatives, verbs, substantives, ellipses, and many figures and tropes, and made a considerable progress in Comenius's 'Janua,' and had ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... confessions," responded he. "I may say that I never could construe your visits to Paul, the ingenious artist, merely as dictated by ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... to know how many women truly want the suffrage, and how, when it was won, the earnest anti-tariff wife would construe the marriage service in the face of the husband's belief in high tariff. The indirect influence of women in politics is worth a thought. We felt it sorely in 1861, and thence on to the war's end, and to-day it is the woman who is making the general prohibition laws probable. For ill ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... the Mexican minister himself, or were already withdrawn in consequence of the impressive warnings their commanding officer had received from the Department of War. It is hoped and believed that his Government will take a more dispassionate and just view of this subject, and not be disposed to construe a measure of justifiable precaution, made necessary by its known inability in execution of the stipulations of our treaty to act upon the frontier, into an encroachment upon its rights or ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... very wisely decided not to allow the Indian question to rest upon the results of the campaign of 1863, which left the Indians in possession of the country west of the Missouri, rightly supposing that they might construe their escape from General Sibley the previous year into a victory. It therefore sent out another expedition in 1864, to pursue and attack them beyond the Missouri. The plan and outfit were very similar to those of 1863. General Sully was again to proceed up ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... clear the ground from the point of view of obligation. I think it was due, to prove our good faith to the House of Commons, that I should give, that full information to the House now, and say what I think is obvious from the letter I have just read, that we do not construe anything which has previously taken place in our diplomatic relations with other Powers in this matter as restricting the freedom of the Government to decide what attitude they should take now, or restrict the freedom of the House of Commons to decide ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... steak-and-chop, chop-and-steak dinners of ancient taverns, was occasionally relieved by episodes, which, though not witty in themselves, were yet the cause of wit in others; for it takes but little to cause amusement in a lecture-room, where a bad construe; or the imaginative excuses of late-comers; or the confusion of some young gentleman who has to turn over the leaf of his Greek play and finds it uncut; or the pounding of the same gentleman in the middle of ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... if we construe Saxonicum as ravaged by Saxons, rather than occupied by Saxons—a construction which is so little natural, that I doubt whether it would ever have been resorted to if the language of Gildas had not been supposed to preclude the notion of any Saxon invasion ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... "You had no right to so construe my words. You—you know I am not like that. I trusted you as a man; I—I gave you my—my confidence as a friend," her speech growing swift, and impetuous. "Do not make me sorry. I will not accept your money; I will never remain dependent upon you, or ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... regarded the federal constitution as inadequate in strength to perform its required functions, and believed that weakness to be its greatest defect; and it was his sincere desire, and his uniform practice, so to construe its provisions as to give the greatest strength to the executive in the administration of public affairs. Jefferson, on the other hand, contemplated all executive power with distrust, and desired to impair its vitality and restrain its operations, believing ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... ostrich tips, an imitation sealskin sacque and a string of beads as large as hickory nuts, ending near the floor with a silver heart. There was a self-possessed young lady connected with these accessories; and Pitcher was there to construe her. ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... about Dr John Still, Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1592, says that no one "could be admitted to primam tonsuram, except he could first bene le bene con bene can, as they called it, which is to read well, to conster [construe] well, and to sing well, in which last he hath good judgment." [The three bene's are ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... the Viceroy and Lady Curzon in their own personal arrangements has also been criticised, and people complain that they might have done great good with the immense sums expended in dress and entertainment and display, but it is easy to construe these criticisms into compliments, for everyone testifies that both the viceroy and his beautiful American wife performed their parts to perfection, and that no one could have appeared with greater dignity and grace. Every detail of the affair was appropriate ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... great migration of a people impress an unsophisticated brain? If the entire population leaves a district the matter is clear; the place must be evacuated before the enemy. But the trains loaded with Jews do not come from districts already occupied by the foe. How else can a plain man construe this fact than that the Jews are spies, dangerous people, in short, our internal enemy? And so this one-year-old baby whose puffed-up, tiny hand hangs down from its mother's shoulder is also an enemy, just as is this sad girl wearily skulking in a corner, and this ...
— The Shield • Various
... slightly developed form, the economic process bears the character of a struggle between men for the possession of goods. It has been customary in economic theory, and especially among those economists who adhere with least faltering to the body of modernised classical doctrines, to construe this struggle for wealth as being substantially a struggle for subsistence. Such is, no doubt, its character in large part during the earlier and less efficient phases of industry. Such is also its character in all cases where the "niggardliness ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... effort is made to develop his powers of independent thought and so to enable him to revise his inherited opinions. A certain stimulus no doubt is given to his mental activity by setting him mathematical problems to solve and passages in the classical authors to construe; but his thought on political and social questions remains a thing apart, unstirred, atrophied. What else is this but political propaganda? And when it is reinforced by a thousand subtle hints in and out of the classroom, hints suggesting that, ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... would get a better shot. But, while he was waiting, what he called a "cussed little long-legged bird" scared them off, by giving a sharp, shrill cry of alarm, which the deer evidently were clever enough to construe as meaning that something out of the ordinary ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... I make no doubt that you meant honourable questions. A young lady of Miss Sutton's good sense, and worthy character, could not mean otherwise. And I have said, perhaps, more than I need upon the subject, because we all know how ready the presuming of the other sex are, right or wrong to construe the most innocent meetings in favour of their ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... he began to look upon the hours passed in school with horror. Rather than risk an answer which might be wrong and excite a storm of abuse from the master, he would sit stupidly silent, and when it came towards his turn to stand up and construe he grew sick and white with apprehension. His happy moments were those when Mr. Perkins took the form. He was able to gratify the passion for general knowledge which beset the headmaster; he had read all sorts of strange books beyond his ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham |
