"Overestimate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... country and jaunts to the local entertainments. Over and above this, every Thursday evening she went to the subscription library to change the week's supply of books, and there again she met friends and acquaintances. It is hard to overestimate the value of church or chapel—but particularly chapel—as a social institution, in places like Woodhouse. The Congregational Chapel provided Alvina with a whole outer life, lacking which she would have been poor indeed. She was not particularly religious by inclination. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... our country. Too much encouragement cannot be given to the reported efforts of certain railway companies to divert a portion of the tide of immigration to the Southern states. It is impossible, in the opinion of the Bureau, to overestimate the importance of this subject as bearing upon the effect of immigration on the future ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... to automobilism of this great trial one can hardly overestimate it. There is no place here for the freak machine or scorching chauffeur, such as one has found in many great events of the past. A great touring contest over such a course would be bound to have important results in many ways. The ordinary class of circuit is a very close approach to a ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... way,—I'm sure I don't know; beyond that it embarrasses me horribly to have you overestimate me so. If any courage has been shown this night, it is yours ... But I'm forgetting again." He thought to divert her. "Where shall I tell the cabby to go this ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... to overestimate the service which the Federal reserve system has already rendered to the country. It is necessary only to recall the chaotic condition of our banking organization at the time the Federal reserve ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge
... not disposed to blame the politicians and the business men. They govern the nation, it is true, but they do it in a rather absentminded fashion. Those revolutionists who see the misery of the country as a deliberate and fiendish plot overestimate the bad will, the intelligence and the singleness of purpose in the ruling classes. Business and political leaders don't mean badly; the trouble with them is that most of the time they don't mean anything. They ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... school's work is not to be underestimated. The social intercourse that the child experiences there, the regularity of hours, the teacher's personality, all have their favorable influence in the molding of the child's character. But neither must we overestimate the powers of the school. The school has the child but a few hours a day, for barely more than half the year; the classes are unconscionably large. We all hope that the classes will be made smaller, but they never can be small enough, within our own times, for the purpose ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... those things which tend to produce harmony of thought will bring happiness and contentment; the will, rightly drilled,—and divinely guided,—can drive out all discordant thoughts, and usher in the reign of perpetual harmony. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of forming a habit of cheerfulness early in life. The serene optimist is one whose mind has dwelt so long upon the sunny side of life that he has acquired a habit ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... overestimate the impetus that a master’s successes impart to the progress of his pupils. My first studious year in Paris had been passed in the shadow of an elderly painter, who was comfortably dozing on the laurels of thirty years before. The change from that sleepy environment ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... delight is fitful and uncertain unless bound or blended with the power to be indifferent to involuntary annoying emotions, and that self-command is in itself the highest mental pleasure, or one which surpasses all of any kind. He who does not overestimate the value of money or anything earthly is really richer than the millionaire. There is a foolish story told by COMBE in his Physiology of a man who had the supernatural gift of never feeling any pain, be it from cold, hunger, heat, or accident. The rain beat ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... to overestimate the value of the Celtic contribution to our national literature and character: the race that gave us Ossian, and Finn, and Cuchulain, that sang of the sorrowful love and doom of Deirdre, that told of the pursuit of Diarmit and Grania, till ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... as under graver faults, lies very commonly an overestimate of our special individuality, as distinguished from our generic humanity. It is just here that the very highest society asserts its superior breeding. Among truly elegant people of the highest ton, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... chiefly in slender plumpness and bloom. But it served her purpose as no classic mould would have done. She did not overestimate it. But she was probably better satisfied with it than with most of those conditions of her life that people were always telling her were ideal. They spoke of her as the only child in a way that implied ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... made them overestimate the distances they did—and they did overestimate them, very much. When we were tracking up on the Rat Portage, in the ice water, at the Arctic Circle, don't you remember we figured on double what we had actually done? A man's wife corrected him on how long they had been married. He ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... contains the principle, that solicitude for the future is at bottom heathen worldly-mindedness. The heathen tendency in us all leads to an overestimate of material good, and it is a question of circumstances whether that shall show itself in heaping up earthly treasures, or in anxious care. These are the same plant, only the one is growing in the tropics of sunny prosperity, and the other in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... and embarrassing nature of this factor in the campaign are hard to overestimate. The insufficient number of horses and their debility have doubtless accounted {p.098} for much of the delay and seeming languor of action, which has appeared otherwise inexplicable; the utter weakness of the poor beasts having indeed been ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... this trouble seriously, But not to gloom or whine; To never overestimate Our strength, or to decline To see this is no picnic, But do our earnest part With brain and muscles, newly trained— ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... "Probably also a bee. Who but a bee would overestimate human beings like that? Your Miss Cassandra, or whatever her name is, doesn't know her history. Those cities and towers and other human devices you speak of are none of them any good to us. Who ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... but to drive on up to the end of the shaft, come out into that world wherever the shaft ended, then try to fight his way through to the great hall where he hoped to find Phee-e-al. And his haste made him overestimate the passing time; their journey had ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... common to the lower animals and to savage or degenerate man alike—as against the intellect and the reasoned action of the will, he saw a menace to human attainment, to civilisation—in the best meaning of that word— to right reason and noble living, which it would be difficult to overestimate. These good people, while pouring contempt on the body, and even denying its existence, in point of fact thought and talked about little else. All of which struck him as not only very tiresome and very silly, but very dangerous. Modern Protestantism might eventuate in Rationalism, in a limiting ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... rather dared—confide. He is in the Chancellerie for Foreign Affairs. His uncle M. de Talleyrand thinks a great deal of him and often entrusts him with very delicate work. This morning he gave M. de Marsan a valuable paper to copy—a paper, Monsieur, the importance of which it were impossible to overestimate. The very safety of this country, the honour of our King, are involved in it. I cannot tell you its exact contents, and it is because I would not tell more about it to the police that they would not help me in any way, and referred me to you. How could they, said the chief Commissary ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... experience influence morale, playing a part difficult to overestimate. They provide a basis for evaluating discipline. A study of the history of the State may prove valuable in estimating the present condition in this respect; a nation or command which may be classed as a veteran has an advantage over a ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... "You overestimate me, my friend. Much of that is merely contracted for. Actually it'll take me nearly nine months to get rid of it. And by that time I'll have more. Anyway, I think I have something like ten million left. And remember that way back in the twentieth century some ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... be a strong coward and a weak hero. But in the spiritual region, strength and courage do go together. The consciousness of the divine power with us, and that alone, will make us bold with a boldness that has no taint of levity and presumption mingled with it, and never will overestimate its own strength. The charge to Joshua, then, not only insists upon the duty of strength, but on the duty of conscious strength, and on the duty of measuring the strength that is at my back with the weakness that is against me, and of being bold because I know that more and 'greater ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to believe that although the business genius must have a good inheritance, yet the inheritance does not determine what its possessor shall make of himself. Many persons are inclined to overestimate the influence of inheritance in determining success in business. The folly of this attitude is every day becoming more and ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... Now, however, that this question is raised, I feel it desirable to say without any hesitation that the majority of golfers possess vastly exaggerated notions of the effect of strong cross winds on the flight of their ball. They greatly overestimate the capabilities of a breeze. To judge by their observations on the tee, one concludes that a wind from the left is often sufficient to carry the ball away at an angle of forty-five degrees, and indeed sometimes, when it does take such an exasperating ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... moments Professor Thunder was not likely to overestimate the intrinsic value of the Missing Link as he stood, for tucked away under the singlet that lay between him and his hairy simian cuticle was a store of treasure with the product of which Nicholas Crips ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... that his overestimate of her ignorance of affairs had not lured him into giving her the names of the parties at interest to transcribe. But did she really understand? ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... easy to estimate the effectiveness of the constitutional and of the occasional factors in their relation to each other. Theory is always inclined to overestimate the first while therapeutic practice renders prominent the significance of the latter. By no means should it be forgotten that between the two there exists a relation of cooeperation and not of exclusion. The constitutional ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... down the street, trampling under foot all who were in the way. One man was gored through and through by a maddened bull. At least a dozen persons', it is said, were killed, though probably this is an overestimate. One observer tells us that "the first sight I saw was a man with blood streaming from his wounds, carrying a dead woman in his arms. He placed the body on the floor of the court at the Palace Hotel, ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... the world by the type of character which they embodied and, in a sense, created. In this view, Cicero represents a force that no historian can neglect, and the importance of which it is not easy to overestimate. He did for the Empire and the Middle Ages what Lucretius, with his far greater philosophic genius, totally failed to do—created forms of thought in which the life of philosophy grew, and a body of expression which alone ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... Mr. North, speaks excitedly," said the elder gentleman; "yet I think she does not overestimate the unfortunate position in which your odd fancy places you. I know nothing of the reasons that have impelled you to this step; I only know that the popular opinion is that the cause is utterly inadequate. You are still young, with a future before you. ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... on horseback, many of them, from youth, and are trained to the perfect control of themselves and their steeds in difficult circumstances. In addition to these causes of superiority, they have a vast advantage over the Federal troops in the present contest from two causes: It is hard to overestimate the advantage they find in a knowledge of the ground, the roads, the ravines, the hiding-places, the marshes, the fords, the forests, &c. But even more important than this is the sympathy they have from the inhabitants, almost ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... entertaining, our opera box, the theater and social frivolities aggregate no inconsiderable sum, which I will not overestimate at thirty-five hundred dollars. ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... water, of knowing every little wickedness of the ocean and understanding the way to conquer it too; her mainmast cleared eighty-five feet, and was stepped well forward, with a boom that Colin did not overestimate greatly when he put it at eighty feet. Although the boy was not a keen judge, he thought the bowsprit immensely long, and noticed what a narrow nose ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... We can not overestimate the fervent love of liberty, the intelligent courage, and the sum of common sense with which our fathers made the great experiment of self-government. When they found, after a short trial, that the confederacy ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... "I think you overestimate my service to him, possibly. I dare say the boat could have picked him up ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... "Thou dost overestimate thyself," she retorted. Catching up the fan and chaplet that her woman had let fall she made as though to run past him. But he put himself in her way, and with shining eyes, caught ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... city; and in the city itself, it was said that the personal roll of Peter Poyas embraced a membership of six hundred names. More than one witness placed the conjectural strength of Vesey's forces as high as 9,000, but I am inclined to write this down as a gross overestimate of the people actually enrolled as ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... he at once takes a name as the first step in liberty—the first assertion of individual identity. A woman's dignity is equally involved in a life-long name, to mark her individuality. We can not overestimate the demoralizing effect on woman herself, to say nothing of society at large, for her to consent thus to merge her existence so wholly in that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Church, and ever tempts us to substitute outward connection with the institution for real possession of the truth of which the institution is the outgrowth. Therefore I urge upon you very emphatically—and all the more earnestly because of the superstitious overestimate of outward connection with the outward institution of the Church which is eagerly proclaimed all around us to-day—that connection with any organised body of believing men is not 'being within,' and that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... desirable; and he loved her beyond expression. But ... his play was also more than a slight thing in his life. It meant a good deal to him; he had worked hard and put the best that was in him into its making; and hard as the work had been, it had been a labour of love. He wasn't a man to overestimate his ability; he possessed a singularly sane and clear appreciation of the true value of his work, harbouring no illusions as to his real status either as dramatist or novelist. But at the same time, he knew when he had done good work. And A Single Woman ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... say) conspicuously out of harmony with the present time. But if you hanker for these pictures of the past that is another matter. I will merely issue a warning that you should preserve this book on some shelf not too accessible by those who are still young enough to overestimate its importance. ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... Putnam, Martin H. Fisk, Isaac A. Parker, Ephraim March, William E. Barnard, Ambrose W. Clarke, Amos N. Currier, Richard C. Stanley, Albert S. Bickmore, George S. Morris, and John W. Scribner. It is hardly possible to overestimate the influence of these men in shaping the thought and ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... But I overestimate our numbers, for it was not the whole of the Heilbron contingent that reached the firing line. We had to leave some of them behind with the horses at the foot of the kop, and there were others who ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... which he considered essential to success not only in battle, but in pursuit of a defeated enemy. From his point of view, Thomas was unquestionably right in his action. How he came to make so great an overestimate of the Confederate strength, in view of the means of information in his possession and the estimate General Sherman had given him before he started for Savannah, it is difficult to conjecture. But the fact is now beyond question that Thomas made all those elaborate preparations to attack an enemy ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... It is difficult to overestimate the importance of Mr. Humphrey Crewe, of his value to the town of Leith, and to the State at large, and in these pages only a poor attempt at an appreciation of him may be expected. Mr. Crewe by ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... here," said Dick. "If we don't, I'm thinking the cause of the Union will be more than doubtful. We don't seem to have the generals in the East that we have in the West. Our leaders hang on here and they don't overestimate the enemy." ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a tendency among Mendelians and mutationists to overestimate the importance of experiments in comparison with reasoning, either inductive or deductive. Bateson, however, has admitted that Mendelian experiments and observations on mutation have not solved the problem of adaptation. It seems to be demanded, nevertheless, that characters must be produced ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... the question of a sterile abnegation, we must foresee that it may be important not to overestimate one's individual interests, to the visible detriment of the ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... from the witchery of him because they do not well know the fine art of approaching him. I would, therefore, be a doorkeeper, and throw some doors wide open, that men and women may unhindered enter. This essay aims to stand as a porter at the gate. We shall never overestimate Shakespeare, because we can not. Some men and things lie beyond the danger of hyperbole. No exaggeration is possible concerning them, seeing they transcend all dreams. Space can not be conceived by the most luxuriant imagination, holding, as it does, all worlds, and capable of holding another ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... regularly; to which he consented, but not until he had assured himself that this would be acceptable to the pastor of the Reformed congregation. But his mission was to the sheep scattered abroad, of whom he reckoned (an extravagant overestimate) not less than one hundred thousand of the Lutheran party in Pennsylvania alone. Others, as he soon found, had been feeling, like himself, the hurt of the daughter of Zion. A series of conferences was held from month to month, in which men of the various ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... of medical books, the apprenticeships, training in Europe or England, and the demand for medical services despite a high fee, it is possible to overestimate the competence of the seventeenth-century Virginia doctor even by the standards of his own century. An observation made by William Byrd II early in the next century tends to reduce the ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... overestimate the value of the insistence on the social aspect of human affairs as Mrs. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... favorite resort of pilgrims, chiefly as the site of the graves of the great apostles, while many flocked to the tomb of Saint Martin of Tours. Meanwhile, wrote Henry C. Sheldon in a "History of the Christian Church," there were emphatic cautions against an overestimate of the value of pilgrimages. The eminent Greek Father, Gregory of Nyssa (332-398), said that change of place brings God ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... "You overestimate my worth and his interest. He is a man who lives in a world of his own and needs no society, save such as is afforded in his tasteful and elegant home. He loves books, flowers, music, paintings, and his dog! He is a stern ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... shown by Professor Lloyd Morgan[145] how we ourselves, and even professed psychologists among us, tend to overestimate the complexity of the mental processes of animals; and there can be no doubt that savages generally are subject to this error in a very much greater degree, that, in fact, they make, without questioning and in most cases without explicit statement even to ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... Journalists have an excessive overestimate of their influence. They cannot, as Diana said, comparing them with men on the Parliamentary platform, cannot feel they are aboard the big vessel; they can only strive to raise a breeze, or find one to swell; and they cannot measure the stoutness ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... so much better than the Atlantic ever had that I am probably inclined to overestimate everything I saw on the voyage. It was the first trip at sea that ever gave me any pleasure. The huge vessels are in themselves a great comfort, and in the placid waters and the sliding down the rotund side of the great globe under warmer and warmer skies ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... but in the case of the medieval romances there is this direct and real dependence. The Medea of Apollonius Rhodius is at the beginning of medieval poetry, in one line of descent (through Virgil's Dido as well as Ovid's Medea); and it would be hard to overestimate the accumulated debt of all the modern poets whose rhetoric of passion, whether they knew it or not, is derived somehow from the earlier medieval masters of Dante or Chaucer, Boccaccio ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... dismantled it. One of van Manderpootz's few mistakes was to leave it around where a pair of incompetents like you and Denise could get to it. It seems that I continually overestimate the intelligence of others. I suppose I tend to judge them by the brain ...
— The Ideal • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... in Georgia, where I found a ward of eighty sick and wounded soldiers fresh from the battle of Resacea. My professional fitness for duties so grave and so large in extent was of a very questionable order, and I did not in the least overestimate it. ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... established priesthood is naturally the firmest support of despotism; but the course of events made that of Massachusetts revolutionary. This was a social factor whose importance it is hard to overestimate; for though the influence of the elders had much declined during the eighteenth century, their political power was still immense; and it is impossible to measure the degree in which the drift of feeling toward independence would ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... interesting volume of the letters I have received from correspondents unknown to the world of authorship, but writing from an instinctive impulse, which many of them say they have long felt and resisted. One must not allow himself to be flattered into an overestimate of his powers because he gets many letters expressing a peculiar attraction towards his books, and a preference of them to those with which he would not have dared to compare his own. Still, if the homo unius libri—the man of one book—choose to select one of our ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... within a reasonable distance, in order that his movements or lack of movement may be constantly watched and reported on. The usual tendency is towards a failure to send these patrols far enough to the front and for the patrol leader to overestimate the distance he has traveled. A mile through strange country with the ever-present possibility of encountering the enemy seems three ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... the distances they did—and they did overestimate them, very much. When we were tracking up on the Rat Portage, in the ice water, at the Arctic Circle, don't you remember we figured on double what we had actually done? A man's wife corrected him on how long they had been married. He said it was twenty years, and she said it was ten, by ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... is very difficult to speak positively. The invert himself is a misleading guide because he has formed round himself a special coterie of homosexual persons, and, moreover, he is sometimes apt to overestimate the number of inverts through the misinterpretation of small indications that are not always conclusive. The estimate of the ordinary normal person, feeling the ordinary disgust toward abnormal phenomena, is also misleading, because ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... One can hardly overestimate the boon a man like Dr. Russel is to a district. Trust is a plant of slow growth with the natives, but they have learned to trust him entirely, and go to him in all their troubles as children go to a father. And he has a very real helpmate in his wife. ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... important. The victories by which the struggles between the European conquerors themselves were ended deserve lasting commemoration. Yet, sometimes, even the most important of them, sweeping though they were, were in parts less sweeping than they seemed. It would be impossible to overestimate the far-reaching effects of the overthrow of the French power in America; but Lower Canada, where the fatal blow was given, itself suffered nothing but a political conquest, which did not interfere in the least with the growth of a French state along both sides ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... born to greatness. He had none of the advantages which even the poorest boys may now enjoy. But he achieved greatness by always making the best use of such opportunities as came in his way. He was not afraid of work. He did not give up to discouragements. He did not overestimate his own abilities. He was earnest and faithful in little things; and that, after all, is the surest way of attaining to great things. There is no man to whom we Americans owe a greater debt of gratitude. Without his aid the American colonies would hardly have won independence. ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin
... terrestrial activity depends. But on the modern theory, which includes the play of electrical phenomena as a function of the aether, there are other considerations which show that this number 10-2 is really an enormous overestimate; and it is not impossible that the co-efficient of ultimate inertia of the aether is greater than the co-efficient of inertia (of different kind) of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and broad enough to include both ideas, the human mind is prone to overestimate the one or the other. Traces, at least, of a similar mode of thought persisted by the Greek Fathers of the Church, and disappeared, if ever, with the predominance of Latin theology. To the oriental the idea of evolution is natural. The earth ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... more and more apparent that the exact number of lives lost will never be known. Up to the present time the disposition has been to under rather than overestimate the number of ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... than an episode in itself. The author actually cannot think of any better way than to make Constance Bonacieux—who is represented as a rather unusually intelligent woman, well acquainted with her husband's character, and certainly not likely to overestimate him through any superabundance of wifely affection or admiration—propose that he, a middle-aged mercer of sedentary and bourgeois habits, shall undertake an expedition which, on the face of it, requires youth, strength, audacity, presence ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... vigorous mind, her clear insight, and strong common-sense, made her quick to judge and discriminate. As Dinah knew, she very seldom made a mistake in her opinion of a person. Dinah's charitable nature was rather prone to overestimate her friends and acquaintances—"all her geese were swans." As Elizabeth often said, when she cared for any one she simply could not see their faults. "If we were all as blind as Dinah," her sister would say, "the world would be a happier place;" ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... did not overestimate the value of the manuscript, and it would be extremely interesting could we trace the evidence by which it came to be believed that it was written by the hand of St. Tecla. A note in Arabic at the foot ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... unscrupulous intriguers, without an atom of moral sense or loyalty, and both possessed ability, differing in kind, perhaps, which they used in the accomplishment of their own ends. France can never overestimate the great evil these two men did to the national cause. Napoleon's power and penetrating vision kept them in check only when he could grasp the nettle. Even when absent on his campaigns, they knew he was kept ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... psychological purposes but for the vaudeville stage, and although such observations unquestionably have certain value for comparative psychology, it is well known that unless an observer knows the history of an act, he is not able to evaluate it in terms of intelligence and is especially prone to overestimate its value ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... head and presented in a concrete shape the somewhat vague speculations as to development and evolution which had long been floating in the minds of naturalists. In the actual working out of Darwin's great theory it is impossible to overestimate the influence of Lyell. This is made abundantly clear in Darwin's letters, and it must never be forgotten that Darwin himself was a geologist. His training in this science enabled him to grasp the import of the facts so ably marshalled by Lyell in ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... terms of some general conception, some theory, of these relations; forgetting that the simplest natural occurrence is so complicated that our powers of description are incapable of expressing it completely and accurately; forgetting the uselessness of disconnected facts; we are inclined to overestimate the importance of our own views of nature's ways, and to underestimate the usefulness of the views of our predecessors. Moreover, as naturalists have not been obliged, in recent times, to make a complete renunciation of any comprehensive theory wherein they had lived and moved for ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... a long way inland Mr. Weaver and others described it as of the like good quality as at the Mission, but with much muskeg. It is difficult to estimate the extent of the latter, for, being more noticeable than good land, the tendency is to overestimate. Its proportion to arable land is generally put at about 50 per cent., which may be over or under the truth, for only actual township or topographic surveys ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... cost of the work within a short series of years. The report of the Secretary of the Navy shows the saving in our naval expenditures which would result. The Senator from Alabama, Mr. Morgan, in his argument upon this subject before the Senate of the last session, did not overestimate the importance of the work when he said that 'The canal is the most important subject now connected with the commercial growth and progress of ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... newspaper controversies Never uses a one-syllable word when he can think of a longer one No satisfaction in being a Pope in those days Not afraid of a million Bedouins Not bring ourselves to think St John had two sets of ashes Old Travelers One is apt to overestimate beauty when it is rare Only solitary thing one does not smell in Turkey Oriental splendor! Original first shoddy contract mentioned in history Overflowing his banks People talk so glibly of "feeling," "expression," "tone," Perdition catch all the guides Picture which one ought to see once—not ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Mark Twain • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... clinches its gripe upon the guilty heart, and claims it for its own. Then, and not before, sin is actually felt and acknowledged, and, if unaccompanied by repentance, grows a thousand-fold more virulent by its self-consciousness. Be it considered, also, that men often overestimate their capacity for evil. At a distance, while its attendant circumstances do not press upon their notice, and its results are dimly seen, they can bear to contemplate it. They may take the steps which lead to ...
— Fancy's Show-Box (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the army. It was Colonel James Beecher, of the famous Beecher family, and a brother of Henry Ward Beecher. He was in command of the First North Carolina Colored Regiment. In this position it would be hard to overestimate the variety and value of his services, for he became for his soldiers at once a gallant fighter, an eloquent, convincing preacher, and a most indefatigable and successful school-teacher. Preaching had been his ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... is to balance their real importance against both the good and the bad qualities shown not only by the individual but by his brothers, sisters, parents, and other relatives. Conscientious sufferers from visible defects of any kind are apt to overestimate their importance. Moreover, many supposedly hereditary defects may equally well be the result of an unfavorable environment like that which caused similar defects in the parents. Under ideal conditions they might never ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... of the night. He flattered himself that he was able to look at any situation straight in the face, so to speak. He flattered himself that he was not a man to be led away by vanity. He was, as a rule, on very good terms with himself, but he was rather inclined to undervalue than overestimate the distinction which he enjoyed among his fellow-men. And the result of his due consideration of his last meeting with Phyllis was to make him feel that he had never met a girl who was quite so nice; but he also felt that, if he ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... in the training of the colonial girl was manners or etiquette—the art of being a charming hostess. As Mrs. Earle says, "It is impossible to overestimate the value these laws of etiquette, these conventions of custom had at a time, when neighborhood life was the whole outside world." How many, many a "don't" the colonial miss had dinned into her ears! Hear but a few of them: ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... that neither in the city nor country are we likely to overestimate the influence of the press. The daily and weekly paper have a wide circulation among rural people and furnish a source of penetrating and persistent social influence all the more significant because the readers are little conscious of what they receive from their reading. ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... infancy and youth, but the strong, healthy men and women. The weaklings have to look out for themselves, receive ample warning in the disastrous obvious effects of the slightest imprudence. The robust, even the wariest of them, even the Henry Gowers, overestimate and overtax their strength. Gower's downfall was champagne. He could not resist a bottle of it for dinner every night. As so often happens, the collapse of the kidneys came without any warning that a man of powerful constitution would deem ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... You cannot overestimate real intensity of feeling behind Irish question here. It is growing every day and is not at all confined to Irishmen. The passage of resolution of sympathy with almost unanimous vote in Senate last night is but a slight evidence of interest here. I wish the President could do just a little ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... Review," a post which resulted in a fine of L100 and three months' imprisonment for a libel on Admiral Knowles. He died on October 21, 1771. Smollett wrote altogether five novels and a number of historical works and records of travel. It is impossible to overestimate his influence on novel-writing. Most of the great Victorian writers, especially Charles Dickens, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... [causes of misjudgment. 6] ignorance &c 491. erroneous assumptions, erroneous data, mistaken assumptions, incorrect assumptions (error) 495. V. misjudge, misestimate, misthink^, misconjecture^, misconceive &c (error) 495; fly in the face of facts; miscalculate, misreckon, miscompute. overestimate &c 482; underestimate &c 483. prejudge, forejudge; presuppose, presume, prejudicate^; dogmatize; have a bias &c n.; have only one idea; jurare in verba magistri [Lat.], run away with the notion; jump to a conclusion, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... occasion and the glowing words of praise for the two friends of the dead, spoken with such peculiar force by the minister, led her, as was natural, to overestimate their worth and to undervalue her own. With the same spirit, therefore, with which she admired Herbert and Bob for their acts, she condemned her own inactivity, and there in that little room beside the remains of the humble newsboy she resolved ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... necessary for the first part of the trip. The canoe afforded these people their chief means for getting a livelihood, and was valued accordingly. A boat and a woman were, by common consent, placed upon an equality of value,—certainly not an overestimate of the worth of the canoe, if one laid aside chivalry and regarded the squaws dispassionately. When Captain Lewis was compelled to give a half-carrot of tobacco and a laced coat in exchange for one of the little craft, he observed that he considered himself defrauded of the coat. No doubt he had ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... poems and novels of Scott, Grimm's and Andersen's Fairy Tales, much of Defoe and Swift, Goldsmith's Vicar of Wake field, Coleridge's Ancient Mariner (he himself was very fond of that poem), and many other things, and I cannot overestimate the good they did me. His talks to me during our walks gave me, under the guise of pleasantry, not so much specific information concerning things (though that was not wanting), but—character; that is, the questions he put to me, the ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... of the temptation which most easily besets Mr. Forster are trifles, but the same leaning betrays him sometimes into graver mistakes of overestimate. He calls Swift the best letter-writer in the language, though Gray, Walpole, Cowper, and Lamb be in some essential qualities his superiors. He praises his political writing so extravagantly that we ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... We cannot overestimate the importance of the change effected in the Roman constitution by the creation of this office of the tribunate. Under the protection and leadership of the tribunes, who were themselves protected by oaths of inviolable sanctity, ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... of the slender amount of evidence on which it rests,—must needs be accepted as true. They lose sight of the correlative difficulty:—How comes it to pass that the rest of the copies read the place otherwise? On all such occasions it is impossible to overestimate the importance of detecting the particular cause which has brought about, or which at least will fully account for, this depravation. When this has been done, it is hardly too much to say that a case presents itself like as when a pasteboard mask ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... you mean by coming here at this hour?" he demanded savagely. "You came here to warn me!—really, you overestimate ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... be hard to overestimate the distress caused by the atmosphere which the forest fires left behind them. There are many gases and vapors which we cannot breathe; but the trouble about smoke is that although we can manage to get along with it when it is not too dense, it is ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... rather interesting to observe the different forms which vulgarity is apt to take in the two countries. In England vulgarity is stolid; in America it is smart and aggressive. We are apt, I think, to overestimate the amount in the latter country because it is so much more in voluble evidence. An English vulgarian is often hushed into silence by the presence of his social superior; an American vulgarian either recognises none such or tries to prove himself as good as you by being unnecessarily ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... residence at Concord, for the purpose of editing the Herald of Freedom, an anti-slavery paper which had been started some three or four years before. John Pierpont, than whom there could not be a more competent witness, in his brief and beautiful sketch of the life and writings of Rogers, does not overestimate the ability with which the Herald was conducted, when he says of its editor: "As a newspaper writer, we think him unequalled by any living man; and in the general strength, clearness, and quickness of his intellect, we think all who ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... York Tribune, where for twenty-five years he disseminated the knowledge of the best thought and literature broadcast over the land. When we consider the immense circulation of that periodical and the quality of its readers, we can hardly overestimate the value of his work. Many have become famous ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... army. During the night of the 26th Howe outflanked them and brought his main body to a position on their rear. The next day an attack was made on their front; they were caught between two divisions of the king's troops and were defeated. Howe put their loss at 3,300, which is certainly an overestimate, though he made nearly 1,100 prisoners, among them the generals Sullivan and Lord Stirling, as the Americans called him, an unsuccessful claimant of that earldom.[113] The British casualties were 377. The Americans retreated within their inner lines. If Howe had allowed his troops to storm their ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... of this evidence for our Lord's visit to the Unseen Life. Do not overestimate it. It is not all Scripture. But all that is not Scripture is the wide-spread belief of the primitive Church which was afterwards crystallized into an article of the Creed. Surely it is enough to deepen our sense of the reality of that Unseen Life. It strongly confirms what we have ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... it—by Jove you don't. (Suddenly inspired.) No, you don't, Bob. You overestimate your strength. It's very wrong to overestimate one's strength. People— ah—people have died of it. Why, I'll bet you a hat you can't start now and walk up to Central Park and back in an hour. Come. I'll ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... hear the twinkle in his voice. "My dear lady," he said, "you overestimate my play as, in your great kindness of heart, you overestimate many other things connected with me. But I shall like to think of you at the golf links at eleven o'clock to-morrow morning. You might drive there, but the walk ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... their older connexion with the baronage into so close and intimate a union with the representatives of the towns that at the opening of the reign of Edward the Third the two orders are found grouped formally together, under the name of "The Commons." It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this change. Had Parliament remained broken up into its four orders of clergy, barons, knights, and citizens, its power would have been neutralized at every great crisis by the jealousies ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... impossible to overestimate the value of these benefactions to men of talent and genius. Where would Wordsworth have been, what could he have done, without the gift bestowed upon him by Raisley Calvert! In America such assistance is oftener given in the more ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... answered by Gen. Botha. But such instances, I believe, are so rare that really they are the exceptions which seem to prove the rule. Of course, it goes without saying that every person of English descent is heartily with the mother country, and I do not suppose it would be an overestimate to add that quite 80 per cent, of the Dutch are of the ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... relation between form and content,—the respective value of methods and materials. Primarily, there are two groups of worthy fiction,—that which is great mainly on account of its content, and that which is great mainly on account of its form. It would be unwise, of course, to overestimate the single and inherent value of either material or method. Some comparison, however, may be made between the merits of the ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... as in profitable paths, and the slow and groping struggle with its own ignorance, inertia, and folly, leaves it covered in every age of history with filth and blood. It would hardly be possible to exaggerate man's wretchedness if it were not so easy to overestimate his sensibility. There is a fond of unhappiness in every bosom, but the depths are seldom probed; and there is no doubt that sometimes frivolity and sometimes sturdy habit helps to keep attention on the surface and to cover up the inner ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... constant tendency on the part of energetic intellectual workers, first, to concentrate their energies on a minute specialty, leaving public affairs and interests to their own course. Second, they are apt to overestimate their contributions to the stock of means by which men are made happier, and what is more serious, to underestimate in comparison those orderly, modest, self-denying, moral qualities, by which only men are made worthier, and the continuity of society is made surer. Third, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... period, from being able to give any but the evasive answer he actually did give to the searching philosophical questions put by his youthful admirer. But it is not easy, especially in the light of Isaac Hecker's subsequent experiences, to overestimate the influence which this new presentation of our Saviour had upon the development of his mind and character. For reasons which we have tried to indicate by a brief description of some of his life-long interior traits, the ordinary Protestant view, restricted and narrow, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... mistaken assumptions, incorrect assumptions (error) 495. V. misjudge, misestimate, misthink[obs3], misconjecture[obs3], misconceive &c. (error) 495; fly in the face of facts; miscalculate, misreckon, miscompute. overestimate &c. 482; underestimate &c. 483. prejudge, forejudge; presuppose, presume, prejudicate[obs3]; dogmatize; have a bias &c. n.; have only one idea; jurare in verba magistri[Lat], run away with the notion; jump to a conclusion, rush to a conclusion, leap to a conclusion, judge hastily, shoot ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... this confident dogmatism, which gives us the secret of the enormous influence of Treitschke on his countrymen, as it explains the hypnotism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on a previous generation. I do not think it would be easy to overestimate the extent of that influence. It is true that in one sense Treitschke's political philosophy only expresses the Prussian policy, and that he did not create it. But when a political ideal is expounded with such clarity and such force, when it is propagated with such ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... fertile land may be better business than the half-clearing of land perhaps best suited for forest growth anyway. Again, not fully realizing the plentifulness of forest products in the new locality, he may actually overestimate the value of an attractive piece of forest land showing evidence of the thoughtful care suggested in a ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... falsifying to a sick or dying man, he says, "we overestimate the value of human life, and, besides, we in a measure usurp the place of Providence, when we believe we may save it by committing sin." In other words, Dorner counts falsifying with the intention of deceiving, even ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... overestimate the originality of the Cortrights' seaside garden, and even after your intimate description, it contained several surprises in the shape of masses of the milkweeds that flourish in sandy soil, especially the dull pink, and the orange, about which the brick-red monarch butterflies were hovering ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... the enormous dramatic value connected with the cinematograph. Though it can never take the place of an actual performance, whether in story form or on the stage, it has a real educational value in its possibilities of representation which it is difficult to overestimate, and I believe that its introduction into the school curriculum, under the strictest supervision, will be of extraordinary benefit. The movement, in its present chaotic condition, and in the hands of commercial management, is more likely to ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... Washington's life. From being the mainstay of Virginia and fighting with General Braddock against the French and Indians, he became the mainstay of the United Colonies and fought through seven long and trying years against the veterans of England. Who can overestimate the great patience and courage and determination that ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... made Mortier's house his headquarters at the close of his campaigns waged against French power in America. He is really not so well known as he should be, for in those tangled beginnings of our country we can hardly overestimate the importance of any one determined or strategic move, and it is due to Amherst, very largely, that half of the State of New York was not made a part of Canada. Incidentally, Amherst ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... of those experiments. It was here that the opposite of the hypothesis which I had presupposed suggested itself to me with surprising force. I found that just the ones who perceive the repetition least hate it most, and that those who have a strong perception of the uniform impressions and who overestimate their number are the ones who on the whole welcome ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... ask our president if he does not overestimate the importance of standing up so straight that there is danger of falling over backward? There is no difference of opinion as to the commercial value of the great asset which he has established for the Companies, in so completely winning the ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... a compliment to me as a conversationalist, As you wrote in your note you appreciate my sensible conversation I am afraid you overestimate me. I have a friend who is really brilliant, and can converse eloquently upon any subject. May I bring him ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... father and mother it is difficult to overestimate, almost as difficult as to overestimate what he has accomplished by his ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... overestimate my services. Long years ago in our temples the condition of the state was represented in this manner. I have only disinterred that which later generations had ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... They could not have helped imitating it, if they would; and they did not think of avoiding imitation of it, if they could. It modified, to a very large extent, their grammar; it influenced, to an extent almost impossible to overestimate, the prosody of their finished literature; it supplied their vocabulary; it furnished models for all their first conscious literary efforts of the more deliberate kind, and it conditioned those which were ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... not a word; but I sat by myself, and I matured, I think, the maddest scheme that ever entered a sane man's head. Desperate diseases, as everybody knows, ask for desperate remedies, and here I do not know how it was possible for anybody to overestimate the urgency of the case. Count Rossano has gone peacefully to his rest now this many a year, but I had learned to love the man with a loyal affection and esteem, the like of which I never felt for any human creature, except my wife and my own children. It made for a ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... divinity is present neither more nor less than he is in this globe of ours or in ourselves. This is how, then, one must begin to withdraw oneself from the multitude into oneself. One ought to arrive at such a point to despise and not to overestimate every labour, so that, the more the desires and the vices contend with each other inwardly and the vicious enemies dispute outwardly, so much the more should one breathe and rise, and with spirit, if possible, surmount this steep hill. Here there ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... what, in a crisis like this, is equally wicked, the selfishness of party spirit, preferring party to country. More than this, it has triumphed over the dangerous and destructive notions on State sovereignty, which traitors and partisans have dared invoke. It is impossible to overestimate the importance for the present and for the future of this victorious assertion of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, we find, in a review of the control of prostitution, an estimate in regard to the syphilization of a nation. The estimates are made on the most conservative figures, as, in the desire of the reviewer not to overestimate, he starts by figuring out the actual number of prostitutes in England, Wales, and Scotland to be only 50,000, when they were estimated, by those who had carefully studied the subject, as being more than double that number; the conservative estimate is, ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... things which only really comes into view in actual warfare. The special standpoint of a particular arm must be rejected as unjustified, and the departmental spirit must be silenced. Care must be taken not to overestimate the technical and material means of power in spite of their undoubted importance, and to take sufficient account of the spiritual and moral factors. Our age, which has made such progress in the conquest of nature, is inclined to attach too ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... in his stimulating essays, 'On Actors and the Art of Acting,' has told us that audiences are inclined to overestimate the genius of an actor and to underestimate his trained skill. We are prone to accept the fallacy of the "inspiration of the moment," and to give little credit to the careful preliminary rehearsing ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... could remember them) which you said about me at the dinner. Frank came early next morning boiling over with enthusiasm about your speech. You have indeed always been to me a most generous friend, but I know, alas, too well how greatly you overestimate me. Forgive me for bothering ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... discern that since mere seeing may create false impressions in the mind, and that only by careful observation can we gather for future use such impressions as are thoroughly reliable, we cannot well overestimate the importance ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... to overestimate the value of swine to the general farmer; but to the factory farmer they are indispensable. They furnish a profitable market for much that could not be sold, and they turn this waste material into a surprising lot of money in a marvellously short time. A pig should reach his market before he is nine ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... his friends and friends of his enemies. Truly, you offer me a great advantage in prospective, and are good enough to propose that I step into Count Schwarzenberg's place and rule the country in the Elector's name, as he has done. But I am not blind to my own shortcomings, and do not overestimate myself. I know very well that I am as yet but an inexperienced young man, who has still a great deal to learn, and is by no means in a position to take the place of so distinguished and adroit a statesman as Count Schwarzenberg. I must ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... students, much of the first session is wasted in learning how to learn—in familiarising themselves with utterly strange conceptions, and in awakening their dormant and wholly untrained powers of observation and of manipulation. It is difficult to overestimate the magnitude of the obstacles which are thrown in the way of scientific training by the existing system of school education. Not only are men trained in mere book-work, ignorant of what observation means, but the habit of learning from books alone begets ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... mind to trace, in some work or other, the strange and secret ways through which that Arch-ruler of Civilization, familiarly called "Money," insinuates itself into our thoughts and motives, our hearts and actions; affecting those who undervalue as those who overestimate its importance; ruining virtues in the spendthrift no less than engendering vices in the miser. But when I half implied my farewell to the character of a novelist, I had imagined that this conception ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... everything is right because he is rich, are exactly the same man. The circumstances differ, but the one man is but the other turned inside out. And all round about us we see the fierce fight to get more and more of these things, the tight grip of them when we have got them, the overestimate of the value of them, the contempt for the people who have less of them than ourselves. Our aristocracy is an aristocracy of wealth; in some respects, one by no means to be despised, because there often go a great many good qualities to the making and the stewardship ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... purchase advances, of 3-1/4 per cent., repayable in a period of 68-1/2 years. The urgency of the problem is obvious. The bearing of this state of affairs in rural housing on the fact that in 1904 two out of every thirteen deaths were due to tuberculosis shows that it is impossible to overestimate its importance, and I think that this condition of things, put side by side with the other economic facts with which I have dealt, are a sufficient reply to those who declare that conditions in Ireland would appear couleur de rose were they not seen ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... no more than this it would be hard to overestimate its value, or to praise as it deserves ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... prestige which the methods of the natural sciences have gained, particularly in their application to the phenomena of the physical universe, has undoubtedly led scientific men to overestimate the importance of mere conceptual and abstract knowledge. It has led them to assume that history also must eventually become "scientific" in the sense of the natural sciences. In the meantime the vast ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... of our charitable and penal laws, and have furnished in their reports information and suggestions of great value. If it is true that an abuse exposed is half corrected, it would be difficult to overestimate their work. They have, their reports show, discovered abuses and cruelties practiced, under color of law, in the midst of communities noted for intelligence and virtue, which would disgrace any age. Let the board be granted increased ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... till I know you better.... I'm afraid you've got a tendency to overestimate the gullibility of people in general. It's either that, or.... No: I don't believe you're intentionally hypocritical, ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... first meeting of the Tile Club, in which the subject of drawing for Scribner's Monthly was first mooted, and I do not believe I overestimate the importance that the position of the club, taken at that time, has had and still has—not as a club, for it was dissolved some years back—in the influence its personal art has wielded upon the printed pages ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... Can we overestimate the influence of these associations, of these Soldiers'-Aid Societies, rising up in every city and village, in producing just such a state of mind, in keeping the soldier one of us, one of the people? Five hundred thousand hearts following with deep ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... gentlemen will pardon the criticism, but you talk too much, and too many of you try to talk at once. My head is aching from the roar and din of your noisy orators. Gentlemen, what does it all amount to? You are talking about prohibition, but you overestimate your political strength. Disastrous failures attend upon all your endeavors to conquer existing evils by the votes of men alone. Give women the legal power to combat intemperance, and they will soon be able to prove that they do not like drunken husbands any better than men like drunken ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... which he had not the training or the patience to cultivate with the best results. Niebuhr's adverse opinion is well known and has often been echoed in one form or another by later critics. On the other hand, lovers of the poet are very apt to overestimate the historian, who would probably be seldom heard of to-day If he had not achieved immortal fame by his plays and poems. As it is, his historical writings have become, for better or worse, a part of the classical ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas |
