"Error" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... et montes Georgianorum. Habet igitur illud mare tria latera inter montes, Aquilonare ver habet ad planiciem. [Sidenote: Frater Andreas.] Frater Andreas ipse circumdedit duo latera eius, meridionale scilicet et Orientale. [Sidenote: Reprehenditur Isidori error de mari Caspio.] Ego ver alia duo; Aquilonare scilicet in eundo Baatu ad Mangu cham, Occidentale ver in reuertendo de Baatu in Syriam. Quatuor mensibus potest circundari. Et non est verum quod dicit Isidorus. quod sit sinus exiens, ab Oceano: nusquan ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... difficult trial to endure; but you do not speak of other wants; you say nothing of honor, of faith to God and other men, of courtesy, of love without reproach. It may be that I am not very wise—and yet I think I am—but you seem to me like one who has lost his way and made a great error in life. You are attending to the little wants, and you have totally forgotten the great and only real ones, like a man who should be doctoring a toothache on the Judgment Day. For such things as honor ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... the horses here." Pancho Cueto hesitatingly addressed the dim blur which he knew to be Colonel Cobo. The Colonel of Volunteers was in a vile temper, what with the long night ride and an error of Cueto's which ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... been a common error for the charity visitor, who is strongly urging her "family" toward self-support, to suggest, or at least connive, that the children be put to work early, although she has not the excuse that the parents have. It is so easy, after one has been taking the industrial view ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... brethren of his settlement passed their time in reading and transcribing, as well as in manual labour. Very careful were they to copy correctly. Baithen, a monk on Iona, got one of his fellows to look over a Psalter which he had just finished writing, but only a single error was discovered.[1] Columba himself became proficient in copying and illuminating. He could not spend an hour without study, or prayer, or writing, or some other holy occupation.[2] He transcribed, we are told, over three hundred ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... and Mac. Edits. give the Princess's malady, in error, as Da al-Sud' (megrims), instead of Da al-Sar' (epilepsy) as in the Bresl. Edit. The latter would mean that she is possessed by a demon, again the old Scriptural fancy (see vol. v. 28). The subject is highly fitted for romance but not ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... "shame!" but I care not for the stoics, nor the puritans. Genuine nature and unsophisticated morality, that turn disgusted from the rooted adepts in vice, have ever a reclaiming tear to shed on the children of error. Then, let the sterner virtues, that allow no plea for human frailty, stalk on to paradise without me! The mild associate of my journey thither shall be charity:—and my pilgrimage to the shrine of mercy will not, I trust, be worse performed for having aided the weak, on my way, who ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... He was extremely popular among the Venetians. Petrarch, in a letter written shortly after his death, says of him: "He was a virtuous man, upright, full of love and zeal for his republic; learned, eloquent, wise, and affable. He had only one fault, to wit, that he loved war too much. From this error he judged of a cause by its event. The luckiest cause always appeared to him the most just, which made him often repeat what Scipio Africanus said, and what Lucan makes Caesar repeat: 'Haec acies ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... diminished, and thy waterfowl be made few in number! [Thus] it cometh that the man who ought to see clearly hath become blind, and he who ought to hear distinctly hath become deaf, and he who ought to be a just guide hath become one who leadeth into error. Observe! thou art strong and powerful. Thine arm is able to do deeds of might, and [yet] thy heart is avaricious. Compassion hath removed itself from thee. The wretched man whom thou hast destroyed crieth aloud in his anguish. ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... ye, can we charge a master soul With error, when beyond all life's experience Between the cradle and the grave, it rises, Whispering of things unutterable, breaks its bond With outward sense and sinks into itself, As fades a star in space? Hath not that soul A history ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... any of us be now, sir," said Mr. Francis, "if we had each of us received full measure for a boyish error?" ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... were throwing their beef-cattle and range horses on the market. So low, in fact, that Judith's first surmise when Hampton brought it to her was that the typist taking the company's dictation had made an error. ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... temptation came so suddenly, seemed so harmless, generous and just, that I yielded to it unconscious that it was one. Surely I deceived myself as cruelly as I did you, and God knows I have tried to atone for it when time taught me my fatal error." ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... essentially the same point: Pope could never become the English Virgil if he "let meaner Satire ... stain the Glory" of his "nobler Lays."[16] And Aaron Hill wrote an allegorical poem to show Pope the error of The Dunciad and to suggest means of escape from entombment "in his own PROFUND."[17] In such censure we perhaps glimpse an opinion attributable to the still influential genres theories: a poet of "sublime Genius" should work ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... to prove an error of judgment; for the big river was none other than the Beaver—an important part of an old trail of the Indians to ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... left college, and taken his degree in the law-school, and spent a year, more or less studiously, in Europe, to really know him if they had not known the dreaming boy in his early home, with all the limitations as well as the vitalizing influences of his start in life. And on the contrary, the error of the neighbors of a lad in forecasting his career comes from the fact that they do not know him. The verdict about Philip would probably have been that he was a very nice sort of a boy, but that ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... happily known at that time of the perfect description of the Wellington Channel ice subsequent to our passage across in 1850, as shown by the tract of the American Expedition and Lieutenant De Haven's admirable report, we should not then have fallen into the error of believing barriers of ice to be permanent in deep-water channels, a fallacy which it is to be hoped has exploded with many other misconceptions as to the fixed nature of ice, and the constant accumulation of it ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... often than not in absurd and painful situations; but he was weak and illogical enough to believe that the Revolutionaries were more wicked and more foolish than other men, thereby falling into the error of the metaphysician. At the same time he was no Pessimist and did not hold that life was altogether bad. He admired Nature in several of her departments, especially the celestial mechanism and physical love, and accommodated himself to the labours of life, pending the arrival of the day, ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... mistake, and the exacting specifications concerning the experiment were blurred in his memory. He knew that with time he could bring back everything that he had read, but it would take deep concentration and, perhaps, many days of trial and error to determine the right path that they must follow ...
— The White Feather Hex • Don Peterson
... only when its action is not interrupted by stronger causes, which then weakens or render useless, the action of the former. It is impossible that the best arguments should be adopted by men, who are interested in error, prejudiced in its favour, and who decline all reflection; but truth must necessarily undeceive honest minds, who seek her sincerely. Truth is a cause; it necessarily produces its effects, when its impulse is not intercepted by ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... have been mistakes—mistakes due to the inevitable process of trial and error inherent in doing big things for the first time. We all know that there have been too many complicated forms and questionnaires. I know about that. I have had to fill ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... because she was a contrast to himself. She didn't say much, so he credited her with thinking the more. She agreed with everything he said, so he considered her the cleverest woman he knew. He discovered his error, no doubt, in sackcloth and ashes, poor fellow; but mercifully he had not to endure many years of disenchantment. I can't imagine a worse fate than being tied for life to ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... hands together smote that swell'd the sounds, Made up a tumult, that for ever whirls Round through that air with solid darkness stain'd, Like to the sand that in the whirlwind flies. I then, with error yet encompass'd, cried: "O master! What is this I hear? What race Are these, who seem so overcome with woe?" He thus to me: "This miserable fate Suffer the wretched souls of those, who liv'd Without or praise or blame, with that ill band Of angels mix'd, who nor rebellious ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... wealth, not for any use that it is to bring them, but merely to please themselves with the contemplation of it, enjoy any true pleasure in it? The delight they find is only a false shadow of joy. Those are no better whose error is somewhat different from the former, and who hide it out of their fear of losing it; for what other name can fit the hiding it in the earth, or, rather, the restoring it to it again, it being thus cut off from being useful either to its owner or to the rest ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... one of the truth of this proposition without giving the long array of facts which I have collected, and which cannot possibly be here introduced. I can only state my conviction that it is a rule of high generality. I am aware of several causes of error, but I hope that I have made due allowance for them. It should be understood that the rule by no means applies to any part, however unusually developed, unless it be unusually developed in comparison with the same part in closely allied species. Thus, the bat's wing ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... fair return in the way of customs concessions upon articles exported by us to them was so obvious that to have gratuitously abandoned this opportunity to enlarge our trade would have been an unpardonable error. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... from Dover to Calais made by Blanchard and Jefferies. It was rich in incident. On the 7th of January, 1785, in a northeast wind, their balloon was filled with gas on the Dover side; scarcely had they risen, when an error in equilibrium compelled them to threw out their ballast, retaining only thirty pounds. The wind drifted them slowly along towards the shores of France. The permeability of the tissue gradually suffered the gas to escape, and at the expiration of an hour and a half, the voyagers perceived that ...
— A Voyage in a Balloon (1852) • Jules Verne
... lower oil prices. Per capita food imports increased significantly, while medical supplies and health care services steadily improved. Per capita output and living standards were still well below the pre-1991 level, but any estimates have a wide range of error. The military victory of the US-led coalition in March-April 2003 resulted in the shutdown of much of the central economic administrative structure. Although a comparatively small amount of capital plant was damaged during the hostilities, looting, insurgent ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Figs. 20, 22 show a view of the actual tomb; fig. 21 shows the chief contents. The interest of these half-native, half-Roman grave-mounds, which occur in eastern Britain and in the Low Countries opposite, will justify their insertion here. I may also correct an error in my account. No 'Samian stamped VITALIS' was found at Mersea, but objects which have been elsewhere found in association ...
— Roman Britain in 1914 • F. Haverfield
... physiology. From the very start he found in the workings of the human body a fascination that concentrated his efforts. Poor, he worked hard enough to obtain scholarships and fellowships in one university after another until finally he became a Ph. D. Here was a great error from the practical standpoint; for had he become an M. D., he would have had a profession that offered an independent financial future. But, in his zeal, he did not wish to take on the extended program of the physician, and he saw clearly that he might become a ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... still less clearly. He designed to reform what he deemed abuses, to bring the English Church into closer conformity with the other Churches of the West; he assuredly never dreamed that the issue of his reform would be the strife between Henry and Thomas and the humiliation of John. His error was that of forgetting that he himself could wield powers, that he could hold forces in check, which would be too strong for those who should come after him. At his purposes with regard to the relations of England and Normandy ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... invalidity of murder. For an infusion of sentiment and rhetoric he knew he might trust Mocket's unaided powers, but the basis of the matter he would furnish. He spoke of murder as the check the savage gives to social order, as the costliest error, the last injustice, the monstrousness beyond the brute, the debt without surety, the destruction by a fool of that which he knows not how to create. He spoke for society, without animus and without sentiment; in a level voice marshalling fact ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... language. I am not going to be squeamish and object strongly to the use of the word Metropolitan, though I think it indefensible. Still, it is too bad of them to persist in using the word bye-laws for by-laws—so establishing solidly a shocking error. The word bye has no existence in England except as short for be with you, in the phrase Good-bye. The so called by-laws are simple laws by the other laws, and have nothing to do with any form of salutation. In a bill of the Great Western ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... philosophic and especially botanical teachings and their ingenious application, it is directly destructive to the use of the selection theory as the principal key to the solution of the problems. Eduard von Hartmann describes the work in his publication, "Wahrheit und Irrthum im Darwinismus," ("Truth and Error in Darwinism"), as a mile-stone which marks the limits where Darwinism as such passed the summit of ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... the disunionists he said: "They have abandoned their errors, but not their object. Being bent upon the ruin of the republic they use truth or error for its accomplishment, as best suits the exigencies of the hour. If these people are honest in their convictions, they may find abundant consolation in the fact that the principle is neither conceded, compromised, nor endangered by these ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... was fumbling at the little clamp, having made a slight error in setting in the leather, a great hand appeared before her eyes and fastened the clamp for her. It was the foreman. Her heart thumped so that she could scarcely see to ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... they had adopted, there was room only for five. They corrected their miscalculation by broadening the division of the wall between the fourth and fifth bay of the aisles. When they came to build the arcades, they were conscious of their previous error, and planned them in five equal bays irrespective of the plan of the aisles. In churches of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, especially in districts like Norfolk or south Lincolnshire, where much rebuilding was done, the regularity of plan is often ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson
... some of the contents of this Library, I shall correct the error committed in the account of the Public Library, by commencing here with the MANUSCRIPTS in preference to the Printed Books. The MSS. are by no means numerous, and are perhaps rather curious than intrinsically valuable. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... this principle of classification we have three forms which may be exemplified by Kipling's William the Conqueror, wherein action is emphasized; his Tomb of His Ancestors, wherein character is emphasized; and his An Error in the Fourth ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... time, however, though it was at the time difficult to pick out, there was very real progress being made, and, though a number of 'freak' machines fell out by the wayside, the pioneer designers of those days learnt by a process of trial and error the right principles to follow and gradually succeeded ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... another, and to fancy we mean the opposite to an "Aristocratic" period. But indeed we do not. So far as that political point goes, the Chinaman has always been infinitely more democratic than the European. But the world, by a series of gradations into error, has come to use "Democratic" as a substitute for "Wholesale," and as an opposite to "Individual," without realizing the shifted application at all. Thereby old "Aristocracy," the organization of society for the glory and preservation of the Select Dull, gets to a flavour even of freedom. ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... that the purport of their teaching was a salutary medicine to the whole world ('whatever Manu said that was medicine'). Now, as these Rishis did not see truth in the way of Kapila, we conclude that Kapila's view, which contradicts Scripture, is founded on error, and cannot therefore be used to modify the sense of the Vednta-texts.—Here finishes the adhikarana treating ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... men, to follow up the Prussians eastward by the Namur road. His assumption was unfounded. Bluecher, loyal to his engagements, retired upon Wavre; Wellington, relying upon Bluecher's loyalty, took his stand on the field of Waterloo; and this error on the part of Napoleon determined ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... very remarkable is the manner in which even the great majority of readers confuse these two classes, and believe that mere popular success is correlative with genius and desert. A great cause of this really vulgar error is the growing conviction that artistic skill alone determines merit in literature, and that intellect, as the French, beginning mildly with Voltaire and ending violently with Sainte-Beuve, assert ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... work with his customary care and thoroughness, for long practice had made it possible for him to go on as though nothing had happened, to listen to querulous complaints and long lists of symptoms, and to write without error those scrawled prescriptions which were, so hopefully, to cure. Not that Dick himself believed greatly in those empirical doses, but he considered that the expectation of relief was half the battle. ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a great mistake to think that the best is the cheapest in regard to the food question, that the higher priced meats, fish, butter, etc., contain special virtues lacking in the cheaper articles. Poor cooking is the chief cause of this error in judgment. No doubt a well broiled steak is more appetizing and delicate in flavor than some of the cheaper cuts, but in proportion to the cost is not equal in nutritive value; careful cooking and judicious flavoring ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... pioneer study of the Siouan Indians that the popular fallacy concerning the aboriginal "Great Spirit" gained currency; and it was partly through the work of Dorsey among the cegiha and Dakota tribes, first as a missionary and afterward as a linguist, that the early error was corrected. Among these tribes the creation and control of the world and the things thereof are ascribed to "wa-kan-da" (the term varying somewhat from tribe to tribe), just as among the Algonquian tribes omnipotence was assigned ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... foot-sore but cheerful, his appearance was the signal for an outburst that left him disconsolate and bewildered. He apologized over and over for his little error, and tried to reinstate himself by announcing, with a confidence he was far from feeling, that this time he had identified the elusive Chiquita beyond the peradventure of a doubt. This welcome intelligence did much to make Kirk forget ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... called a 'heretick,' purely because he differs from another, as to the articles of faith. For either we should all be 'hereticks' or there would be no 'heresy' among us.... Heresy does not consist in opinion or sentiments: it is not an error of head but of will."—Foster, A Defense of Religious ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... a hiccup became a mark of affluence instead of a social error, as formerly, and a loaded flank is a sign of hospitality rather than of menace, things may have changed. I am speaking, though, of the damper early nineties in Kentucky, when a sudden motion toward ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... Lord Coke, his Speech and Charge, with a Discoverie of the Abuses and Corruptions of Officers, 8vo. London: N. Butter, 1607, as a genuine document; but it is not so; and, lest the error should gain ground, the following account of the book, from the Preface, by Lord Coke, to the seventh part of his ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... there has been—may I call it a recrudescence?—an uncontrollable recrudescence of my former regrettable self. For a disastrous moment the Mr. Hyde element in me, which I thought I had stifled and cast out, arose and possessed me. In brief, I have been guilty of an error which the police consider serious; in fact, the police are this moment searching for me. So you see, I am in the same situation as Mr. De Peyster: I prefer my whereabouts to remain unknown. Since we are ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... with the No. 0 crayon that are larger than the white spots desired in the stipple effect; these light places must be cut into smaller light spots. If you should take out these white spots (and this is an error you must be very careful to avoid), you would produce an effect of large dark and white spots that would be entirely wrong, the real process being to divide large white and dark spots into smaller ...
— Crayon Portraiture • Jerome A. Barhydt
... and other things; they will be one of the most valuable, one of the most terrible of books as showing what happens when a man speaks without knowledge. To read what Mr. Howells says of Mr. Thackeray is almost an illiberal education. The reason of the error is quite obvious. It is simply that the clever American does not know; he has not sufficient range of comparison. For my own part, I should not dare to continue criticising so much as a circulating library novel, if I did not ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... of the Louvre. If this last picture is to be accepted as a semi-idealised presentment of the Spanish captain, it must, as has already been pointed out, have been painted nearer to the time of his death, which took place in 1546. The often-cited biographers of our master are clearly in error in their conclusion that the painting described in the collection of Charles I. as "done by Titian, the picture of the Marquis Guasto, containing five half-figures so big as the life, which the king bought out of an Almonedo," is identical with the large sketch made by ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... made him speak, that else was dumb! These are the arcs, the trophies I erect, That fortify thy name against old age; And these thy sacred virtues must protect Against the Dark, and Time's consuming rage. Though th' error of my youth in them appear, Suffice, they show I ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... "Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a ...
— The Art of Soul-Winning • J.W. Mahood
... of millionaires should be working, indirectly at least, for the prosperity of a man like Dryfoos, who, as March understood, had got his money together out of every gambler's chance in speculation, and all a schemer's thrift from the error and need of others. The situation was not more incongruous, however, than all the rest of the 'Every Other Week' affair. It seemed to him that there were no crazy fortuities that had not tended to its ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... men I should have said, 'Why, it is affectations,' with Sir Hugh Evans ['Merry Wives of Windsor,' act i. scene 1]; but Sir George is the man in the world most void of affectation; and then he is an exquisite painter, and no doubt saw where the incident would have succeeded in painting. The error is not in you yourself receiving deep impressions from slight hints, but in supposing that precisely the same sort of impression must arise in the mind of men otherwise of kindred feeling, or that the common-place folk of the world can derive such inductions ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... jostled and torn between two opposite, unappeasable tendencies of soul; one an upward yearning after everything high and pure, the other a down-dragging hunger for every base indulgence. I was warmed and fed. Yet I was pained to find him so steeped in presumptuous error, so wayward of belief and unbelief. The sweet ease with which he overturned and emptied out some of my arguments gave me worse failure of the diaphragm than a high swing ever did. Nevertheless I responded; and he rejoined; and I rejoined again, and presently he gave me the notion ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... unloaded weapon which he had taken from his opponent's pocket. It was puerile, too, to accept without proof the verbal assurances of the widow Leigh that she was one of themselves, a loyal German spy. And Fritz committed an unpardonable error in giving away the site of the Marconi apparatus by his undisguised suspicion of anybody who took any interest in ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... etc., etc. He stopped. Evidently, in spite of his being so used to it, he still felt pleasure in listening to his own productions. "This sentence is the direct result of the most glaring judicial perversion and error," he continued, impressively, "and there are grounds for its revocation. Firstly, the reading of the medical report of the examination of Smelkoff's intestines was interrupted by the president at the very ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... among the highest in the service; the trusted friend, and almost the other self of Nelson. Acting with the utmost disinterestedness, though he could only expect to be superseded, for a public board will seldom confess itself to have been in error, he did not hesitate, as soon as his own authority had been properly admitted, to give Sir Thomas a separate squadron in the best part of the station. It proved a most lucrative command, for in addition to its general advantages, some prizes of immense value were taken. On the 20th ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... there is a slight error, which writers of the greatest genius very frequently fall into.—It will be needless to observe to the accurate reader, that in the fifth and sixth verses there is a verbal pleonasm where the poet speaks of the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... and not that of the printer, who labored under many disadvantages in deciphering the manuscript copy of the book; the greater part of which was written on the battle-field, and under fire of the enemy. It is thus that in the first page we find an error of the most glaring character possible, but which might have been the Author's, as well as the printer's omission. Thus, the Author is made to say that the "aristocracy" of New Orleans were "well known by that elegance ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... shall rise again: The eternal years of God are hers; But Error, wounded, writhes with pain, And dies among ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... get his nephews and nieces deported, and refuse to perform Honest Work—yet remain a hopeless slave to the Book of Etiquette. In a Pullman car, with a ticket for the lower berth, he will take the seat facing backward, only to tremble and blush with shame on learning his social error. Who has not suffered the mortification of picking up the fork that was on the floor and then finding out afterward that it was the function of the waiter to pick up the fork? What is a girl to do if, escorted home at night ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... all this darkness and error, the majority are well contented, and quite willing to obey "warnings" like this and the following, published in Los Principios, ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... spirit of bitterness and enmity, but as an act of duty, to teach a needed lesson; for surely the Lord was on the side of the right, and was using the men of the North to teach this needed lesson to those laboring in error. Ah! it is a very different point of view we take when we suffer, instead of merely moralizing on the suffering of others; especially we who feel that we know what is right, and lack in great part the imagination to comprehend the ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... much as you like; there will be no interference and no hindrance. But when you see things going wrong, when you see a mistake about to be made, it is an appalling thing to stand there helpless, unable to influence those you love, or to point out a palpable error, and convince them that your clearer sight sees it as such. Of course, I understand that it must be very difficult for a man who is newly married, to entirely abandon the one who has loved him, and whom he loves. But I assure you that if you follow the ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... anything. I shall be sorry tomorrow, 's likely as not, for freeing my mind as much as I have, but my temper's up and I'm going to be the humble instrument of Providence and try to turn you from the error of your ways. You've defaced and degraded the temple the Lord built for you, and if He should come this minute and try to turn out the crowd of evildoers you've kept in it, ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... had searched for Villon in the hope of drawing some confirmation from him, or what, to a mind willing to be convinced, might pass for confirmation; but in his vexed anger he had spoken prematurely. Weakly he tried to cover his error, first by an appeal, then by domineering. But the lover in Stephen La Mothe was neither ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... the interpretation given by the owner of the chart, but the informant was unconsciously in error, as has been ascertained not only from other Mid[-e]/ priests consulted with regard to the true meaning, but also in the light of later information and research in the exemplification of the ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... reply. That escape for which he deemed himself responsible—was it not he, Ganimard, who, by his sensational evidence, had led the court into serious error? That escape appeared to him like a dark cloud on his professional career. A tear rolled down his cheek to ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... something in this overwhelming, becoming grief, combined with so lively a sense of what was socially correct, jarred unpleasantly on the younger woman. Of course, funerals had to have management, like everything else. And it was only part of Annie's code to believe that an awkwardness now, a social error ever so faint, an opportunity given the world for amusement or criticism, would reflect upon the family and upon ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... to it?"... I would ransack the phases of my development from the first shy unveiling of a hidden wonder to the last extremity as a man will go through muddled account books to find some disorganising error.... ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... shut against any visit you might have honoured me with." "Ah, madam! why have I not known this sooner? Some evil planet ruled my thoughts when it occurred to me that I might not be so happy as to meet with a favourable reception." "There, my lord, you were indeed in error; for though I might not feel a very tender friendship towards you whilst supposing I had many causes for complaint, I could not refuse you those marks of respect your rank and station entitle you to receive." "Then, madam, I may flatter myself that ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... first cultivate this power of criticism, always accompanying the study by exercises in reconstruction of faults in the author read. Thus, wherever a sentence appears awkward in expression, the reader should revise it; wherever there is a seeming error in the logical development of a subject, or the psychological development of a fictitious character, he should reconstruct it. Nothing is so helpful to a writer as self-criticism. Thus Mrs. Humphrey Ward has recently confessed that the happy ending of her "Lady ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... present themselves in so distinct a form as to be capable of separate recognition. The first or premonitory stage consists in the occurrence of diarrhoea. Frequently of mild and painless character, and coming on after some error in diet, this symptom is apt to be disregarded. The discharges from the bowels are similar to those of ordinary summer cholera, which the attack closely resembles. There is, however, at first the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... was its chief safeguard. For, in spite of a vast number of writers of all nations who have attempted to describe Italian life, and who, from an imperfect acquaintance with the people, have fallen into the error of supposing them to live perpetually in a highly complicated state of mind, the foundation of the Italian character is simple—far more so than that of his hereditary antagonist, the northern European. It is enough to notice that the Italian habitually expresses what he feels, while it is the chief ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... for one who wouldn't hesitate to avail himself of any advantage chance might throw in his way," returned the thief-taker, coldly. "I find I was in error. No matter. A time may come,—and that ere long,—when you will be glad to purchase my secrets, and your own safety, at a dearer price than ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... would be right to command the sepulchre to be guarded until the third day, as otherwise his disciples might come and steal him away, and say to the people, 'He is risen from the dead,' and the last error would be worse that the first. Pilate was determined to have nothing more to do with the business, and he only answered: 'You have a guard; go, guard it as you know.' However, he appointed Cassius to keep a watch over all that took ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... Genesis, with their accompanying genii and architectural surroundings. That is rendered clear by a statement in Albertini's Roman Handbook, to the effect that the "upper portion of the whole vaulted roof" had been uncovered when he saw it in 1509. Having established this error in Condivi's narrative, what he proceeds to relate may obtain some credence. "Raffaello, when he beheld the new and marvellous style of Michelangelo's work, being extraordinarily apt at imitation, sought, by Bramante's ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... "Mrs. Radcliffe" as the author of "Castle of Otranto." The editor likely confused Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho with Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto. As it is unclear which book he was referring to, the error ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... that in this you are in error," returned the other. "Originally both farms were in one; that was subsequently sold with a ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... that means quite lost all chance of being rejoined by the Henry Frederick, which might otherwise have got up with them. Besides, they concluded that the missing ship had failed to find St Mary's isle, owing to its being wrong placed in the map of Plancius, in lat. 38 deg. S. which error they themselves had fallen into, had they not been set right by the observations of Mr Mellish. They were farther confirmed in the resolution of not returning to the island of St Mary, by hearing of the misfortune which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... story-teller, forgotten or neglected to carry out his intention; or, again, it is possible that the words in question may have been intended as an introduction to the Story of the Favourite and her Lover (see post, p. 165), to which they seem more suitable, and have been misplaced by an error of transcription. In any case, the text ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... I knew well that the King, particular in courtesies, never forgot to call his servants by their titles save in two cases: when he indicated by the error, as once in Marshal Biron's affair, his intention to promote or degrade; or when he was moved to the depths of his nature and fell into an old habit. I did not dare to reply, but I ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... guide pointed out to me those of Clovis, Godfrey of Bouillon, Albert the Wise, Charles V, Philip II of Spain, Rudolph of Hapsburgh, and to my great astonishment the British King Arthur; there were twenty-eight statues altogether. But on my return to my inn, I found that my guide had made a great error respecting King Arthur, and that the said statue represented Prince Arthur, son of Henry VII, King of England, and not the old Hero of Romance; and my hostess' book further informed me that these statues were those of the Kings and ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... all, Harriet," replied Mr. Mannering, with much emotion, "for the acknowledgment of your error is half-way to repentance and atonement. And this is a day of triple happiness, for I have just heard that, now my sight is restored, I have a fair chance of again entering into mercantile pursuits, and arriving at independence. But oh! ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... to Christianity had been sudden. Yet such quick transitions from error to truth were not unfrequent. He had tried the highest forms of Pagan superstition and heathen philosophy but had found them wanting, and as soon as Christianity appeared before him he beheld all that he desired. It possessed exactly what was needed ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... body on the ground as a measuring rod. In this sad procession are millions, and millions of unhappy souls, without God, and therefore without hope. They are going down from the darkness of sin and error to the darkness of the tomb, with none to whisper in their ears the story of redeeming love; and so in their blindness and folly, believing that God delights in misery and pain and suffering, they torture their poor bodies; and in some instances still, as in olden times, "give of the fruit ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... with a very undue degree of vehemence in a dispute with you last night, occasioned by what I am convinced was a gross misconception of your expressions. As the Colonel, though a military man, is not too haughty to acknowledge an error, he has commissioned me to make his apology as a mutual friend, which I am convinced you will accept ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... [32] [An error. No edition by Pinson is known, or is likely to have ever existed. The impression referred to is Copland's. See Hazlitt's "Handbook," ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... know, is blind: defects that blight The loved one's charms escape the lover's sight, Nay, pass for beauties, as Balbinus glows With admiration of his Hagna's nose. Ah, if in friendship we e'en did the same, And virtue cloaked the error with her name! Come, let us learn how friends at friends should look By a leaf taken from a father's book. Has the dear child a squint? at home he's classed With Venus' self; "her eyes have just that cast:" Is he a dwarf ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... to state his own side so clearly and concisely as to make the principles involved easily understood. His second object should be so to divest his opponent's argument of useless verbiage as to make it stand forth clearly; for as truth is self-evident, so error bears upon its face its own condemnation. Error needs only to be exposed to ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... Adam Lindsay Gordon that through him Australia had found her first fine utterance in song. {452} This, however, is an amiable error. There is very little of Australia in Gordon's poetry. His heart and mind and fancy were always preoccupied with memories and dreams of England and such culture as England gave him. He owed nothing to the land of his adoption. Had he stayed at home he would have done much better ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... 1724, other smock-marriages were recorded, and in Lincoln County, Me., in 1767, between John Gatchell and Sarah Cloutman, showing that the belief in this vulgar error was wide-spread. The most curious variation of this custom is told in the "Life of Gustavus Vassa," wherein that traveller records that a smock-marriage took place in New York in 1784 on a gallows. A malefactor condemned to death, and about to undergo his execution, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Courtney's tragic end sobered me, and put what I had been doing in a true light. I am glad my insanity was not permitted to proceed farther than it did; but I have quite enough to reproach myself with as it is. So far as I hare been able to explain the matter to myself, my prime error lay in attributing, in a world subject to constant change, too much permanence to a given state of affairs. The fact that Ethel was the wife of another man seemed to me so fixed and unalterable that I allowed my imagination to play with the picture ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... "It is an error of judgment on the boy's part. When we were his age we thought we knew better than our elders; but we know better now. Look here, Dominic, my boy. You are in the wrong. This man, your father's assigned servant, was tried by a jury of ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... This is not in accord with page 22, line 2, in which Vingulmark is mentioned as being given to Harald the Grenlander. Perhaps the error is on the page aforesaid, as on page 53, line 30, Harald is described as King ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... side-track of social service many a young man who otherwise would be a heroic preacher of the everlasting gospel. The theological seminaries of almost all our denominations are becoming so infected with this grievous error, that they are not so much organs of Christ, as they are organs of Antichrist. This accounts for the rise, all over the land, of Bible schools, to take the place of the seminaries. The evil is ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... the Chief's whole meaning, and was startled by the sudden unveiling of his mastery. Her hands hung loose; her figure was tremulous. A murmur from Corte jarred within her like a furious discord, but he had not offended by refusing to disclaim his error, and had simply said in a gruff acquiescent way, "Proceed." Her sensations of surprise at the singular triumph of the Chief made her look curiously into the faces of the other men; but the pronouncing of her name engaged ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... That follows not by force of argument, which you, being licentiates, should stand upon: therefore acknowledge your error, and be attentive. ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... in general took the correct attitude toward the Land question; but in recommending that the peasants seize the land by force, they committed a profound error.... From the first days, the Bolsheviki declared that the peasants should take over the land 'by revolutionary massaction.' This is nothing but anarchy; the land can be taken over in an organised manner.... For the Bolsheviki it was important ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... point of vantage into the crowded mass below, punished them so severely that the advance was forced back upon those that crowded the defile in the rear. Al Kamah, finding his army recoiling in dismay and confusion, and discovering too late his error, ordered a retreat; but no sooner had a reverse movement been instituted than the ambushed Christians on the heights began their deadly work, hurling huge stones and fallen trees into the defile, killing the Moslems by hundreds, and ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... its own sake is one of those errors, which has been well called Titanolatry, the worship of giants. Neither is wisdom an object of admiration, unless it be used for good ends. To worship it for its own sake is a common error enough—the idolatry of Intellect. But it is none the less an error, and a grievous one. God's power and wisdom are glorious only in as far as they are used (as they are utterly) for good ends; only, in plain words, as far as God is (as ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... success. The officers began to suspect that their lookout on Campanella had been deceived, and that what he had supposed to be a lugger was, in truth, a felucca, or perhaps a xebec—a craft which might well be mistaken for a lugger, at the distance of a few leagues. The error, however, was with those in the ship. The officer sent upon the heights was a shrewd, practised master's-mate, who knew everything about his profession that properly came within his line, and knew little else. But for a habit ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... my days are numbered and that my span of life will soon be done; but while I live I feel it my duty to cling to my demented husband, and to do all I can to turn him from the error of his ways. But I do so wish that my poor children could have my mother's care, when I am gone. If I were satisfied on that score, I ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... such investigation is to find unit values for strength and stiffness, etc. These, because of the complex structure of wood, cannot have a constant value which will be exactly repeated in each test, even though no error be made. The most that can be accomplished is to find average values, the amount of variation above and below, and the laws which govern the variation. On account of the great variability in strength of different specimens of wood even from the same ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... heap of papers scribbled over with verses, in themselves an undecipherable mosaic work of erasures; articles freshly begun; letters forgotten, and posted in the table drawer instead of the letter-box, an error to which absent-minded people are peculiarly liable. The effect was charming, ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... comparatively idle; he possessed a remarkable power of making recantation easy; and there is, I believe, no instance in which an accused heretic was brought under his immediate cognizance, where he failed to arrange some terms by which submission was made possible. With Wolsey heresy was an error—with More it was a crime. Soon after the seals changed hands the Smithfield fires recommenced; and, the chancellor acting in concert with them, the bishops resolved to obliterate, in these edifying spectacles, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... to her cheek, but she did not budge, not by a hair's breadth. "I beg your pardon," said Lawrence, standing erect. He had measured in that moment the extent of his error, and he cursed, not for the first time, his want of perception, which his ever-candid father had once called a streak of vulgarity. Defrauded of the pleasure he had promised himself from the contact of Isabel's ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... and down the province of Quebec he was denounced by the ultramontane leaders. Here was sheer, stark Liberalism of the brand the Church had condemned. Bishop Lafleche declared that no Catholic could without sin vote for the chief of a party who had formulated publicly such an error, and Archbishop Langevin called upon every true son of the Church to stand by those who stood by it. In Ontario and the other English-speaking provinces, on the contrary, the welkin rang with denunciations of hierarchical presumption. ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... assert that superiority. The Teuton will not only achieve the victory, he will deserve it. Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht (World history is world judgment). History is not a conflict between abstractions, between truth and error, between higher and lower principles, between conflicting ideals; it is, above all, the tragic conflict between higher and lower races. War is necessary and war is beneficial. War is not only the instrument, it ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... apart as the poles. Scanlon has gone partly over the route with me, and because of this interweaving I have had considerable trouble in preventing his jumping at conclusions—in taking appearance for granted without waiting for proof. I am not sure how far I kept him from error," with a nod and a laugh, "for several times I believe he has gone the length of ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... through error it could be recovered, under certain circumstances. But this point is a matter concerning which the ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... by pedantic teachers is to demand too much Form; to insist that a piece of music shall be a model of arithmetical adjustment. This is probably a graver error than apparent formlessness. Design and logic and unity there must surely be; but any obtrusive evidence of mathematical calculation must degrade music to the level ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... own experience in life, confirmed by much observation, made the evil here indicated as clear as noonday to her perceptions, saw the error of her beautiful niece, Edith, in courting rather than shunning observation while ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... in Calvin's opinion, "wiping off all their glory." Nevertheless Calvin himself had said, in 1539, that Zwingli's opinion was false and pernicious. So difficult is the path of orthodoxy to find! In 1557 the Zwinglian leader M. Schenck wrote to Thomas Blaurer that the error of the papists was rather to be borne than that of the Saxons. Nevertheless Calvinism continued to grow in Germany at the expense of Lutheranism. Especially after the Formula of Concord the "Philippists" went over in ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... vanquished, and he ceased to rail at himself, or restrain his fancies. He became a dreamy, sad-eyed, camp-fire gazer, like many another lonely man, separated, by chance or error, from what the heart hungered most for. But this great experience, when all its significance had clarified in his mind, immeasurably broadened his understanding of the principles of ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... married daughter and two single ones—were so powerfully impressed with Sally's resemblance to her supposed parent that three-fourths of them went unconvinced away, in spite of the efforts of the whole household to remove the error. The odd fourth was supposed to have carried away corrective information. "I got the flat one, with the elbows, in a quiet corner," said Sally, "and told her Jeremiah was only step. Because they all shouted at once, so ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... a parallel. Perhaps you know something of the old alchemists. They had laid hold on the edge of chemistry. But because that truth came confused, because they all had things by the wrong handle, a thousand of them confused truth with error until, in the end, they did not know right from wrong. This force in which you and I are interested is a little like chemistry—it may be called mental and spiritual chemistry. But because it deals with the unseen, not with the seen, ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... Fortitude and Justice personified, with unwearying affection. She is Penelope, tried by her husband's fault as well as error. ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... was the error of head not heart; And—oh! how beyond the ambushed foe, Who to enmity adds the traitor's part, And carries a smile with ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... me, Pompey? why, my courteous friend, Can he remain secure that wields a charge, Or think of wit when flatterers do commend, Or be advis'd that careless runs at large? No, Pompey: honey words make foolish minds, And pow'r the greatest wit with error blinds. Flaccus, I murder'd Anthony, thy friend; Romans, some here have lost at my command Their fathers, mothers, brothers, and allies; And think you, Sylla, thinking these misdeeds, Bethinks not on your grudges ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... it for an otter, with which voracious animal the Calder, a stream swarming with trout, abounded, and knowing the creature would not meddle with them unless first attacked, he paid little attention to it; but he was soon made sensible of his error. His arm was suddenly seized by a large black hound, whose sharp fangs met in his flesh. Unable to repress a cry of pain, Hal strove to disengage himself from his assailant, and, finding it impossible, flung himself into the water in the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the sea, I saw a good way before me something that resembled a great fire, which afforded me some comfort; for I said to myself, I shall find here some persons, it not being possible that this fire should kindle of itself. As I drew nearer, however, I found my error, and discovered that what I had taken for a fire was a castle of red copper, which the beams of the sun made to appear at a ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... said. No sooner had the words left her lips than the thought came unbidden: "If my uncle and Captain Coke wished the ship to be thrown away, nothing could have better suited their purposes than this tragic error." ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... Barnabas Saul came to see me at Mortlak: apparent error for "July" zbhafvrheuvf fgngr may be meant for two words: zbhafvrhe uvf fgngr Mr. Thomas Sowthwell ryd to Prag / ward from Trebon usually spelled 'Prage', but usage of 'ward' occurs elsewhere cira occasum solis paulo ante error ...
— The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee - And the Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts • John Dee
... a poser. The judge is evidently worried; if he make a wrong guess and says "yes" or "no" at this juncture, the appellate court may say: "Error, judgment reversed, new trial ordered." What happens is that the judge takes a chance. The lawyer says, "I refer you to 169 New York Court of Appeals Reports, page 492; in the case of Jones vs. Metropolitan, the court there said that the refusal ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells |
