"Misdirection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the vast resources that the European invention of railways and telegraphic communication put within reach of the American people. It has stimulated men to a greater individual activity, perhaps, than the world has ever seen before. Men have been wasted by misdirection no doubt, but there has been less waste by inaction and lassitude than was the case in any previous society. Great bulks of things and great quantities of things have been produced, huge areas brought under cultivation, vast cities reared in ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... Indifference and misdirection are our greatest enemies in times of peace. These hinder our growth and if allowed to exist, will ultimately lead to our becoming ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... N. misteaching^, misinformaton, misintelligence^, misguidance, misdirection, mispersuasion^, misinstruction^, misleading &c v.; perversion, false teaching; sophistry &c 477; college of Laputa; the blind leading the blind. [misteaching by government agents] propaganda, disinformation, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... was the happiest period of his literary life as well as the most successful. During it he produced many of his greatest creations. One decided failure he made; but with this exception if each new story did not seem to exhibit any new power, it at least gave no sign of weakness, or misdirection of energy. This period is in fact so supremely the creative one of Cooper's life as regards the conception of character and scene that nearly all he did ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... that distortion of moral feeling, in consequence of which the inclinations wander from the strict path of rectitude;—but the primary effect of this loss of mental harmony, and that by which it is perpetuated, appears to be chiefly a habitual misdirection of the attention,—or a total want of consideration of the truths and motives, by which the moral judgments and decisions ought to be influenced. Apart from this condition of the mind, indeed, there is reason to believe, that the actual differences in moral ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... is high time that the common sense of civilization should laugh him out of court. The US who are flourishing, or pining, as the case may be, in the British West Indies—by favour of the Colonial Office on the former hypothesis, or, on the second, through the misdirection of their own faculties—do not, and, in the very nature of things, cannot in any race take the lead of any set of men endowed with virile attributes, the conditions of the contest ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... southern States, from Georgia to Virginia, the part of the Navy from first to last was subsidiary, though important. It is therefore unnecessary to go into details, but most necessary to note that here, by misdirection of effort and abuse of means, was initiated the fatal movement which henceforth divided the small British army in North America into two sections, wholly out of mutual support. Here Sir William Howe's error of 1777 was reproduced on a larger scale and was therefore more fatal. This led directly, ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... admittance of a messenger of evil to her invalid should have been an error of judgement. The butler had argued it with her. She belonged to the list of persons appointed to cut life's thread when it strains, their general kindness being so liable to misdirection. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... night the unrepentant winds were full of mischief. A monstrous dignity of fleecy clouds scudded undignified across the blue. The precious park became a tossing waste of woodland, teased into flurried liveliness, full of false starts and misdirection, instantly buffeted for every blunder and bellowing good-natured protests at every cuff. Respectable brown leaves chased one another down the tracks; dark sober pools slapped their confining banks; the steady ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... the plantation road upward, assisted by the moon which was near its full; and toilsomely attaining the limits of the cultivated land, buried themselves in the tomb of the forest. Here, with groping and hurt, and frequent misdirection, they struggled on and on, making of a watercourse their path, and at times so hidden in the defile of rocks that it was as though the earth had closed over them. In this manner were many hours spent until ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... callous if you like, Bunny, but remember that I was in much the same hole as you've since been in yourself, and that I had counted on this W. F. Raffles even as you counted on A. J. I thought of the man with the W. G. beard—the riderless horse and the bloody saddle—the deliberate misdirection that had put me off the track and out of the way—and now the missing manager and the report of bushrangers at this end. But I simply don't pretend to have felt any personal pity for a man whom I had never seen; that kind of pity's usually cant; ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... to suppose that these peculiarities in Spanish literature were produced by the direct action either of the Inquisition or of the government. The foundations of this dark work were laid deep and sure in the old Castilian character. It was the result of the excess and misdirection of that very Christian zeal which fought so gloriously against the intrusion of Mohammedanism into Spain, and of that loyalty which sustained the Spanish princes so faithfully through the whole of that terrible contest. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta |
