"Mistaken" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that I were mistaken. But having given the subject some little thought and investigation, you will, I trust, permit me the honest expression of my own views upon this important matter. It is for that purpose and none other, that I am here. But you, Mr. President, as well as all those now present, can certainly ...
— Address delivered by Hon. Henry H. Crapo, Governor of Michigan, before the Central Michigan Agricultural Society, at their Sheep-shearing Exhibition held at the Agricultural College Farm, on Thursday, • Henry Howland Crapo
... He cares, or seems to care, little about the suffrage now, just because he thinks that he can best serve his own interests by working these Trades' Unions. Take from him that means of redress (real or mistaken, no matter); and he will seek redress in a way in which you wish him still less to seek it; by demanding ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... volume of Poems!—that is indeed a subject of new and very great interest. By degrees we hear more of public opinion concerning them, and I am very much mistaken if their power both in thought and execution is not more and more felt and acknowledged. I had a letter from dear Miss Fenwick to-day, whose first impressions were that they were by you, for it ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and merciful Disposition, came to be guilty of so barbarous an Action as that of dragging the Governour of a Town after his Chariot. I know this is generally ascribed to his Passion for Homer; but I lately met with a Passage in Plutarch, which, if I am not very much mistaken, still gives us a clearer Light into the Motives of this Action. Plutarch tells us, that Alexander in his Youth had a Master named Lysimachus, who, tho he was a Man destitute of all Politeness, ingratiated himself both with Philip and his Pupil, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... F.R.S. "No," he said, "you have nothing to thank but the goodness of your own work." For about ten minutes I felt rather proud of that speech, and shall keep it by me whenever I feel inclined to think myself a fool, and that I have a most mistaken notion of my own capacities. The only use of honours is as an antidote to such fits of the "blue devils." Of one thing, however, which is by no means so agreeable, my opportunities for seeing the scientific world in England force upon me every day ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... she said, running against the sleeper. "If it isn't that boy! And here the rain has been working round into the porch and it is coming on him! If you don't take cold, Charles Pitt Macomber, then I am mistaken! ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... your offence, and perhaps you were not altogether mistaken. Yet posterity declines to read a line of yours, and, as we think of you, we are again set face to face with that eternal problem, how far is popularity a test of poetry? Burns was a poet: and popular. Byron was a popular poet, and the world agrees in the verdict of ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... which the discoveries of natural science offer to the farmer of this century, it will little avail his successors unless he strives to educate his children. It is a very mistaken and lamentable notion—now, alas! too prevalent—that a liberal education is necessary alone to those who intend to enter upon a professional life. May the time be not far distant when farming may become a profession which takes ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... had happened. How the braves had mistaken the spacesuited man for a monster. How arrows had been fired before they had learned otherwise. How Robin had come, and gone off with ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger
... character that he pressed her to allow him to make it known. "Be sure, on the contrary," she replied, "that you never mention it. What good could it do? they would not believe you;[9]" but in this she was mistaken. Her charities were too widely spread to escape the knowledge even of those who did not profit by them; and they had their reward, though it was but a short-lived one. Though the majority of her acts of personal kindness were performed in ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... his Lordship, happens, unfortunately, to be mistaken. The Naval force of the Britons seems to have been very considerable in ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams
... think, my lord, you are mistaken a little about his habits. I don't fancy he ever drinks unless he ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... palace to work kitchen politics with the queen. In the meantime you get a few things on your shelves from the store-room. I'll lend you some, Hawkins. And you, Peter, see the German store. Start in all of you, selling for paper. Remember, I'll back the losses. If I'm not mistaken, in three days we'll have a national council or a revolution. You, Ieremia, start messengers around the island to the fishers and farmers, everywhere, even to the mountain goat-hunters. Tell them to assemble at the palace three days ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... voluntary, but from which the blind instinct of nature takes all freedom. The first refer to the affection itself, and are united necessarily with it; the others respond rather to the cause and to the object of the affections, and are thus accidental and susceptible of modification, and cannot be mistaken for infallible signs of the affective phenomena. But as both one and the other, when once the object is determined, are equally necessary to the instinct of nature, so they assist, both one and the other, the expression of affective ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... as Mr. Justice Holmes has said, is the true foundation of so many of our political judgments. The theory of natural rights upon which Burke heaped such contempt was wrong rather in its form than in its substance. It clearly suffered from its mistaken effort to trace to an imaginary state of nature what was due to a complex experience. It suffered also from its desire to lay down universal formulae. It needed to state the rights demanded in terms ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... belief and maternal pride with which she answered: "Don't I know better than them all what my child is worth? Could anything make me mistaken in him? I should have to be very ungrateful then. ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... surely, he could not have mistaken the pale olive face and the beautiful, soft, dark, lustrous eyes; nay, he made bold to put his hand on her arm, so determined was he to ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... any Christian brother ignorant of these things, and mistaken on them, I can patiently behold such a man holding his opinion; nor do I see that any ignorance as to the position or character of the corporeal creation can injure him, so long as he doth not believe any thing unworthy ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... of it, "if you think you are going to order me round, you're mistaken! I guess I shan't associate with every tramp that comes along—so ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... recognize the former when mistaken for it. Both will be with us until our women bear ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... mistaken in supposing that the construction foreman had been influenced only by a desire to get rid of a man who was to some extent incapacitated. As a matter of fact, Miss Stirling, who had been rather pleased with the part he had played two days ago, had, when her father insisted on her taking a white ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... mistaken; they were going faster, faster even than their efforts with the poles would account for. With the narrowing of the bed of the stream, the current was taking on a new swiftness. Shann said ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... beauty, however, of this history will be that at any point in its progress we may consult it for Tristram's good, and learn all that, up to that point, God has given us eyes to see. It may be that in deciding to make him a gardener we have been mistaken. That book ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... giving so attention to his profession as to neglect me and my children, he was becoming, every day, more the ideal of a physician, cool, calm, thoughtful, studious, ready to sacrifice his life at any moment in the interests of humanity. How often I have mistaken his preoccupied air for indifference; how many times I have inwardly accused him of coldness, when his whole heart and soul were filled with the grave problem of life, aye, ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... dangerous stuff in her now, and my anxiety is very great. Have you seen what a nature it is? You have not alluded to her beyond answers to instructions, but her character cannot have escaped you. I am never mistaken in my estimates of Italian and Cymric blood. Singularly, too, she is part Welsh on the mother's side, to judge by the name. Leave her mind entirely free till it craves openly for some counteraction. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Dimanche in 1846. Leon Gautier indeed, in Les Epopees francaises, says: 'Victor Hugo s'est propose de traduire notre vieux poeme, dont il avait sans doute quelque texte sous les yeux.' But it is clear from the mistake about the word Closamont and other details that Gautier was mistaken and that the source from which Hugo drew ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... had used the same combination to describe a real puff-ball, so that Hedwig's name was already a synonym. The specific name here adopted is next in point of priority, although Persoon discarded it the year following, substituting fallax, because he had mistaken the genus. ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... any of that gentry think they can drive their flock over here, and water their woolies at my expense, they're mistaken," declared Bud with emphasis. "Sheep men have to be, I reckon, but they're out of place in a cow country. Hello, there!" he called, loudly. "Come on out ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... of this death Eugenie felt a new motive for attachment to the house in which she was born, where she had suffered so much, where her mother had just died. She could not see the window and the chair on its castors without weeping. She thought she had mistaken the heart of her old father when she found herself the object of his tenderest cares. He came in the morning and gave her his arm to take her to breakfast; he looked at her for hours together with an eye that was almost kind; he brooded over her as though she had been gold. The old man was so ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... thinks I'm going to break my heart about him, she's mistaken. And so's He. I must be miserable for a bit," said Betty bravely, "but I'll not be miserable forever, so he needn't think it. Of course, I shall never care for anyone ever again—unless he were to love me for years and years before he ever said a word, and then I might say I would try.—And try. ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... said Fritz, laughing at the idea of old Lorischen being mistaken for the broad-shouldered, red-faced, whaling captain. The old nurse, who was very particular about her personal appearance, would have had a fit at the bare supposition, much less at such an allusion to her age as would have supposed her ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... alone should make them live. They breathe immortal in the prose of Livy, in the verse of Silius they are vain 'shadows of men foredone'. The Hannibal of Silius is not the dazzling villain of Livy, the incarnation of military daring and 'Punic faith'. Mistaken patriotism does not lead Silius to blacken the character of Rome's great antagonist; he strives to do him justice; he is as true a patriot, as chivalrous[618] a warrior, as any of the Roman leaders. But he does not live; he is merely ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... prepared to begin. He had considered his schooling as an end to be gained when it was only a means to the end. He had considered his learning as wealth to hold when it was capital to invest. He had mistaken the thoughts that he received from others for Knowledge when they were given him only to inspire and to help him ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... everything that is most characteristic of the great American nation is invitingly spread before the English youth, so that in a few weeks he will be so well equipped with Transatlantic details as (if he wishes) to be mistaken for a real inhabitant either of a big London hotel or a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... by a tail-piece in prose, formed somewhat on the model of the preface of Pope—for I was a great admirer, at the time, of the English written by the "wits of Queen Anne"—in which I gave serious expression to the suspicion that, as a writer of verse, I had mistaken my vocation. ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... nodded complacently. "I've sort of got a feelin' that way, an' if I ain't mistaken, them's his pony's hoofs comin' now—someway they sound different from ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... upon as a very pleasant but quite stupid fellow, had passed made his own rebuff harder to bear. He had always been proud of his intelligence, and now he asked himself desperately whether he was not mistaken in the opinion he held of himself. In the three months of the winter session the students who had joined in October had already shaken down into groups, and it was clear which were brilliant, which were clever or industrious, and which were 'rotters.' ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... no means profound, and was chargeable with many errors, yet the charms of his style and the play of his happy disposition throughout have continued to render it far more popular and readable than many works on the subject of much greater scope and science. Cumberland was mistaken, however, in his notion of Goldsmith's ignorance and lack of observation as to the characteristics of animals. On the contrary, he was a minute and shrewd observer of them; but he observed them with the eye of a poet and moralist as well as a naturalist. We ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... the door, and presently came back to say that she had been mistaken, and that it was a brown horse, and that all the neighbours were peeping out of their windows to see what the noise ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... stressful, stormy hours of my most unhappy youth did I not wish that she had preferred the virginal life of the cloister, and thus spared me the heavy burden of an existence which her unholy and mistaken saintliness went so near ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... seconds, and dreamed that Mors was sweeping down, with extended arms, to snatch you. By the clock I had not slept quite two minutes, yet the countenance of Mors was indelibly stamped on my memory, and now I am transferring it to paper. You are mistaken; it is terrible, but not hideous!" Beulah laid aside her pencil, and, leaning her elbows on the table, sat, with her face in her hands, gazing upon the drawing. It represented the head and shoulders of a winged female; the countenance was inflexible, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... he states the question about Justification and Works, and how the foundation of Faith without works is overthrown; and then he proceeds to discover that way which natural men and some others have mistaken to be the way, by which they hope to attain true and everlasting happiness: and having discovered the mistaken, he proceeds to direct to that true way, by which, and no other, everlasting life and blessedness is attainable. And these two ways he demonstrates thus;—they be his ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... really vain of her pretty face, but she well knew that her delicate type of beauty could not stand continuous late hours without showing it, and Patty was not mistaken when she claimed for herself a good share of ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... miserably dwarfed and utterly sterile, and that they behaved in all other respects like ordinary hybrids. He might then maintain that he had actually proved, in accordance with the common view, that his two varieties were as good and as distinct species as any in the world; but he would be completely mistaken. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... was mistaken. Her father's voice was stronger than usual and his eye kindled with something of the old fervor, then drawing from beneath his pillow a slip of ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... this means that the ultimate test of the constitutionality of legislation restricting freedom of utterance is whether there is still sufficient time to educate the utterers out of their mistaken frame of mind, and the final say on this necessarily recondite matter rests with the Supreme Court! Justice Brandeis also asserts (274 U.S. at 376) that there is a distinction between "advocacy" and "incitement," but fails ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... and then written out and committed to memory. As he had to speak in a foreign tongue, he considered this precaution absolutely necessary. At the same time it often made him feel shy and nervous when speaking before strangers, and this sometimes gave to those who did not know him a mistaken impression of coldness ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... describe the word pastern in his dictionary as the knee of a horse. "Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance," was his laconic reply. So great a man could well afford to confess utter ignorance of matters outside his own sphere. But how few of mankind are ever willing to own themselves mistaken about any subject under the sun, unless it be bimetallism or some equally unfashionable and abstruse (though not unimportant) ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... coldly. "I came to you for human aid, and thank you for what you have granted me: I have not been presumptuous enough to ask more, nor to believe myself a fitting subject for conversion. I am weak, but not weak enough to take advantage of the mistaken kindness of either the temporal Council of Todos Santos or its spiritual head." He opened the door leading into the garden. "Forget and forgive me, Father Esteban, and ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... we are all over-apt to prize in this world, should have been there too, and learnt a lesson not soon to be forgotten. I put my hand in my coat-pocket for my napkin to give my eyes a wipe, but found it was away, and feared much I had dropped it on the road; though in this I was happily mistaken, having, before I went to my bed, found that on my journey I had tied it over my neckcloth, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... he loved me—and so I told him my love—I shall never, never get over that!" she exclaimed passionately. "But I know now—I knew before he went away the last time, that I was mistaken; no man could say what he did and know even the ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... the possession of Hidehira, grandson of Kiyohira, at the time when the Minamoto family suffered its heavy reverses. Yoshitsune expected, therefore, that at least an asylum would be assured, could he find his way to Mutsu. He was not mistaken. Hidehira received him with all hospitality, and as Mutsu was practically beyond the control of Kyoto, the Minamoto fugitive could lead there the life of a bushi, and openly study everything pertaining ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... about art we not only change and disagree, but correct ourselves and each other. The history of taste, both in the individual and the race, is not a mere process, but a progress, an evolution. "We were wrong in calling that poem beautiful," we say; "you are mistaken in thinking that picture a good one"; "the eighteenth century held a false view of the nature of poetry"; "the English Pre-Raphaelites confused the functions of poetry and painting"; "to-day we understand what the ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... that I was mistaken as to the meaning of hosebaunde, which was possibly only the French mode ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various
... for the Rhine country. They enjoyed Brussels, and old Antwerp's Dutch art and its beautiful cathedral-tower that Napoleon thought should be kept under glass. They found Liege "alive with people" to greet their arrival at the Golden Sun, where they were mistaken for the expected and almost new king, Leopold, and his fine-looking brother. Sad truth brought cold looks and back views among other shadows of neglect. Cooper noted: The "Golden Sun veiled its face from us; we quit the great square to seek ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... chief of all the Masai. I forget what I was, either the brother of King George or the nephew of Theodore Roosevelt—the only two white men every native has heard of. It may be that both of us were mistaken, but from his evident authority over a very wide district we were ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... petulant expression, it was evident that she had distinct claims to prettiness, though of the carefully prolonged variety. The art of the masseuse was visible in that curious swollen smoothness of the skin which gives an effect of spilled candle-wax—its lack of wrinkles never to be mistaken for the freshness of youth. Much also might be said of the skill with which the "original color" of her hair had been preserved. She was very well "done," indeed; every detail proclaimed expenditure of time—other people's—and money—her own. ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... leader and the led. He realizes that comradeship, without presumptuous familiarity, is the firmest foundation for mutual loyalty (page 14). He knows that kindness and consideration, without suggestion of pampering, will not be mistaken for weakness by any subordinate worthy of ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... the way across to Vancouver and Victoria. Every province and every territory of it, I know well. I know the people, too, a people thoroughly democratic and honest to the core. I would now plainly warn those who think that there is no such thing as Canadian sentiment that they are completely mistaken. They had better not reckon without their host. The silent vote is that which tells, and though it will not talk, it will vote solid all the time for those who represent national sentiment when the national life is threatened. I am not a party man. In my day, I have ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... about the Kew Waterfront, really a potential cheat, robber, and occasional murderer, looked upon the recent arrival at the "Green Dragon" as a prey specially destined by Providence for his necessities. He was never more completely mistaken. Kennedy McClure was, in the loafer's own language, "fly to the tricks of all wrong coves." Had he not held his own (and more) for thirty years in a hundred markets with horse-fakers and cattle-drovers? He did not "go after the lush"—still less "follow the molls." He never walked ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... with a manner that was tender and grave, "you are totally mistaken. Madame Firmiani deserves your esteem, and all the ...
— Madame Firmiani • Honore de Balzac
... look as if she had been mistaken in him. She must love him very much when she could excuse such cowardice.—For when she said that she had sent for him to ask him to give up his thoughts of revenge, it must have been from bashfulness not to have to acknowledge the ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... am not mistaken in the fact that there exists, both in the educated and half-educated portions of the community, something of a surmise or misgiving, that there really is at bottom a certain contrariety between the declarations of religion and the results of ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... at once, fortunately accompanied by Gourville, for, absorbed in his own calculations, the poet would have mistaken the route, and was hurrying as fast as he could toward the village of Saint-Mande. Within a quarter of an hour afterward, M. Vanel was introduced into the surintendant's cabinet, the description and details of which have already been ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... of a true woman and the manner of a lady, accomplished and refined beyond most of her sex, she combines a surprising calmness of judgment and promptitude and decision of character. The popular instinct was not mistaken, which, when she set out from England on her mission of mercy, hailed her as a heroine; I trust she may not earn her title to a higher, though sadder, appellation. No one who has observed her fragile figure and delicate health can avoid misgivings lest ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... advanced and cried, "To arms!" and like a lightning flash the battalion square was formed around the Emperor's tent. He rushed out, and then re-entered to take his hat and sword. It proved to be a false alarm, as a regiment of Saxons returning from a raid had been mistaken for ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... Sitting on his haunches by the roadside, twenty yards away, was a very large fox gazing at me with malignant eyes, and licking his muzzle in a suggestive manner. All this I saw, but no more, and might have forgotten it, or thought myself mistaken, but the next morning, in that very fold, were found the bodies of twenty-three lambs and sheep, and the unmistakable signs that brought home the crime ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... every time I touched anything that was furzy I fancied I felt the fangs. I had rather go to war than live that episode over again. Nobody was hurt. The man who thought a tarantula had "got him" was mistaken—only a crack in a box had caught his finger. Not one of those escaped tarantulas was ever seen again. There were ten or twelve of them. We took candles and hunted the place high and low for them, but with no success. Did we go back to bed then? ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Tale of Peter Bell," you asked "Why 'The Waggoner' was not added?" To say the truth, from the higher tone of imagination, and the deeper touches of passion aimed at in the former, I apprehended this little piece could not accompany it without disadvantage. In the year 1806, if I am not mistaken, "The Waggoner" was read to you in manuscript, and as you have remembered it for so long a time, I am the more encouraged to hope that, since the localities on which the poem partly depends did not prevent its being interesting ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... that I can repeat every word of it. It was a story of a donkey-driver, who, having lost his wife Alawiyah, went and lived alone in the ruby hills of Badakhshan, where the Angel of Memory fashioned for him out of his own sorrow and tears an image of his wife. This image was mistaken by a townsman named Hasan for his own wife, and Ja'afar was summoned before the Ka'dee. Afterwards, when The Veiled Queen came into my possession, I noticed that this story was quoted for motto on ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... his surroundings revived his late dream of a honeymoon with Cissie. Certainly, in his fancy, he had visioned a honeymoon in Pullman parlor cars and suburban bungalows. He had been mistaken. This great chamber rose about him like a corrected ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... impression that this lady is a more eligible candidate for the Presidential chair than McLean or Cass, Van Buren or old "Rough and Ready," then let the Salic laws be abolished forthwith from this great Republic. We are much mistaken if Lucretia would not make a better President than some of those who have lately tenanted the White House.—New York ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... dismay. (If you will take my opinion, they know pain as well as joy, M. le Maire, Those who are in Semur. They are not as gods, perfect and sufficing to themselves, nor are they all-knowing and all-wise, like the good God. They hope like us, and desire, and are mistaken; but do no wrong. This is my opinion. I am no more than other men, that you should accept it without support; but I have lived among them, and this is what I think.) They were taken by surprise; they did not understand it any more than we understand when we have ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... seest the accountability under which I labour. If thou feelest it to be for thy soul's peace, and that thy earthly punishment will thereby be made more effectual to salvation, I charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer! Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so than to hide a guilty heart through life. What can thy silence do for him, except it tempt him—yea, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... we talked about other matters, and it became plain that this Neot was a wonderfully wise man, and, as I thought, a holy one in truth, as they called him. There is that about such an one that cannot be mistaken. ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... not been mistaken. A moment later a dark figure loomed up out of the darkness, and the exclamation which greeted me, as I made my presence known, showed that I ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... to wash in the water that stands in the basin of the eternal rock. Ay, at almost every step of the journey you will be crying out: "Create within me a clean heart!" If you have no such aspirations as that, it proves that you have mistaken your way; and if you will only look up and see the finger-board above your head, you may read upon it the words: "There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof is death." Without holiness no man ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... you are mistaken when you say the Episcopalians approve of the theatre and late parties, and so forth,' retorted Hiram. 'I have been told by two or three of that persuasion, that the clergy object decidedly ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... therefore requires a strict Inspection into its Nature; and this I have been the more particular in, because I am sensible of the great Quantities of unwholsome Waters used not only by Necessity, but by a mistaken Choice. ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... have I found thee here, And Innocence, thy sister dear? Mistaken long, I sought you then In busy companies of men: Your sacred plants, if here below, Only among the plants will grow; Society is all but rude ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... me one service," said he. "She taught me that there's an appearance which may be mistaken for the substance. That shall be to her credit." He sat silent, smiling thoughtfully for a moment. Then he raised his eyes and drew Louise toward him. "But ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... They occupy the Mawab River Valley and the region included between the Hijo, Mawab, and Madawan Rivers. They are probably the people whom Montano called Tagabawas, but I think that this designation was perhaps a mistaken form of Tagabaas, an appellation given to Maggugans who live in the b-as, or prickly swamp-grass, that abounds at the headwaters ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... may be mistaken—Oh, he can't be more than forty, or thirty," continued the man, watching the countenance of Julia; "he is a man that looks much older ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... to make the contract in obsolete currencies, in Austrian pounds, in Venetian pounds, but as I inexorably reduced these into familiar money, he paused desperately, and made me an offer which I accepted with mistaken exultation. For my captain was shrewder than I, and held arts of measurement in reserve against me. He agreed that the measurement and transportation should not cost me the value of his tooth-pick—quite an old and worthless one—which he showed me. Yet I was surprised ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... than the uneducated. For true philosophy teaches us that we ought to restrain and quiet disagreements, and to give up our opinions as soon as we are persuaded, even by the humblest person, that they are mistaken. The first rule of philosophy is, Know thyself; and the further one advances, the lower opinion one should have of himself, the more one should realize what there remains to be learned. But you make philosophy into a kind of fencing, and consider a man a philosopher ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... it's the same thing. Sometimes, when I'm stubborn, I remain a whole week angered against them, without speaking to anybody. Yet you know how I love them, and I always end by doing what they wish, like a boy. If you think that I was happy to live unmarried, you're mistaken. No, it couldn't have lasted anyway, ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... But they were only raised so high to be dashed to earth again in the most unexpected manner. The friends of Hastings were convinced that he would have the unfailing support of Pitt in his defence. He was now to learn that he was mistaken. ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... one, even to his captain. Did the secret involve aught unfavorable to his captain? Were those previous misgivings of Captain Delano's about to be verified? Or, in his haunted mood at the moment, had some random, unintentional motion of the man, while busy with the stay, as if repairing it, been mistaken for a significant beckoning? ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... is mentioned in the Spectator, in opposition to such performances, as are generally written in a swelling stile, and in which the bombast is mistaken for the sublime. It is meant as a compliment to his late majesty, on his arrival ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... solve wisely and for civilization the mighty problems resting upon them. The American people, intrenched in freedom at home, take their love for it with them wherever they go, and they reject as mistaken and unworthy the doctrine that we lose our own liberties by securing the enduring foundations of liberty to others. Our institutions will not deteriorate by extension, and our sense of justice will not abate under tropic suns in distant ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... at Union cavalry appearing in their front. Jackson, with some staff-officers and orderlies, had ridden out beyond his lines, as was his wont, to reconnoitre. On his return he was fired at by his own men, being mistaken in the gloom for a Federal scout. Endeavoring to enter at another place, a similar error was made, this time killing some of the party, and wounding Jackson in several places. He was carried to the rear. A few days after, he died of pneumonia ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... mistaken. The King of Prussia, who is so covetous of that which belongs to others, will gladly ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... character and manner might not please me. I know from your flatteries how easily friendship can be blinded. Will you think the worse of me if I attach a condition to my consent? In the interests of your future I should like to see your friend, and know and decide for myself whether you are not mistaken. What is this but the mother's anxious care of my dear poet, which I am in duty bound ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... deficient in recognition of a high ideal of duty can never be believed among those who have studied it candidly and attentively; I have endeavoured above to suggest that in this point, take it all in all, it yields to no age or race. It would indeed be a mistaken following of those noble servants of humanity to draw from their memories an argument for selfish isolation or for despair of the commonwealth of man. He who has drunk deeply of that divine well and gazed ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... countries that hold them, and their chief influence is to produce and prolong bad government. Why, then, he asks, do European nations maintain them? The answer is very characteristic, both of the man and of his school. Something, he charitably admits, is due to mere ignorance, to mistaken views of utility; but the main cause is of another kind. He quotes the saying of Sancho Panza, who desired to possess an island in order that he might sell its inhabitants as slaves, and put the money in his pocket; and he maintains that the chief ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... to have been done reluctantly. It was hardly necessary in the case of the Pastoral Symphony as it is comparatively easy of comprehension. The title gives the clew; the occasional bird notes of quail, cuckoo and lark, the scene at the brook, could hardly be mistaken; while the dance-music in Part III, as well as the storm with its forebodings of terror, convey their meaning plainly to the average intelligence. This poem of nature is always enjoyable, refreshing the mind, and resting the jaded faculties, ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... Carl is not to be pitied. He had the pleasure of martyrdom when he heard the younger Johnson tell of Martinhurst, the Suburb Beautiful. He believed that he had reached the nadir of boredom. But he was mistaken. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... at liberty and welcomed with shouts of triumph. Latierce, however, is not given up; on the contrary, he is tormented for an hour and then massacred, while the directory of the district, which is less submissive than the municipal body, is forced to fly.—Symptoms of this kind are not to be mistaken, and similar ones exist in Brittany. It is evident that the minds of the people are permanently in revolt. Instead of the social abscess being relieved by the discharge, it is always filling up and getting more inflamed. It will ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... that, Moll, my lady? That'll empty folk's pockets, or Joe Harris is mistaken for once in his life. My, this is a stroke o' luck!" and Mr. Harris rubbed his dirty hands together and laughed gleefully. "We've been on the lookout for a couple o' youngsters this many a day; now we've hit upon them at last. A bear an' a dwarf's all very well, but ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... red light of the oil-lamp, strong, tall, and beautiful, his long black hair sweeping over his shoulders, the knife swinging at his neck, and his head crowned with a wreath of white jasmine, he might easily have been mistaken for some wild god of a jungle legend. The child half asleep on a cot sprang up and shrieked aloud with terror. Messua turned to soothe him, while Mowgli stood still, looking in at the water-jars and the cooking-pots, the grain-bin, and all the other human ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... he walked along he would say suddenly, "Go there"—but without lifting his eyes, just waving his hand towards the spot—"and there you will find a bunting's nest, or a stone-chat's"; nor once in a dozen times would he be mistaken. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the snuff-box to the pipe. Sometimes, apparently, they chewed. A World of 1754 pokes fun at the "pretty" young men who "take pains to appear manly. But alas! the methods they pursue, like most mistaken applications, rather aggravate the calamity. Their drinking and raking only makes them look like old maids. Their swearing is almost as shocking as it would be in the other sex. Their chewing tobacco not ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... badly mistaken," Dick admitted with a smile. "Still, I know the people I'm going to like. How is it I haven't seen you about? We're not very far off and most of the people in the neighborhood have driven over to ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... winding-sheet, and lie down fearlessly in its sepulcher, preparatory to its resurrection as a butterfly; but immeasurably more to be admired is the calculating courage of men who are ready to stake their all upon any issue—even upon one so mistaken, so false, so partial to one class and so unjust to another, as the cause of the slave-holders. Every earnest purpose must have its own ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... have a lady named Brand lodging in the house," I went on. "I dare say I am mistaken in supposing her to be a lady of the same name whom I know. But I should like to make sure whether I am right or wrong. Is it too late to ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... he said; "I must look upon the past in a false light. What!" he continued, "can I have been following a false path?—can the end which I proposed be a mistaken end?—can one hour have sufficed to prove to an architect that the work upon which he founded all his hopes was an impossible, if not a sacrilegious, undertaking? I cannot reconcile myself to this idea—it ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... peasant informed the snake what the King had said, he replied, 'To-morrow morning, early, you must go to the market and buy all the fruit you see there, and then sow all the stones and seeds in the palace garden, and, if I'm not mistaken, the King will be satisfied ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... seemed to please Nastasia Philipovna, although too often they were both rude and offensive. Those who wished to go to her house were forced to put up with Ferdishenko. Possibly the latter was not mistaken in imagining that he was received simply in order to annoy Totski, who disliked him extremely. Gania also was often made the butt of the jester's sarcasms, who used this method of keeping ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the Berbera harbour was a British man-of-war, and the Habr Owel then believed we were in earnest. Until then, it appeared, they would not believe it, thinking our trade in Aden would suffer by this proceeding as much as their own. They were, however, mistaken; trade found an outlet at other places; and they, by its suppression on their grounds, were fast sinking into insignificance. Seeing this, they showed by urgent prayers a disposition to treat on any conditions we might like ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... everything depended on his remaining motionless. As the people of the brig were partly in shadow, he could not, and did not, fully understand how completely he was himself exposed, in consequence of the brightness of all around him, and he had at first hoped to be mistaken for some accidental resemblance to a man. His nerves were well tried by the use of the fowling-piece, but they proved equal to the necessities of the occasion. But, when an answering report came from the rear, or from the opposite ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... that Samodin should be written instead of Samoyed. For Samoyed means "self eater," while Samodin denotes an "individual," "one who cannot be mistaken for another," and, as the Samoyeds were never cannibals, Serebrenikoff gives a preference to the latter name, which is used by the Russians at Chabarova, and appears to be a literal translation of the name which the Samoyeds give themselves. Nordenskiold, however, considers it probable ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... disturbed by surmises and conjectures concerning the presence of the two negroes in the French capital. He knew Cheditafa quite as well as he knew Mok, and it was impossible that he should be mistaken. It is seldom that any one sees a native African in Paris, and he was positive that the men he had seen, dressed in expensive garments, enjoying themselves like gentlemen of leisure, and living at a grand hotel, were the same negroes he had last seen in rags and ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... sure you have had very little regard for ours. I have been greatly deceived in you, Ida. I thought when you came that you were a quiet, well-conducted young woman, and I could scarcely believe my eyes when I first saw that I was mistaken, and that your quietness was only slyness. I suppose you didn't think I saw that you were trying to entrap my poor boy; but a mother's eyes are sharp, and a mother will protect her own at any cost. Oh, you needn't try to stare me out of countenance, or to put on ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... could these two people be with whom I was so strangely and unexpectedly thrown? The one was a lady, I could hardly be mistaken in that; it was proved in many ways, voice, air, aspect, all spoke of birth and breeding, however much she might have fallen away from or forfeited her ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... event which placed their lives in most imminent peril. The provisions laid in at Towisk were nearly consumed, and the time at which they should have reached the next town had arrived, when the native guides confessed that they had mistaken the road, and there was every prospect of the whole party perishing in the desert. What were the feelings of Mr. Dobell, when awaking one morning, in this situation, he found that the Tongusees were no longer with him; the rascals had gone off in the night, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... that I ever heard of. You certainly must be a performer if you did a thing like that. I remember the pilot's telling me he thought he heard someone cry out from the river, but as the call was not repeated, he thought he must have been mistaken. Come in, and we ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... reappearance. But minute after minute passed and nothing appeared; and presently Cunningham and the carpenter came up the beach staggering under a load of timber that promised to be amply sufficient for all our needs. I began to think that I must have been mistaken, and was about to lay aside the gun and descend to the beach again, when the boatswain, who had taken the glass from me and had been ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... I had not mistaken her, I thought, she was both weak and sensual. I must conquer the first quality, and seduce the second, and the battle was won. But it was hard to prevent my own self-command slipping from me, and if I did not keep that, my real object would be lost in this useless sort of coquetry, ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weathercock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... the names of two jackals that figure in the history, and Bidpai is one of the principal human interlocutors, who came to be mistaken for the author. This remarkable book was turned into verse by several of the Arabic poets, was translated into Greek, Hebrew, Latin, modern Persian, and, in the course of a few centuries, either directly or indirectly, into most of the languages of ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... tempest subsided. On the fourteenth day, at dawn, the mariners perceived what appeared to be a tuft of wood rising out of the sea. They joyfully steered for it, supposing it to be an island. They were not mistaken. As they drew near, the rising sun shone upon noble forests, the trees of which were of a kind unknown to them. Flights of birds also came hovering about the ship, and perched upon the yards and rigging without ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... Procopius, (l. i. c. 25.) is the first and best. The height above the walls. On Nolli's great plan, the sides measure 260 English feet. * Note: Donatus and Nardini suppose that Hadrian's tomb was fortified by Honorius; it was united to the wall by men of old, (Procop in loc.) Gibbon has mistaken the breadth for the height above the walls Hobhouse, Illust. of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... to notice, in the foregoing observations, a very mistaken notion which prevails in many quarters, that it is best to let the trees drop their fruit, and not to pick the nuts when ripe. Nature directs differently. As soon as the husk of the nut is more brown than green it should be picked. It then makes better ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... where the waters stagnate, are many bogs, which formerly abounded with subterraneous trees, though Dr. Plot says positively, that "there never were any fallen trees hidden in the mosses of the southern counties." But he was mistaken: for I myself have seen cottages on the verge of this wild district, whose timbers consisted of a black hard wood, looking like oak, which the owners assured me they procured from the bogs by probing the soil with spits, or some such instruments: but the peat ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White |
