"Misinterpretation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... permeates his motives, at times giving him urban cravings that keep him from utilizing to the full his social resources in the country. Any attempt to understand rural life that minimizes the common human fellowship which the newspaper offers the farmer is certain to lead to unfortunate misinterpretation. Mentally the farmer is far from being isolated in his experiences, for he no longer is confined to the world of local ideas as he once was. This constant daily stimulation from the world of business, ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... everything as on a battlefield, there he stayed more than two hours, exposed to a heavy rain which began after the fire, and to all the heat and smoke. Alone, unguarded, evidently anxious to dispel all misinterpretation which malevolence could draw from the unhappy event, he displayed great energy ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... letter to Mr. Moran, or by Mr. Davis in his letter to the New York "Herald." They must have been as unsuccessful as myself in the search after anything in these speeches which could be construed into misinterpretation of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... deciding force in turning the scales already so overloaded by fate. Philosophy failed to prevent war. Nietzsche's philosophy did not cause it. His philosophy affords a convenient phraseology in which to express a philosophy of war, granting sufficient misinterpretation of his philosophy. Probably what influence he has had has been due rather to his literary impressiveness than to his thought as a contribution ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... anybody's wilfully false translations from that pretending to authority? I repeat what? None is conceivable, since what could you have beyond the assurance of the translator, even which could only guarantee his intentions)—here is a cause of misinterpretation amounting to ruin, viz., after being read for centuries as if practically meant for our guidance, such and such a chapter (e.g., Jael and Sisera), long proscribed by the noble as a record of abominable perfidy, has at length been justified on the ground that it was never meant ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... out of their connexion, may possibly have been compatible with a transphenomenal principle of energy; but I defy any one to show a single sentence which, taken with its context, should be naturally held to advocate that view. The misinterpretation probably arose at first from my having defended (after Renouvier) the indeterminism of our efforts. 'Free will' was supposed by my critics to involve a supernatural agent. As a matter of plain history, ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... for the race, makes it more difficult for those who possess it to-day to carry out the mission. The Negro scholar who sets out to pursue the paths pointed out does it at a great amount of self-sacrifice. He must expect to meet rebuff, discouragement, misinterpretation, lack of recognition, hardships, and these do not by any means come alone from the Anglo-Saxon. The foes are often of his own race. It will take all the philosophy he can summon to contend with the opposition that comes from ignorance, from coarseness, from the unthinking and ...
— The Educated Negro and His Mission - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 8 • W. S. Scarborough
... account of their thoroughness are interesting. From the documents it can be ascertained how near some of the critics came to that worship of the Faultless Hero with which Dryden in his heroic plays occasionally conformed, while he guarded himself against misinterpretation ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... Upon the misinterpretation of such objective planes depends the illusion of underestimation of the height or incline of a hill one is breasting, and of the converse overestimation of one seen across a descending slope or intervening valley. The latter ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... trick of some playwright. It would make a capital farce, this idea, carried out. A young man slighting the lovely heroine of the little comedy and making love to her grandmother! This would, of course, be overstating the truth of the story, but to such a misinterpretation the plain facts lend themselves too easily. We will relate the leading circumstances of the case, as they were told us with perfect simplicity and frankness by the subject of an affection which, if classified, would come under the general head of Antipathy, but ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... observed with concern the unfriendliness of the British Ministers, and now pressed its envoy to demand definitely whether they held the position of a neutral or an enemy. The only possible cause of enmity could be a misinterpretation of the decree of 19th November, which obviously applied merely to peoples that demanded the fraternal aid of Frenchmen. As France wished to respect the independence of England and her allies, she would not attack the Dutch. The opening of the Scheldt, however, was a question decided irrevocably ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... second Richard Wagner, not yet has he the charm of the Lizst personality, but he bulks too large in contemporary history to be called a decadent, although in the precise meaning of the word, without its stupid misinterpretation, he is a decadent inasmuch as he dwells with emphasis on the technique of his composition, sacrificing the whole for the page, putting the phrase above the page, and the single note in equal competition with the phrase. ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... calls for firmness and discretion on the part of parents and more care by the Broadcasting Service in arranging and timing programmes. Serials and recordings giving undue emphasis to crime or sex are not desirable, nor is the frequent repetition of recordings that are capable of misinterpretation, particularly in times like ...
— Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents - The Mazengarb Report (1954) • Oswald Chettle Mazengarb et al.
... made by the rulers in my church; but, having had no training in the law, I am less certain that my political position will be as unmistakably understood by the rulers in my state. Therefore, to avoid misinterpretation of certain words and phrases in this booklet, I here expressly disclaim any intention of violating the criminal-syndicalism statute of Ohio, following as closely as may be its phraseology in these ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... such things be,/And overcome us, like a summer's cloud,/Without our special wonder?] [W: Can't] The alteration is introduced by a misinterpretation. The meaning is not that these things are like a summer-cloud, but can such wonders as these pass over us without wonder, as a casual summer cloud passes ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... house. Although there is some gossip, nothing at all occurs between them beyond a little perfectly natural flirtation. The young man's father, hearing the gossip, speaks to the young lady in order that she may take steps to protect herself and his son against surmise and misinterpretation. Thereupon a sudden flood of light breaks upon her soul, by which she sees that she is really attached to the young man, and being a woman of unusual character, or perhaps absurdly averse to lying even upon such a subject, in answer to a question admits that this is ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... oversteps the limits of possible experience, the proper distinction of the different theories of the reality of sensuous objects is of great importance, in order to avoid the illusion which must necessarily arise from the misinterpretation of ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... around his finger. Yes, it was all quite clear. And Brian helpfully would be shocked and thrilled at the sacrificial tribute of penance. Kenny pursed his lips and nodded. He would even concede the sunsets. That, after John Whitaker's cold-blooded misinterpretation, was necessary to his own ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... steam-engine and his celebrated troop of life-size turkeys gobbling the tall grass in a meadow, at the end of which stood, high up in the picture, a French chateau. Impressionism is a word that has lent itself to every kind of misinterpretation, for in its exact sense all true painting is penetrated with impressionism, but, to use the word in its most modern sense—that is to say, to signify the rapid noting of illusive appearance—Monet is the only painter to whom ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... evidence might possibly be objected to or eluded. He confessed that he feared the witness who copied the register and the witness to the marriage were alive. And then he talked pathetically of his desire to do what was right, his dread of slander and misinterpretation. He said nothing of Sidney, and his belief that Sidney and Charles Spencer were the same; because, if his daughter were to be the instrument for effecting a compromise, it was clear that her engagement with Spencer must be ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... an intention; and indeed her lively feelings, and the violent fancy she had taken for his conversation and character, in every expression of admiration and attachment which she really felt, and which she never supposed capable of misinterpretation. By himself they were not misinterpreted; but he seems to have had ever before his eyes a very unnecessary dread of that being so by others—a fear lest madame du Deffand's extreme partiality and high opinion should expose him to suspicions of entertaining ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... apostolic carefulness have protected him? I suspect it would only have given rise to more vulgar misunderstandings and misrepresentations still. To explain to him who loves not, is but to give him the more plentiful material for misinterpretation. Let a man have truth in the inward parts, and out of the abundance of his heart let his mouth speak. If then he should have ground to fear honest misunderstanding, let him preach again to enforce the truth for which he is jealous, and ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... These are questions too often wrongly answered, notwithstanding the fact that with a little careful scrutiny the point may be easily settled. The error, which is too often committed, of pronouncing the leg upon which the animal travels soundly as the seat of the lameness, is the result of a misinterpretation of the physiology of locomotion in the crippled animal. Much depends upon the gait with which the animal moves while under examination. The act of walking is unfavorable for accurate observation, though, if the animal walks ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... in consequence of that misinterpretation, excited similar suspicions in me; and thus, ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... Young Children.—The words of the text-book, however, like the words of the teacher, are often open to misinterpretation, especially in the case of young pupils. This may be illustrated by the case of the student, who upon reading in her history of the mettle of the defenders of Lacolle Mill, interpreted it as the possession on their part of superior arms. ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... father—now happily deceased—had offered an instructive example of social and religious survival—survival, to be explicit, of the once famous Clapham Sect, and that in its least agreeable aspect. His theology was that of obstinately narrow misinterpretation of the Scriptures; his piety that of self-invented obligations; his virtue that of unsparing condemnation of the sins of others. His domestic morality was Hebraic—death kindly playing into his hands ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... preaches; noticing, all along the way of her researches therein, that whenever her thoughts had wandered into the bypaths of ancient philosophies or pagan literatures, her spiritual insight had been darkened thereby, till [5] she was God-driven back to the inspired pages. Early training, through the misinterpretation of the Word, had been the underlying cause of the long years of in- validism she endured before Truth dawned upon her understanding, through right interpretation. With the [10] understanding of Scripture-meanings, had come physical rejuvenation. ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... Indeed, he himself maintained that "good works are necessary to salvation in order that we may not lose it again." (387. 391.) At the same time Menius, as stated above, claimed that he had never employed Major's proposition, and counseled others to abstain from its use in order to avoid misinterpretation. The same advice he gave with respect to his own formula that new obedience is necessary to salvation. (Frank 2, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... eyed it, perplexed, deadly afraid, yet seeing no avenue of escape from what must appear a public exhibition of contempt for Quarrier if he refused to taste its contents. That meant a bad night for him; yet he shrank more from the certain misinterpretation of a refusal to drink from the huge loving-cup with its heavy wreath of scented orchids, now already on its way toward him, than he feared the waking ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... venture to think, have got to the end of another man's self-control before this. Anyway, she had at last irritated me into speaking as strongly as I felt. What I said had been so plainly (perhaps so rudely) expressed, that misinterpretation of it seemed to be impossible. She mistook me, nevertheless. The most merciless disclosure of the dreary side of human destiny is surely to be found in the failure of words, spoken or written, so to answer their ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... slap. One of the illustrateds deleted its voice from the general chorus. Cuckoo was aware of this, and looked up again to find two eyes fixed upon her with an expression of thin distaste that was incapable of misinterpretation. A second illustrated ceased to sing, two heads were inclined towards one another, and the "t'p, t'p, t'p" of a low whisper set the remaining two ladies at their posts as sentinels on the ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... these elements at work, it is not to be wondered at that a question which admitted of misinterpretation should be greedily laid hold of, and that, thus misinterpreted, the passions of the mob should be successfully roused. I believe there is little question that the Government brought forward the Rebellion Losses Bill in the Senate in a manner, if not ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... human sacrifice may sometimes have been a mere misinterpretation of a sacrificial ritual in which an animal victim was treated as a human being. For example, at Tenedos the new-born calf sacrificed to Dionysus was shod in buskins, and the mother cow was tended like a woman in child-bed. At Rome ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... itself, and separate it from the company of some others not perhaps so admissible. First, I say, we must observe Reynolds's exact meaning, for (though the assertion may at first appear singular) a man who uses accurate language is always more liable to misinterpretation than one who is careless in his expressions. We may assume that the latter means very nearly what we at first suppose him to mean, for words which have been uttered without thought may be received without examination. But when a writer or speaker may be fairly supposed to have considered his expressions ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... found, in some churches, of singing this Psalm on Sundays but not when it is read in the ordinary course of the Psalms. We believe that this is due to a misinterpretation of the Rubric. There is just as much reason for singing it on the 19th as on any ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... her hand was utterly at her own disposal, might again appear, and again urge a suit which he felt so few circumstances could induce her to deny. All this half-acknowledged yet earnest train of reasoning and hope vanished from the moment he had quitted her uncle's house. His words bore no misinterpretation. He had not yielded even to her own condescension, and her cheek burned as she recalled it. Yet he loved her. She saw, she knew it in his every word and look! Bitter, then, and dark must be that remorse which could have conquered every argument but that which urged him to leave her, when ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... American Negro was counted among the reasons why it was thought he could never gain his freedom on this continent. But this was a misinterpretation of his real character. Besides, it was next to impossible to learn the history of the Negro during the years of his enslavement at the South. The question was often asked: Why don't the Negroes rise at the South and exterminate their ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... juridical point of view, to insist that no respect at all, except the respect that arises from being too weak to have your own way, is due from either to the other. This shallow and mischievous notion rests either on a misinterpretation of the experience of civilised societies, or else on nothing more creditable than an arbitrary and unreflecting temper. Those who have thought most carefully and disinterestedly about the matter, are agreed that in advanced societies ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... Once more the hunted, helpless look it had worn when first he had looked on it. But more. Such an utter fear and sickening unto death. But not fear, terror for herself. Fear for the death of an ideal, a fear caused by her misinterpretation of his intent with the pistol. It had not been real, it had not been real. He was as other men, the men of her world and all the world was alike and life not worth living. With a finesse he had not ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... and that it is to such persons that St. Paul refers in the justly admired fifteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians; and that the inadvertence to this has led a numerous class of divines to a misconception of the Apostle's reasoning, and a misinterpretation of his words, in behoof of the Socinian notion, that the resurrection of Christ is the only argument of proof for the belief of a future state, and that this was the great end and purpose of this event. Now this assumption is so destitute of support ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... colour under that plausible tongue. The tactician began by declaring that the plaintiff was perfectly sane, and his convalescence was a matter of such joy to the defendant, that not even the cruel misinterpretation of facts and motives, to which his amiable client had been exposed, could rob him of that sacred delight "Our case, gentlemen, is, that the plaintiff is sane, and that he owes his sanity to those ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... take up this position prove, not that the artist has no meaning to convey, but that for them the artist's nature is unintelligible, and his meaning is conveyed in an unknown tongue. It seems superfluous to guard against misinterpretation by saying that to expect clear definition from music—the definition which belongs to poetry—would be absurd. The sphere of music is in sensuous perception; the sphere of poetry is in intelligence. Music, dealing with pure sound, must ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... the Trisagion, "who wast crucified for us," which for a time won recognition as sound and catholic, was first made by the monophysite Bishop of Antioch.[2] Both these phrases have scriptural authority, and they are justified by the communicatio idiomatum. But they are liable to misuse and misinterpretation. All depended on how they were said and who said them. The monophysite meant one thing by them, the catholic another. The arriere pensee of the monophysite gave them a wrong turn. He was always on the look-out for ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... way home from celebration, give nine cheers for mother and children. Outcry at Indian Bar against Spaniards. Several severely wounded. Whisky and patriotism. Prejudices and arrogant assurance accounted for. Misinterpretation by the foreigner. Injustices by the lower classes against Spaniards pass unnoticed. Innumerable drunken fights. Broken heads and collarbones, stabbings. "Sabbaths almost always enlivened by such merry ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... life, or perhaps with the death of the person who seems to be seen, what are we to think? Or again, when several witnesses simultaneously have the same hallucination,—not to be explained as a common misinterpretation of a real object,—what are we to think? This is the true question of ghosts and wraiths. That apparitions, so named by the world, do appear, is certain, just as it is certain that visionary rats appear ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... just that is the proof. The Lord could not in fact have exposed His law to the possibility of mutilation or misinterpretation, but must in fact have left a guardian of His truth to prevent that ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... the court's complacent misinterpretation ere he saw its smile; the facile theory that brooding so much over her fascinating picture had unhinged his brain. From that moment a hardness came over his heart. He shut his lips grimly. What was the use of talking? ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... Parliament which the judges do not like; and some of the interpretations undoubtedly seemed far-fetched and artificial. Yet some of those which were pointed to at the time as flagrant instances of extravagant misinterpretation have now come to look different. Nothing could exceed the scorn poured on the interpretation of the Twenty-second Article, that it condemns the "Roman" doctrine of Purgatory, but not all doctrine of purgatory as a place ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... constitutional rights are thus systematically assailed, are themselves the aggressors. At the present time this imputed aggression, resting, as it does, only in the vague declamatory charges of political agitators, resolves itself into misapprehension, or misinterpretation, of the principles and facts of the political organization of the new ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... face; and Dysart's misinterpretation of his philosophy almost stung him into fierce retort; but as his heavy lips unclosed in anger, his eyes fell on Dysart's ravaged face, and he sat silent, his personal feelings merged in an ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... "Cross and Self Fertilisation," page 361, Darwin describes hive-bees apparently searching for a secretion on the calyx. In the same passage in "Cross and Self Fertilisation" he quotes Muller as stating that hive-bees obtain nectar from red clover by breaking apart the petals. This seems to us a misinterpretation of the "Befruchtung der Blumen," page 224.) I do so hope that you have not wasted any time from my stupid blunder. I hate myself, I hate ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... you looked hot and unhappy. Were you proposing to Miss Mathewson by letter? It's always best to say those things right out: letters are liable to misinterpretation," ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... himself, was a mist formed out of the moods and the mistakes of men, which befogged the sea of life and prevented plain sailing for the little commercial and social barques of men; it was a miasma of misinterpretation where the ills of life festered, and also a place where the accidentally wounded were ground between the upper and the nether millstones of force or chance; it was a strange, weird, interesting, and yet futile battle of wits where the ignorant and the ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... does this man fall below his own high level or fail to set his private remarque upon his labor. It is in a way unfortunate that Stevenson, early in his career, so frankly confessed to practising for his craft by the use of the best models: it has led to the silly misinterpretation which sees in all his literary effort nothing but the skilful echo. Such judgments remind us that criticism, which is intended to be a picture of another, is in reality a picture of oneself. In his lehrjahre Stevenson "slogged ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... was condemned off-hand, by a certain class of readers, as an outrage on their sense of propriety. Conscious of having designed and written, my story with the strictest regard to true delicacy, as distinguished from false—I allowed the prurient misinterpretation of certain perfectly innocent passages in this book to assert itself as offensively as it pleased, without troubling myself to protest against an expression of opinion which aroused in me no other feeling than a feeling ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... chapters. When the doctrine of immanence began, as it has been of late, to be reasserted in a somewhat pronounced manner, most of those who were best able to judge felt conscious of certain dangers likely to arise through misinterpretation and over-emphasis; that those anticipations have been abundantly realised, no careful student of recent developments will dispute, and the present book is intended both to call attention to these dangers and to bring out the distinction between the truth of immanence ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... collected.] to give some account of the genesis of these Californian sketches, and the conditions under which they were conceived, is peculiarly tempting to an author who has been obliged to retain a decent professional reticence under a cloud of ingenious surmise, theory, and misinterpretation. He very gladly seizes this opportunity to establish the chronology of the sketches, and incidentally to show that what are considered the "happy accidents" of literature are very apt to be the results of quite logical ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... liberals of the town had regarded this very stronghold as their Bastille, and it had been dismantled by them in emulation of their brethren of Paris. The language and motive of the report were therefore capable of misinterpretation. A storm at once arose among the Marseilles Jacobins against both Buonaparte and his superior, General Lapoype; they were both denounced to the Convention, and in due time, about the end of February, were both summoned before the bar of that body. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... called in question, he tells us, was a few lines in a preface to one of his books; the objection, says he, I must not pass in silence, because it was the only part of his life that was liable to misinterpretation, even by the confession of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... and to eliminate it I may have to show her Oliver's account of that long-forgotten night of crime in Spencer's Folly. It is naively written and reveals a clean, if reticent, nature; but that its effect may be unquestionable I will insert a few lines to cover any possible misinterpretation of his manner or conduct. There is an open space, and our handwritings were always strangely alike. Only our e's differed, and I will ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... don't understand me, Huntingdon! My own aim in life is to make my service to my country compensate for the selfishness and foolishness of my youth. My methods may, as you say, have been open to misinterpretation. But God knows my impulses have been disinterested. And you must realize now, Huntingdon, that it has been the business of certain people to see that you and I misunderstand ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... no knowledge of the Scottish law. I had a vague dislike and dread of the deception which Mr. Brinkworth was practicing on the people of the inn. And I feared that it might lead to some possible misinterpretation of me on the part of a ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... the vituperation hurled by many Northern friends of the blacks at the "professed philanthropists" who went to Port Royal to "make their fortunes" out of the labor of the "poor negro." The integrity of Mr. Philbrick's motives stands out in his letters beyond the possibility of misinterpretation. This record is a witness of what sort of thing he and his kind were ready to do to redress the ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... desperado, and was naturally much alarmed, so she sent a telegram to learn what had happened, and in reply Faye telegraphed for her to come out, and fearing that he must be very ill she left Boston that very night. But we understood that she would start the next day, and this misinterpretation caused my undoing—that and ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... example, there is reason to believe that savages have always regarded the lower animals as powerful beings, there is no need, in accounting for the veneration given them, to resort to the roundabout way of assuming a misinterpretation of names ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... the ins and outs of this "Nineteenth Century" business. I was anxious to help Knowles when he started the journal, and at his earnest and pressing request I agreed to do what I have done. But being quite aware of the misinterpretation to which I should be liable if my name "sans phrase" were attached to the article, I insisted upon the exact words which you will find at the head of it; and which seemed, and still seem to me, to define my position as a mere adviser ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... which accompanies this nondescript collection of translations is scattered throughout various works, and is somewhat liable to misinterpretation if taken out of its immediate context. Before proceeding to consider it, however, it is necessary to notice certain phases of the general literary situation which created peculiar difficulties for the translator or which are likely to be confusing to the present-day ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... letter to Oscar, aunty wrote that he deserved a much worse punishment than he had received, for his wilful misinterpretation of his father's warning, obeying the letter, rather than the spirit, and for his obstinacy about the motto. ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... my success depends, upon whose appreciation my reward lies. Do not imagine that I do not frequently suffer deeply, that I am not wounded, and that I do not feel mortified and become discouraged by the misinterpretation of my motives. These are passing clouds, but they are not ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Perhaps most instructive and most tranquillising of all is this, that the progress of physical knowledge is constantly destroying in silence erroneous opinions which had never seemed to be attacked.[71] And in reading history, how much ignorance and misinterpretation would have been avoided, if the student had but been careful to remember that 'the law as written and the law as administered; the principles of those in power, and the modification of their action by the sentiments of the governed; an institution as it emanates from those who form it, and the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... Another piece of fanciful philology, based on a misinterpretation of a Greek transliteration of the name Jerusalem. The Solymi are traditionally placed in Lycia. Both Juvenal and Martial use Solymus ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... repulsive in manners or in person on terms of eternal hostility. In a community so nobly released as was Rome from all base Oriental bondage of women, this followed—that compliances of a nature oftentimes to belie the native nobility of woman become painfully liable to misinterpretation. Possibly under the blinding delusion of secret promises, unknown, nay, inaccessible, to those outside (all contemporaries being as ridiculously impotent to penetrate within the curtain as all posterity), the wife of Lamia, once so pure, may ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... The Times recorded the event, December 29, but with no comment save that Southern prospects were less rosy than had been supposed. Then ensued a long silence, for this time there was no possibility of that editorial wiggling about the circle from excuses for misinterpretation to a complacent resumption of ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... the popular treatment of the theory of descent, is justly considered as its most important outcome and as the keystone of the evolutionist edifice—to the well-known proposition, "Man is descended from the Ape." While we simply ignore all the misrepresentation, distortion, and misinterpretation which this ape, or pithecoid hypothesis, has met with on all sides, we will only remark that this fundamental proposition, in the sense of our modern doctrine of evolution, can rationally have only this plain meaning: that the human species as a whole was long since developed from ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... of causative factors given at the end of the case study deals only with the factors of delinquency. To avoid misinterpretation of the coordinated facts, what they are focused upon should ever be remembered. The statement of these ascertained factors brings out many incidental points which should be of interest to lawyers and ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... to say that even though the reports we were getting were detailed and contained a great deal of good data, we still had no proof the UFO's were anything real. We could, I said, prove that all UFO reports were merely the misinterpretation of known objects if we made a ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... he repeated, watching the lovely, sensitive face which pride and dread of misinterpretation had slightly ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... abroad that he was out looking for one was to go where he was to be found. It wouldn't look right to leave town without giving Hargus a chance to state his business; it would be a move subject to misinterpretation, and damaging to a man's ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... quite as authentic as any we have of heaven. If God has such a place prepared for us, and really wanted us to know it, He could have found some better way than a book so liable to alterations and misinterpretation. God has had no trouble to prove to man the laws of the constellations and the construction of the world, and such things as that, none of which agree with His so-called book. As to a hereafter, we have not the slightest evidence that there is any—no evidence that ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the way of accepting the identification is that it is stated that the lost Atlantis lay beyond the Pillars of Hercules; but doubtless this statement is due to Solon's misinterpretation of what was said by his Egyptian informant, or to the Saite priest's endeavour to accommodate his ancient tradition to the wider geographical knowledge of his own time. The old Egyptian conception of the ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... among us at the present moment who are waiting for the speedy coming of Christ. They expect, before another year closes, to see Him in the clouds, to hear His voice, to stand before His judgment- seat. These illusions spring from misinterpretation of Scripture language. Christ, in the New Testament, is said to come whenever His religion breaks out in new glory or gains new triumphs. He came in the Holy Spirit in the day of Pentecost. He came in the destruction of Jerusalem, which, by subverting the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... your judgment; and this is the answer which, upon your authority, we will give to all masters of the art of misinterpretation? ...
— Philebus • Plato
... that he was kept in great state, being surrounded with a numerous body of officers and guards, and in all respects royally treated. Plutarch speaks of him as being [39][Greek: semnos proskunomenos], worshipped with a degree of religious reverence. The whole of this notion took its rise from a misinterpretation of the title above. I have mentioned, that in early times Cahen was a title universally conferred upon priests and prophets: hence Lycophron, who has continually allusions to obsolete terms, calls the two diviners, Mopsus and ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... verbally or otherwise. Evidently all these traditions, as well as those about abductions of women by animals and fostering of children by them, fall naturally into their places as results of the habitual misinterpretation ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... understand the precise and definite meaning of the writers who used them, and the chances of misinterpreting or misunderstanding them are reduced to a minimum. It is I think well-known that avoidance of technical terms has often rendered philosophical works unduly verbose, and liable to misinterpretation. The art of clear writing is indeed a rare virtue and every philosopher cannot expect to have it. But when technical expressions are properly formed, even a bad writer can make himself understood. In the early days of Buddhist philosophy in the Pali literature, ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... revolting against a misinterpretation which would injure her vanity, though it was not likely to aim at her honour, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... from a recent daily paper reads, "'Rest while you work,' says Annie Payson Call,"—and then the editor adds, "and get fired," and although the opportunity for the joke was probably thought too good to lose, it was a natural misinterpretation ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... infinitely daring, yet he skirted the cause of the quarrel with perfect tact: "The misinterpretation of a few careless and kindly words, said in passing, and repeated, with garbling additions, to a man who was not himself.... The brooding of a mind most unhappily beset with alcohol.... A blow resented by a too devoted but ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... discovered the western world previous to Columbus, in the course of the voyage with Cam, was founded on a misinterpretation of a passage interpolated in the chronicle of Hartmann Schedel, a contemporary writer. This passage mentions, that when the voyagers were in the Southern Ocean not far from the coast, and had passed the line, they came into another hemisphere, where, when they looked towards the east, their ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... misunderstood, and led me to refer to the place again. I immediately withdrew the note which had been interpreted in a way very different from what I had intended, and at the same time perceiving that my argument was obscure and liable to the misinterpretation of which Dr. Lightfoot has made such eager use, I myself at once recast it as well as I could within the limits at my command, [8:1] and this was already published before Dr. Lightfoot's criticism appeared, and before I had any knowledge ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... danger that would come to his people through contact with a country leagues removed in customs and beliefs. Neither crucifixion nor torture had availed to keep out the new religion. With it came wisdom and great reforms. Misinterpretation too, had followed. Old laws were shattered, and this girl, Zura Wingate was a product of a new order of things, the result of broken traditions, a daughter of two countries, ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... was intensely proud. She had been an unobserved witness of the scene between Edward and Wanda in the wood, and, of course, had made her own misinterpretation. A man who could permit a low, untutored savage to fawn upon him in that way, kissing his hand repeatedly, and flushing with gratified vanity, presumably at his words of endearment, could scarcely expect to be treated otherwise than with disdain by the high-bred ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... been the customary misinterpretation of calm justice in the case of my father's moderation during the wild ardor of abolition. This sort of ardor is very likely necessary in great upheavals, but it is not necessary that every individual should join the partisans (while ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... declare: Grace is everything, free-will is nothing. If the power of grace destroyed the freedom of the human will, their mutual relation would be no problem.(700) Possibly St. Augustine in the heat of controversy now and then expressed himself in language open to misinterpretation, as when he said: "Therefore aid was brought to the infirmity of the human will, so that it might be unchangeably and invincibly influenced by divine grace."(701) But this and similar phrases admit of a perfectly orthodox interpretation. As the context shows, Augustine merely ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... irregularly and coarsely laminated (This term is open to some misinterpretation, as it may be applied both to rocks divided into laminae of exactly the same composition, and to layers firmly attached to each other, with no fissile tendency, but composed of different minerals, or of different shades of colour. The term "laminated," ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... upon, and their worse side unduly left in the background. It may well have been that an impression of personal adhesion was conveyed which only very partially existed, or even where it did not exist at all: that is a risk of misinterpretation which it is always hard for the historical critic to escape. There may have been a too eager tone; but to be eager is not a very bad vice at any age under the critical forty. There were some needlessly aggressive passages, and some sallies ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... Hosanna was, though ingenious, a misinterpretation of Gaubil's. Mr. Wylie has sent me a paper of his own (in Chin. Recorder and Miss. Journal, July, 1871, p. 45), which makes things perfectly clear. The expression transcribed by Pauthier, Yao san wen, and rendered "Hosanna," appears in a Chinese work, without reference to this inscription, as ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... of no misinterpretation, we see stated the doctrine of telepathy, which is only now beginning to find acceptance among scientific men, but which, as I view it, has been amply demonstrated by the experiments of recent years and by the thousands of cases of spontaneous occurrence ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... exquisitely ludicrous result. He interprets the last line of Parting at Morning as meaning that the woman "desires more society than the seaside home affords"! But it is the man who speaks, not the woman. The confusion plainly arises from a misinterpretation of "him" in "straight was a path of gold for him." Berdoe reads this as "lucrative work for the man"! Of course "him" refers to the sun who has "looked over the mountain's rim" . . . Here is an instance of making ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... misinterpretation of matters of fact, we are also to guard against the misrepresentation of natural appearances. Whether warped by the prejudice of partial and erroneous theory, or deceived by the inaccuracy of superficial observation, naturalists are apt to see things in an improper light, ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... chair was still vacant. Elsa became alarmed. Perhaps he was ill. She made inquiries, regardless of the possible misinterpretation her concern might be given by others. Mr. Warrington had had his meals served in his cabin, but the steward declared that the gentleman was not ill, only tired and irritable, and that he amused ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... subsequently shipped by the governor from Quebec to England, and never returned to Virginia. It is this treatment of Van Braam, more than any thing else, which convinces us that the suspicion of his being in collusion with the French in regard to the misinterpretation of the articles of capitulation, was groundless. He was simply ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... doubtful, however, whether this tradition be well founded, or whether it has not, as Mr. Maundrell and other writers suspect, originated in the misinterpretation of a very common Greek phrase. Our Saviour is said to have taken with him Peter, James, and John, and brought them into a high mountain "apart;" from which it has been rather hastily inferred that the description must apply to Tabor, the only insulated and solitary hill in the neighbourhood. We ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... of fact, heightened by legend, be allowed in the gospel history, the influence of myth is a psychological cause sufficient to explain the remainder. The idea is regarded as prior to the fact: the need of a deliverer, he pretends, created the idea of a saviour: the misinterpretation of old prophecy presented conditions which in the popular mind must be fulfilled by the Messiah. The gospel history is regarded as the attempt of the idea ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... of the kind. Let me say that once and for all," I returned peremptorily. "I've made my position clear to you, because you're my sister and you ought to be spared any further misinterpretation of my actions. But to have you dear people intriguing after billets for me would ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... own shams are liable to misinterpretation. In centuries to come our own modern recipes for "Scotch Woodcock" or "Welsh rabbit" may be interpreted as attempts on our part to hoodwink guests by making game birds and rabbits out of cheese and bread, like Trimalchio's culinary artists are reputed to have made suckling ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... precedence; but another, scarcely less disconcerting, is the likelihood of misunderstanding some allusion which was perfectly familiar to the author and his public, but which, by reason of its purely local significance, is obscure and subject to the misinterpretation and ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... capital, could he but have suppressed his rancour against those who had preceded him in the task, but a misconstruction or misinterpretation, nay, the misplacing of a comma, was in Gifford's eyes a crime worthy of the most severe animadversion. The same fault of extreme severity went through his critical labours, and in general he flagellated with so little pity, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... he repeated, "while we observe the French, they cannot make any attempt on ships or shore without running great hazard, and if we are beaten, all is exposed to their mercy." Thus without specially noticing the Minister's misinterpretation of his despatch, he intimated that his intention was observation, ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... This deliberate misinterpretation of his motives made it difficult for William to speak. "Do YOU think," he began, hoarsely, ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... idea, but with an examination of the conditions of its expression; less with the varieties of religious experience than with the nature of its manifestations. How far may religious experience be explained as a misinterpretation of normal non-religious life? To what extent have pathological nervous states influenced the building up of the religious consciousness? There can be no question that the last-named factor is an important one. This is admitted by Professor ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... aspect of things, and know that such and such a look of a tower or cottage at five hundred yards off means that sort of tower or cottage near; while, also, this nearer sketch will be useful to prevent any future misinterpretation of your own work. If you have time, however far your light and shade study in the distance may have been carried, it is always well, for these reasons, to make also your Dureresque and your near memoranda; for if your light and shade drawing be good, much of the interesting detail ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... and the moral law alone must be regarded as the principle on which that and its realization or promotion are aimed at. This remark is important in so delicate a case as the determination of moral principles, where the slightest misinterpretation perverts men's minds. For it will have been seen from the Analytic that, if we assume any object under the name of a good as a determining principle of the will prior to the moral law and then deduce from it the supreme practical principle, this would always introduce ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... speeches of the greatest importance; it is too laborious for ordinary purposes, since the account includes at most only a part of the speech. The best way, doubtless, to get a speech is to take notes on it. And yet this must be done properly or there is a danger of misinterpretation of statements or of undue emphasis upon any single part of the speech. The report of a speech should be as well balanced and logical as the speech itself, differing from the original only in length and the omission of details. The speech report must be ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... high above the level of their own sentiments; and the rest suspect it of something sinister or selfish, from the suggestions of their own sordid and vicious inclinations. The young Count subjected himself to such misinterpretation, among those who observed the increased warmth of civility and complaisance in his behaviour to Ferdinand. They ascribed it to his desire of still profiting by our adventurer's superior talents, by which alone ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... Orpheus and Amphion are long past, and that wild beasts have quite lost all respect for even the most admirable of singers?" But this gleeful turn, by which the Baroness at once effectually guarded against all misinterpretation of her warm interest in me, I was put immediately into the proper key and the proper mood. Why I did not take my usual place at the pianoforte I cannot explain, even to myself, nor why I sat down beside the Baroness on the sofa. ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... also Perkins, Secretary of Labor v. Lukens Steel Co., 310 U.S. 113 (1940), which held that prospective bidders for contracts derive no enforceable rights against a federal official for an alleged misinterpretation of his government's authority on the ground that an agent is answerable only to his principal for misconstruction of instructions, given for the sole benefit of the principal. In the Larson Case the ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... with similar subjects, is generally traced to one cause alone; and yet half the time it should rather be attributed to some other source. Anxiety, modesty, mere nervousness, or even vexation at this very misinterpretation, often raise the colour, and make the voice falter. Elinor had fully made up her mind, and she felt that a frank explanation was due to Mr. Ellsworth, but her regard for him was too sincere not to make the moment a painful one to her. He was rejected; but rejected with so much consideration, ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... of succeeding phases of movement is not at all the original movement idea. This is suggested first by the various illusions of movement. We may believe that we perceive a movement where no actual changes of visual impressions occur. This, to be sure, may result from a mere misinterpretation of the impression: for instance when in the railway train at the station we look out of the window and believe suddenly that our train is moving, while in reality the train on the neighboring track has started. It is the same when we see the moon floating quickly through the motionless ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... latter could choose for support either that [131] he preferred, the proposer taking the other contrary proposition: the contestants often left the decision in an envoi to one or more arbitrators by common consent. Misinterpretation of the language of these envois gave rise to the legend concerning the "courts of love," as we have stated in a previous chapter. One of the earliest representatives of this school was Conon de Bethune, born in 1155; he took part ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... do so by reference to the eternal truth, not by what the writer considers the present phase of truth; and if literature so tested is found guilty of suppression, evasion or misinterpretation, we call the work insincere, though the author may have written in perfect good faith. That is a necessary distinction to keep in mind. If you call a man's work insincere, the superficial critic will take ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... '"Of misinterpretation from Mr. Trevor I am in no fear. Had he one sinister design, he never could have imagined the conduct he has so nobly pursued. But to suppose the possibility of such a thing in him would be a most unpardonable injustice. The man who should teach me to distrust him, as ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... was, he saw his old friend and comrade undergoing changes which he himself thought hazardous, saw him criticised in a post where no one ever escaped the severest criticism, and beheld him return to private life amid unpopularity, founded, as he thought, upon misinterpretation of what was perhaps error, but not dishonesty. Meanwhile he felt that the old "Frank," his brother through Alma Mater, dwelt still within the person of the public man; and though to claim that brotherhood ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... Nolan there? The inference is only fair and reasonable that at the very outset he had recognised the misinterpretation of Lord Raglan's orders, and was seeking to change the direction of the charging horsemen, diverting them from the Russian battery towards the redoubts, their ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... or Coacher willfully failing to remain within the legal bounds of his position, except upon an appeal by the Captain from the Umpire's decision upon a misinterpretation ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 • edited by Henry Chadwick
... those who study it only that they may discover methods of pardonable disobedience, recognize the unturnable edge of its sword—and in the worst extremity of their need, strive not to avert, but to evade. The utmost deceivableness of unrighteousness cannot deceive itself into satisfactory misinterpretation; it is reduced always to a tremulous omission of the texts it is resolved to disobey. But a little while since, I heard an entirely well-meaning clergyman, taken by surprise in the course of family worship in the house of a wealthy friend, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... could not have contrived matters half so well, for they had previously made a present of the youngest of the horses to the king of Boossa, but most likely, owing to Pascoe's misrepresentation, or rather his misinterpretation, the monarch was not made sensible of the circumstance. The canoe was to be sent to them in a day or two, when they determined to prepare her for the water ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... light. But no experienced woman of the world, as she declared herself to be, could forget that this was a ludicrously delicate topic with a widower. She must either avoid it altogether, or expose herself to misinterpretation in pursuing it. It took him a few minutes to perceive that Diane had chosen the latter course, and had done it with a fine disdain of anything he might choose to think. She was not of the order of ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... forbearance is associated. If the early moderation of Government did really entrap any man, that man has himself, and his own meanness of heart, to thank for his delusion. But were it otherwise, and the Government became properly responsible for any possible misinterpretation of their own lenity—even in that case, it will remain to be enquired whether Government could have acted otherwise than it did. For else, though Government could owe little enough to the conspirator; yet with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... as it passed westward from the Holy City, it slowly extricated itself out of the spirit and the trammels of Judaism into the self-restraining freedom which Christ gives to His people. The teaching of the Gospel was fully developed, guarded from all possible misinterpretation, and practically applied to all representative circumstances of men, through its coming into contact with the events, persons, and scenes associated with the wonderful missionary journeyings of the apostle Paul, which began at Jerusalem ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... missionary. The church is a missionary band, professedly aiming to carry out the design of its Founder, in the wide field of the WORLD. The commission to the apostles is the commission to Christ's ministers in every age. This commission, it is to be feared, is losing much of its force from misinterpretation. ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... over a mutual misinterpretation, and, with a sense of mingled discord and relief, found themselves kissing and smiling as if nothing had happened. Pride sustained them; the hope that, since the other seemed so unconscious, a hurt dealt so unconsciously need not, for pride's sake, ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... "Beautiful eyes!"—no grosser insult had ever been offered her,—than to be bothered by a servant at her heels. The fact that she looked American and was understood to be following the custom of her own country secured her against any real misinterpretation. ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... Sydenham was thirty years old, before he formed his resolution of studying physick, for which I can discover no other foundation than one expression in his dedication to Dr. Mapletoft, which seems to have given rise to it, by a gross misinterpretation; for he only observes, that from his conversation with Dr. Cox to the publication of that treatise, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... of me, as if to draw me back, kissing my hands as he did so, but his gross misinterpretation of my resistance and the immoral position he was putting me into were stifling me, and ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... error, fallacy; misconception, misapprehension, misstanding^, misunderstanding; inexactness &c adj.; laxity; misconstruction &c (misinterpretation) 523; miscomputation &c (misjudgment) 481; non sequitur &c 477; mis-statement, mis-report; mumpsimus^. mistake; miss, fault, blunder, quiproquo, cross purposes, oversight, misprint, erratum, corrigendum, slip, blot, flaw, loose thread; trip, stumble ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... life we want to know the facts; otherwise we shall not be able to judge correctly of his life and work. There are two principal sources of error in writing biography: the first is ignorance, which leads to the omission of important particulars or to a misinterpretation of those that are known; the other source of error is prejudice for or against the person whose life is portrayed. This prejudice leads, on the one hand, to such a presentation of the biographical facts as to magnify ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... been very kind to many who were once known as dunces or blockheads, after they have become very successful; but it was very cross to them while they were struggling through discouragement and misinterpretation. Give every boy and girl a fair chance and reasonable encouragement, and do not condemn them because of even a large degree of downright stupidity; for many so-called good-for-nothing boys, blockheads, numskulls, dullards, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... fearfully avenged on men and Nations than that same, which indeed includes and presupposes all manner of sins: the sin which our old pious fathers called "judicial blindness;"—which we, with our light habits, may still call misinterpretation of the Time that now is; disloyalty to its real meanings and monitions, stupid disregard of these, stupid adherence active or passive to the counterfeits and mere current semblances of these. This is true of all times ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... of a connoisseur how neatly the denouement of this piteous farce had been prepared. His rage with Charteris; Anne's overhearing, and misinterpretation of, a dozen angry words; that old affair with Clarice—immediately before her marriage (one of how many pleasurable gallantries? the colonel idly wondered, and regretted that he had no Leporello to keep them catalogued ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... 4:10-14. On the contrary they are wanting, except in a general form, in the epistles to the Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Thessalonians (in 2 Thessalonians wholly wanting as in this epistle), Titus, and the first to Timothy. The other objections are founded on misinterpretation, as when it is inferred from chap, 1:15 that the author had never seen those to whom he wrote; and from chap, 3:2 that they had no personal acquaintance with him. But in the former passage the apostle speaks simply of the good report which had come to him from the Ephesian ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... be misconstrued. There was nothing, she told herself, nothing, it was all as open as the day, and still her mind groped about for some forgotten circumstance, something gone almost out of memory that would bear misinterpretation.... How should she begin? "Isaac," she would say, "I am being followed about London." Suppose he denied his complicity! How could he deny ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... correct, but which would have done credit to a profound grammarian. The reason of this undoubtedly was, that they were thrown into situations where they were obliged to write much and often, and in such a manner as to be clearly understood. Perhaps the misinterpretation of a single doubtful word or sentence might have been the ruin of an army, or even of the cause. Thus they had a motive to write accurately; and long practice, with a powerful motive ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott |
