"Miscalculation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 40,000. It soon became apparent that the number of existing parishes throughout the country had been grossly miscalculated. There were not more than 9,000, and the amount of assessment had to be proportionately raised. It was necessary to summon a council at Westminster in June, to remedy the miscalculation that had been made in March. Half of the representatives of the late parliament were summoned to meet the king, and among them two of the city's members, Bartholomew Frestlyng and John Philipot—"the first Englishman who has left behind him the reputation of a financier."(579) The ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... perhaps have done it if you had not forgotten about your gasolene—And you may yet. We shall see. But it seems to me, my—enemy!—that you make a miscalculation. Let us suppose that you take me to Sheleilieh. It is highly improbable, because you no longer have your knife to assist you. I, it is true, no longer have my revolver to assist me; but I have two arms, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... who was drunk when he sinned, but had premeditated his deed. Woe to the judge, if he misses his calculation in adding or subtracting the third, or sixth, or one half, corresponding to the prescribed extenuating or aggravating circumstances! If he makes a miscalculation, the court of appeals is invoked by the defendant, and the inexorable court of appeals tells the judge: "Figure this over again. You have been unjust." The only question for the judge is this: Add your sums and subtract your deductions, and the prisoner ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... of detected guilt, the consciousness that in this iniquitous lecture he had overshot the mark, and made a grievous miscalculation in pushing his detestable argument too far—but, above all, the startling suspicions so boldly and energetically expressed by Lucy, the truth of which, as well as the apprehensions that filled him of their discovery, all united, made ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... he who had long felt himself sure of being one day dictator by public acclamation, and to have been deceived by that dreamer, Robespierre, was most humiliating. But Robespierre would not dare to put him to death! Grave miscalculation! He was immolated like the rest; the crowd looking on with indifference. Along with him perished Camille Desmoulins, a young man of letters, and a Jacobin, but convicted of advocating clemency. Robespierre was one of Camille's ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... flying, somehow relieving the mechanical outlines. Was the disproportion between the great arch, forming a kind of pedestal, and the outlines above due to mathematical miscalculation or to the interference of the ornamentation? We finally decided that the proportions had probably been right in the first place. But they had been changed by the Exposition authorities' cutting the Tower down one hundred feet, thereby saving $100,000. A matter of this ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... childlike solemnity out of his big blue eyes, listened to both sides of the story, and to Henry's miscalculation, at no time during the recital did he laugh uproariously, or exclaim compassionately, or indicate that he shared any ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... reasonably do, in stating the probabilities of a problem, which do not involve any claim to be a prophet. The first is to tell the truth, and especially the neglected truth, about the tendencies that have already accumulated in human history; any miscalculation about which must at least mislead us in any case. We cannot be certain of being right about the future; but we can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past. The other thing that he ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... Five P.M., August 16,1885, finds me seated on a rude stone slab, one of those ancient tombstones whose serried ranks constitute the suburban scenery of Angora, ruefully disburdening my nether garments of mud and water, the results of a slight miscalculation of my abilities at leaping irrigating ditches with the bicycle for a vaulting-pole. While engaged in this absorbing occupation several inquisitives mysteriously collect from somewhere, as they invariably do whenever I happen to halt ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... N. misjudgment, obliquity of judgment; miscalculation, miscomputation, misconception &c (error) 495; hasty conclusion. [causes of misjudgment. 1] prejudgment, prejudication^, prejudice; foregone conclusion; prenotion^, prevention, preconception, predilection, prepossession, preapprehension^, presumption, assumption, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... magnanimity. She was quite sure that her mother, in her shallow way, had cared for Basil, and not at all sure that she had relinquished her hope at the first symptom of his change of heart. But, though one couldn't but feel stern at the thought, one couldn't, also, repress something of pity for the miscalculation of the defeated love. To feel pity, moreover, was to show herself anybody's equal in ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... and several of the conspirators had reason to repent their miscalculation in assaulting so spirited an antagonist. But this did not content him; his blood was up, and he determined to attack the evil at its source. He strode through his discomfited enemies straight into Brigson's room, struck a ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... was given the seat of honour at table. He was placed between Mrs. Pollock and Miss Flora Grady, supplanting Doctor Simpson, who had held the honour ever since Charlie Webster's unfortunate miscalculation as to the durability of an unfamiliar brand of bourbon to which he had been introduced late one Sunday evening. It was a brand that wore extremely well,—so well, in fact, that when he appeared for dinner at noon on Monday ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... vaulting. The builders seem to have thought that they could get in six bays between the transept and the space planned for one of the western towers; but found that, on the measurements 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 Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson
... Necessarily: one who, as I said, can only look backward. Forward, I am nothing. Believe me, I have measured myself at last. This is no miscalculation—like the other. ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... and Chase, who had been goaded up to this. Reading contemporary history and, seeing the high-mightiness with which the Germans began what we conceive their raid upon humanity, we are wont to regard it as evidence of incredible stupidity, whereas it was, in point of fact, rather a miscalculation of forces. That was the error of the secession leaders. They refused to count the cost. Yancey firmly believed that England would be forced to intervene. The mills of Lancashire he thought could not ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... town of Holland, Maestricht, in Limburg. But afterwards the Anti-Revolutionists raised the cry for denominational education, and the Dutch Liberals were rather sore to find their former friends join their antagonists. The soreness was in consequence of a miscalculation; the Liberals had forgotten that in becoming emancipated the Roman Catholics did not become Liberals, but remained Roman Catholics as before, faithful to their creed, and to their ideals, even at the ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... ran down to the bottom of the scale by the time it reached the end of the first line. When the congregation had got two-thirds of the way down, they found they could go no farther, not even those who sang bass. The leader, in some confusion, had to pitch the tune higher, and his miscalculation was looked upon as exceedingly funny by the reckless spirits at the back of the hall. The door opened quietly; and they all turned expecting to see Macdonald, but it was only Sandy. He had washed his face with but indifferent success, and the bulge in his cheek, like a ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... worthless names on their bills. As an instance: one hundred bushels of wheat, sold ultimately for L40, were transferred to a succession of speculating purchasers, who raised among them L1000, on credit of the exchange from one to another. The governments of the colonies had exhibited remarkable miscalculation. In all the treasury failed to meet the expenses. The deposits formerly realised by land sales were withdrawn from the banks. Debentures were issued; new taxes were imposed. The commercial panic was in full career when the ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... only because it is ugly. These must be chained to the beautiful. It is not always wrong even to go, like Dante, to the brink of the lowest promontory and look down at hell. It is when you look up at hell that a serious miscalculation has probably ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... which would have crushed any other spirit save that of Scott. This stroke of evil fortune did not, perhaps, come quite unexpected; it was, however, unavoidable, and it arose from no mismanagement or miscalculation of his own, unless I may consider—which I do not—his embarking in the hazards of a printing-house, a piece of miscalculation. It is said, that he received warnings: the paper of Constable, the bookseller, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... that all the week. You see, when I made my table, by some miscalculation, one leg persisted in coming out shorter than the others, which necessitated its being shored up by a book until I ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... the mood for dim lights and pale wine, not just this minute. Questions howling through his mind. The knowledge that he had made the one Class A colossal blunder of his thirty years in politics, this last half-day. A miscalculation of a man! He should have known about McKenzie—at least suspected. McKenzie was getting old, he wanted a Retread, and wanted it badly. Before, he had planned to get it through Dan. Then something changed his mind, and he decided Rinehart ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... speck on the broad expanse of water, sheltered by a night of almost stygian darkness, she lay outside the narrow radius to which visual observation was confined, patiently waiting for the Doraine to pass a designated point. There was to be no miscalculation on the part of either the boat or the men who went over the side of the big steamship into ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... By a slight miscalculation of distance and elevation, the eye was unharmed, but the well-developed nose was more effectually ruined than its original ever was ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... us. Germany set the example at the beginning of the war of raising no money at all by taxation, puffed up with the vain belief that the cost of the war, and a good deal more, was going to be handed over to her in the shape of indemnities by her vanquished enemies. This terrible miscalculation on her part led her to set a very bad example to the warring Powers, and when protests are made in this country concerning the low proportion of the war's costs that is being met out of taxation it is easy for the official apologist to answer, "See how much ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... and she turned to go into the house; her head gradually sank forward as she went, and her unparagoned ear and neck flushed to a burning red. On the threshold, by some miscalculation, her burdened arm struck the jamb, and the whole load fell again. I sprang and began to gather the stuff into a chair, but she walked straight on as though nothing had occurred, and shut the nearest ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... A hyper-pilot is always anxious just before crossover. You've got to be, because the slightest miscalculation can send you fifty thousand light ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance
... been nearly two hours awake; the race against a well-nigh impossible time limit which would brook neither mistake nor miscalculation had been picked up automatically at daybreak, where it had hesitated at nightfall the day before. While he stared down at this activity, a realization of the months of bitter toil which stood between them and ultimate, uncertain success, crept over Fat Joe. Little by little his features ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... preparations been made, before the piratical schooner, which had made a wide tack outward to catch the wind, came swiftly sweeping round to their side, like a towering falcon on his prey. But, by some miscalculation of her helmsman, she went twenty yards wide of them—not, however, without betraying the full extent of her bloody purposes; for as, under the impulse of a speed she found herself unable instantly to check, she ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... nearly thirteen hundred persons, all of them non-belligerents and more than one hundred of them American men, women, and children. This atrocious crime the Germans committed out of their stupid miscalculation of the motives which govern non-German peoples. They thought that the British and Americans would be so terrorized that they would no longer dare to cross the ocean. The effect was, of course, just the opposite. A cry of horror ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... The enemy, therefore, must be punished; and his punishment must make him permanently impotent to repeat the offence. That having been done, Europe will have durable peace, for there will be no one left able to break it who will also want to break it. Now, I believe all this to be demonstrably a miscalculation. It is contradicted both by our knowledge of the way human nature works and by the evidence of history. In the first place, wars do not arise because only one nation or group of nations is wicked, the others being good. For the actual outbreak of this war, I believe, ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... points[136]. The Ottoman position by no means lacked elements of strength. The first of these was the Danube itself. The task of crossing a great river in front of an active foe is one of the most dangerous of all military operations. Any serious miscalculation of the strength, the position, or the mobility of the enemy's forces may lead to an irreparable disaster; and until the bridges used for the crossing are defended by tetes de pont the position of the column that has passed over ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... suite of offices in the Rookery Building, was suffering from the heat, but much more from mental perturbation. Though not a stingy or penurious man, it was still true that of all earthly things he suffered most from a financial loss. How often had he seen chance or miscalculation sweep apparently strong and valiant men into the limbo of the useless and forgotten! Since the alienation of his wife's affections by Cowperwood, he had scarcely any interest in the world outside his large financial holdings, which ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... to where the wretched little beast, having fallen overboard through a miscalculation, was being carried down-stream by the current and in sore peril of meeting death by drowning, since cats are ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... make clear our position in this matter so that there would not be danger of Communist miscalculation. The Secretary of State on September 4th made a statement to the same end. This statement could not, of course, cover every contingency. Indeed, I interpret the joint resolution as requiring me not to make absolute advance commitments but to use my ...
— The Communist Threat in the Taiwan Area • John Foster Dulles and Dwight D. Eisenhower
... that Meldon said it was; but his satisfaction with it turned out to be ill-founded. It was based on a miscalculation. What seemed to him a desirable sailing breeze was a cause of grave discomfort to ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... great deal of formal Roman language untouched; but to work this out in dry, bald, technical logic, on the face of it, narrow in scope, often merely ingenious, was even a greater stumbling-block. It was, undoubtedly, a great miscalculation, such as men of keen and far-reaching genius sometimes make. They mistake the strength and set of the tide; they imagine that minds round them are going as fast as their own. We can see, looking back, that such an interpretation of the Articles, with the view then taken ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... cast; but it is difficult to learn not to snap off the flies at every throw. Of this, however, we will not speak. I continued casting for some moments, until I became satisfied that there had been a miscalculation. Either the trout were too green to know what I was at, or they were dissatisfied with my offers. I reeled in, and changed the flies (that is, the fly that was not snapped off). After studying the color of the sky, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... charming paradox!" cried Ellis. "And so it is really true that every soldier who dies on the field of battle does so only by virtue of a miscalculation? And if he could but pull himself up and remember that, after all, the preservation of his life was the only motive that induced him to endanger it, he would run away like a sensible man, and try some other device to achieve his end, the device of society having evidently ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... miscalculation about distance Made all their naval matters incorrect; Three fireships lost their amiable existence Before they reach'd a spot to take effect: The match was lit too soon, and no assistance Could remedy this ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... PTOLEMY.—It will be observed that the Greek geographer regarded the Indian Ocean as a landlocked body of water, while he appears to have some knowledge of the so ces of the Nile. The general tendency of the map is to extend Asia very much to the east, which led to the miscalculation encouraging Columbus to ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... boat managed to pull through all right, for Reddy knew the route; but disaster awaited that containing the two chums. Whether they struck a half-submerged rock, and were capsized, or made a miscalculation, and found themselves seized by the ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... the voice sat on the table and hummed fiercely. In the stress of mental anguish caused by his position, Henry made a miscalculation, and in turning bumped the table heavily ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... hurry to reach the spot that he must needs make an unfortunate miscalculation when attempting to climb up the steep bank, or else a root upon which he depended proved false ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... nautilus,' which, 'by yielding, can defy the most violent ragings of the sea.' And, though man is so nicely adapted to your management that it is obviously the end of his creation, remember Mrs. Jones's trifling miscalculation in regard to the meerschaum, and—'N'eveillez pas le ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... exemplified in your complete misjudgment as to the cohesive power of the British Empire and as to the loyalty of its component parts and subject races; by your gross underestimate of France and by your general miscalculation as to how the peoples challenged by you would react to ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... through some appropriate medium, which retained the solids and set free the fluid sewage for irrigation, was the principle of the scheme. "All previous plans," he said, "would have cost millions; mine costs next to nothing." Unfortunately, owing to a slight miscalculation, the invention proved to be impracticable; but Albert's intelligence was unrebuffed, and he passed on, to plunge with all his accustomed ardour into a prolonged study of the ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... witnesses the dying struggles, and hears the heart-rending groans; we must not forget that the best contrivances sometimes fail to do good work, and that a certain percentage of victims have to suffer a prolonged death-agony owing to the miscalculation of a bad workman. Most people go through life without thinking of these things: they do not stop and consider from whence and by what means has come to their table the flesh-food that is served there. They drift along through a mundane existence without feeling a pang of remorse for, or even ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... the criminality of his attempt in its enormous folly. On the other hand, any common-sensible man, looking at the matter unsentimentally, must have felt a certain intellectual satisfaction in seeing him hanged, if it were only in requital of his preposterous miscalculation ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... moment needed all his fortitude. The least mistake or miscalculation on the part of his friends, and what might not be ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... When through delay or miscalculation the vessel lost passenger traffic out of a port other than San Francisco, Mr. Skinner did not feel discouraged. To lose passengers out of San Francisco, where the home office of the Blue Star Navigation Company was located, however, savored of a reflection on his efficiency, and caused him much bitter ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... quick-witted women are there across the table with Chance a-meddling. The big plan must be carried out. The iron trumpery and the social folderol are bits of stuff that have to be juggled about in this business. They have no more intrinsic value than a bank of fog. Providence made a trifling miscalculation when it put together the human mind. As the thing works, there is nothing worth while but the thrills of the game. And these thrills! How they do play the devil with the candle! Thus it comes about that when one pulls his life or his string of playthings ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... with a leg dangling on either side. If the balance was correct, he slid down rapidly and shot out some feet from the bottom, as he had, from an advantageous point of view on Blackfriars Bridge, seen sacks of meal shoot from a Thames warehouse into the barge beneath. If, however, he made a miscalculation, he inevitably rolled off sideways and landed in a heap on the floor. Either result appeared to afford him infinite enjoyment and exhilaration. On this occasion he performed the feat ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... ask, "Why do these shrewd, hard men seem so certain that our favourite must lose? Are they the kind of persons who risk thousands in hard cash unless they know particularly well what they are doing? They bet with an air of certainty, though some of them must be almost ruined if they have made a miscalculation; they defy even the owner of the animal, and they cheerfully give him the opportunity of putting down thousands if he wishes to do so. There must be some reason for this assurance which at first sight looks so very overweening. ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... capabilities helps create world suspicion and tension. We, on our part, know that we seek only a just peace for all, with aggressive designs against no one. Yet we realize that there is uneasiness in the world because of a belief on the part of peoples that through arrogance, miscalculation or fear of attack, catastrophic war could be launched. Keeping the peace in today's world more than ever calls for the utmost in the nation's resolution, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... young men with not too broad a vein of envy. He was no woman hater—anything but that. Indeed, those who wished him ill had from time to time hoped to see him tumble down, through miscalculation in some of his audacities with women. No—he did not hate women. But there were several women who hated him—or tried to; and if wounded vanity and baffled machination be admitted as just causes for hatred, they ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... within my reach. If true, this would mean the well-nigh certain achievement of my heart's desire—the completion of my husband's work. Yet there were the rapids, where the skill and judgment of the men were our safeguards. One little miscalculation and it would take but an instant to whelm us in disaster. Still we had come so far on the way with success, surely it would be given to us to reach the goal in safety. But here inevitably thought flew to one who had been infinitely worthy ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... very calm," she said at last; "he said but little; and, I think, these were his words: 'I find, Janet, I have made a great miscalculation—I thought my hour of danger had passed. We have been many years together, but a parting must sooner or later be, and my time ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... may have, it is conclusive evidence of the failure of German diplomacy in America. The Kaiser has made many miscalculations about nations and about men, but no greater miscalculation than that which he has made in regard to President Wilson and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... a simple thing," he went on, "to talk or sing into that microphone," pointing to a little disk-like instrument about the height of a man's head. "But even there the least miscalculation may wholly spoil the effect of the speech or the music. Now, in a theater, the actor is at least twenty feet or so from the nearest of his audience and the sounds that he makes in drawing in his breath are not perceptible. If he stayed too close to ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... it fails of so conforming, it is either from miscalculation, or from a change in some of the elements of the problem; either in the natural value, that is, in the cost of production, or in the demand, from an alteration in public taste, or in the number or wealth of the consumers. If a value different from the natural ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... irresistibly that I should have read nine millions in place of the numbers that were burning themselves into my brain. But what if it were rightly but two and a half millions, and the great sum on which all my market movements had been predicated was a hideous miscalculation on my part? Then inevitably was I hopelessly bankrupt, or saved from that only to find my neck irrevocably caught in the "Standard Oil" noose. I strove fiercely to steady my nerves, to arrest the stampeding terrors that ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... get him loose or he'll pinch off my foot!" cried Andy. He reached over as well as he could, while standing on one foot, and tried to get hold of the lobster by the back, behind the vicious claws. But he made a miscalculation. ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... feeling," he said, as Fred joined him, "when I was right over the middle of the canyon, and knew, if I had made any miscalculation, I should never stop until pretty well down toward the ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... old carpenter whom he had observed, when the addition was being put to their house, and who, after measuring a board three blessed times, and picking up his saw, made ready to cut it in twain, when, possessed of an idea that he must not make a miscalculation, laid down his saw, and went to work to measure it for ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... decided that a visionary of this stamp might be useful for furthering certain projects of his own. He hoped, by placing under an obligation, to fashion out of the young reformer an amenable instrument—a miscalculation which he lived (though not for long) to repent. Under the Procurator's aegis, Bazhakuloff was summoned to the Capital. The political period was beginning. Moscow, on the whole, was glad to see the last of him—particularly the Chief ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... the whims of the multitude. This, as might have been expected in a great and sovereign state, produced a host of blunders, and amongst them the Sicilian expedition; though this failed not so much through a miscalculation of the power of those against whom it was sent, as through a fault in the senders in not taking the best measures afterwards to assist those who had gone out, but choosing rather to occupy themselves with private cabals for the leadership of the commons, ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... passed to the Herron coterie and the Fanning-Smiths and Great Lakes and Gulf, Dumont was still motionless—he was now estimating the strength and the weaknesses of the enemy, and miscalculation would be fatal. At the end of three-quarters of an hour Culver stopped the steady, swift flow of his report—"That's all the important facts. There's a lot more but it would be ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... tame charges were at church. Using the chair as a battering-ram, without malice—joy being in my heart—I deliberately thrust two of its legs through an upper and a lower pane of a four-paned plate glass window. The only miscalculation I made was in failing to place myself directly in front of that window, and at a proper distance, so that I might have broken every one of the four panes. This was a source of regret to me, for I was always loath to leave a well-thought-out piece ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... horn-rimmed glasses but bewilder him the more, and we have had several of them walk into our arms without intention, though they soon found that thereby they had bettered themselves. There was one young Bavarian officer who made this miscalculation. I saw him moving near our wire in the early dawn. I called to some men to draw a bead on him but he came toward us and at the last with a run jumped down into our trench. "Good morning!" I said to him, looking down my automatic, and you never saw such a crestfallen countenance in your life. ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... imbecility, miscalculation, senselessness, error, foolishness, imprudence, misjudgment, silliness, fatuity, idiocy, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... and squalid streets, seeking groups and crowds, and finding no end of them, but never any sign of the boy. This greatly surprised him, but did not discourage him. To his notion, there was nothing the matter with his plan of campaign; the only miscalculation about it was that the campaign was becoming a lengthy one, whereas he had expected it to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the matter first, and then looked over the bill and money with a careless gentility, saying, "Very right," or "Very well, sir;" wisely calculating, that it was better to lose a few shillings on the road, than to lose a hundred pounds by the risk of Hibernian miscalculation. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... either through some miscalculation or, more probably, because the Russians had widened the channel, there still remained an unfilled gap, wide enough for a single ship to pass through! It was a most vexatious thing, after all the trouble that we had taken and the ordeal which we had passed through; but it could not ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... time-wasting and less simple than its recital would imply. For in the dark, unaccustomed legs are liable to miscalculation in the matter of length of stride, even when shell-holes and other inequalities of ground do not complicate the calculations still further. And it is hard to maintain a perfectly straight line when moving forward through choking fog and over ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... ordeal of the struggle against the Knights of Labor, the action of the socialists was an unforgivable crime. All the bitterness which has characterized the fight between socialist and anti-socialist in the Federation verily goes back to this gross miscalculation by DeLeon of the psychology of the trade union movement. DeLeon, on his part, attributed the action of the Federation to a hopelessly corrupt leadership and, since he failed to unseat it by working from within, he now felt justified in striking ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... the British troops, as these and subsequent events proved, there had been a slight miscalculation in the landing, and the men had actually gone ashore a mile and a half northeast of Gaba Tepe, instead of at that point. Gaba Tepe is so rugged and uninviting that it was believed that the Turks would not trouble to intrench it. Actually the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... to the throne. The new Turkish dynasty, however, was unable to withstand the internal Chinese resistance. Its founder died in 948, and his son, owing to his youth, was entirely in the hands of a court clique. In his effort to free himself from the tutelage of this group he made a miscalculation, for the men on whom he thought he could depend were largely supporters of the clique. So he lost his throne and his life, and a Chinese general, Kuo Wei, took his place, founding the ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... partly from miscalculation, I had lost my way; and, quite alone, but armed with my sword and a brace of pistols, to defend myself against the bears, I arrived at the log-house in the middle of a moonlight night, the hoar frost covering ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... made some miscalculation as to her daughter's hours of study? or was it Helene's own mistake? or had the sunshine and the waving woods, the barking of dogs, the chattering of workmen, all the flood of new life outside old Lancilly, made it impossible to ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price |
