"Undervalue" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Boone, and wonderfully was he endowed by Providence for the part which he was called to act. Far be it from us to undervalue the advantages of education: It can do every thing but assume the prerogative of Providence. God has reserved for himself the attribute of creating. Distinguished excellence has never been attained, unless where nature and education, ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... the successful Stork to the poor Crane, who stood dejectedly to one side, "not to scorn and undervalue qualities in any one, because they are not flaunted in ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... the correctness of your principles in the main, Mr. Grahame, but I hope you do not think that all Lilian's fine acquaintances as you call them, would be so unjust in their judgment as to think the less of her for her love of you, or to undervalue you on account ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... of reason for it. I know the years when the fevers and dysenteries are in earnest, and when they're only making believe. I know the folks that think they're dying as soon as they're sick, and the folks that never find out they 're sick till they're dead. I don't want to undervalue your science, Mr. Langdon. There are things I never learned, because they came in after my day, and I am very glad to send my patients to those that do know them, when I am at fault; but I know these people about here, fathers and mothers, ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... that the female intellect is educable to the same degree as that of man; would it not appear to be a perversion of judgment to undervalue ingenuity, because it accidentally had its seat in female brains? Would it not be unjust to leave talents undeveloped and without cultivation, simply ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... adopting a phraseology at variance with that which so high an authority, and one which I am less likely than any other person to undervalue, has deliberately sanctioned, I have been influenced by the urgent necessity for a term exclusively appropriated to express the manner in which a concrete general name serves to mark the attributes which are involved in ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... many tribes had been persuaded to settle there, instead of seeking their fortunes farther west. The effect upon these settlers in course of time was marvellous. Though it was not of course the mere climate of Sogdiana that changed them, still we cannot undervalue the influence which is necessarily exerted on the mind by the idea of property, when once recognised and accepted, by the desire of possession and by the love of home, and by the sentiment of patriotism which arises in the mind, especially with the occupation ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... said that I undervalue this class. I will come boldly to the other, composed of those who are neither servile not absolutists,—I repel this name, in my turn, with all the pride to which every sincere conviction has a right,—but who believe that humanity has in all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... power the possession of money gives. Why, this very indifference, this happy carelessness about pecuniary details, was but the consequence of his having a large fund in the background that he could draw on at will. If he did not overvalue his fortune, on the other hand he did not undervalue it; and he was about the last man in the world who could reasonably have been expected to part ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... suggesting its dependence on Spirit. "The devotee flouts Nature."—"Plotinus was ashamed of his body."—"Michael Angelo said of external beauty, 'it is the frail and weary weed, in which God dresses the soul, which He has called into time.'" Emerson would not undervalue Nature as looked at through the senses and "the unrenewed understanding." "I have no hostility to Nature," he says, "but a child's love of it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons."—But, ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... undervalue your friendship. You know that, Roger, you too. Uncle Jack. I suppose I should have said something about it. But I—I just sort of drifted into it. I think walloping Sagorski spoiled me—made me rather ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... that you thus obstinately persist in rejecting my friendly offer. Perhaps, another time, I may be more fortunate. Farewell! May we shortly meet again! But, a propos, allow me to show you that I do not undervalue my purchase, ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... become more intense in his literary idolatry, he affected to undervalue Goldsmith, and a lurking hostility to him is discernible throughout his writings, which some have attributed to a silly spirit of jealousy of the superior esteem evinced for the poet by Dr. Johnson. We have a gleam of this in his account of the first evening he spent in ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... wife be a woman of sense, worth, and cultivation, yet not very expert at cutting out a shirt, or making paste, pies, and puddings (though I would not by any means undervalue this necessary part of female knowledge, or tolerate ignorance in my sex respecting them), yet pray, my good sir, do not, on this account only, show discontent and ill-humour towards her. If she ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... that Superintendent Kennedy, in spite of his slighting replies to the two young men, did not really undervalue their information, and that two vigilant detectives, with assistants, were entrusted with the duty of watching the two houses. "L—— and another good man" had been ordered to take charge of the house on East 5—Street, and they entered upon their duties at once. Not as ordinary policemen, ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... by enraged and jealous watermen! Jonathan Hulls in 1736, and M. Genevois in 1759, were each successful, to a certain extent, in constructing working models, but nothing definite resulted from their labours. Yet we would not be understood to undervalue the achievements of such men. On the contrary, it is by the successive discoveries of such inquiring and philosophical men that grand results are at last attained. The magnificent structures that crowd the ocean were not the creations of one era, or the product of one stupendous mind. ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... understand that where a public library is least wanted it is generally most needed. But in most cases he would succeed in stipulating for a certain standard of maintenance by the local authority. Since moderately prosperous illiterate men undervalue education and most town councillors are moderately illiterate men, he would do his best to keep the salary and appointment of the librarian out of such hands. He would stipulate for a salary of at least L400, in addition to housing, light and heat, and he would probably find ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... roofs, and the knife to their throats. It was natural that a man who lived in times like these should overrate the importance of those measures by which a nation is rendered formidable to its neighbours, and undervalue those which make it prosperous ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... which is extremely natural to democratic nations and extremely dangerous, is that which leads them ta despise and undervalue the rights of private persons. The attachment which men feel to a right, and the respect which they display for it, is generally proportioned to its importance, or to the length of time during which they have enjoyed it. The rights of private persons amongst democratic nations are commonly ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... aliquid. Friends disappoint us. But in the contemplation of flowers all our finer feelings are stimulated and blended, and yet there is no excess of feeling to end in regrets, or a painful reaction. When the flowers fade, we cheerfully gather fresh ones. But I hope I do not undervalue my friends," she broke off. "I only mean to say—when you think of all the uncertainties of life, of sickness and death, and other things more dreadful, which overtake our dearest, do what we will to protect them; and then that worst thing whether it be in ourselves ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... "You undervalue them," said I; "they have their College and Academies, their grammar schools and primary institutions, and I believe there are few among them who ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Doctor's, and harangued with his usual warmth. I heard him saying to two or three persons, "People are unjust to great men, Ministers and Princes; nothing, for instance, is more common than to undervalue their intellect. I astonished one of these little gentlemen of the corps of the infallibles, by telling him that I could prove that there had been more men of ability in the house of Bourbon, for the last hundred years, than in any other family." "You ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... delight, what actions it describes, and what persons they are chiefly whom it informs, will find it a work which indeed is full of difficulty in the attempt, but admirable when it is well performed. I write not this with the least intention to undervalue the other parts of poetry: for Comedy is both excellently instructive, and extremely pleasant; satire lashes vice into reformation, and humour represents folly so as to render it ridiculous. Many of our present writers are eminent in both these kinds; and, particularly, the author of ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... illusion as this belief. Life is rich; its tree blossoms eternally, because it is nourished by immortal fountains. It bears dissimilar fruits, varies in colour and glory, but all beautiful; let us undervalue none of them, for all of them are capable of producing plants ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... Jacob Grimm, "has been to undervalue nothing, but to utilize the small for the illustration of the great." When Friedrich Froebel, the founder of the kindergarten, in the course of his researches began to watch the plays of children and to study their unconscious actions, ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... undervalue here Honours the nobles of our land enjoy; We hold in high esteem the British Peer, Warm to the ancient ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... undervalue it? The least poet and poetling lisps some word or syllable of it. The masters build its temples and holy places. All own it, all receive it gladly. But the gospel of life, there is danger that we ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... preference, the large cities where periodicals and publishing houses offer some hope of support in a literary career. Even in the older and better equipped universities the faculty is usually a corps of working scholars, each man intent upon his specialty and rather inclined to undervalue merely "literary" performance. In many cases the fastidious and hypercritical turn of mind which besets the scholar, the timid conservatism which naturally characterizes an ancient seat of learning and the spirit of theological conformity which suppresses ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... himself that he was able to look at any situation straight in the face, so to speak. He flattered himself that he was not a man to be led away by vanity. He was, as a rule, on very good terms with himself, but he was rather inclined to undervalue than overestimate the distinction which he enjoyed among his fellow-men. And the result of his due consideration of his last meeting with Phyllis was to make him feel that he had never met a girl who was ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... cannot undervalue the labours of the monks, who had already nominally brought many portions of Europe to Christianity, the passage of the centre of the Continent to its Age of Faith, was, in an enlarged political sense, the true issue of the empire of the Franks. The fiat of Charlemagne put ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... Lansing Treadwell and I will share and share alike. I shall endeavour, to the best that is in me, to prove to him that it is such men as you who hold the world back! Men who over-estimate money and undervalue blood and social position are not to be ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... You undervalue your own merits, dear [S']akoontala. What man in his senses would intercept with the skirt of his robe the bright rays of the autumnal moon, which alone can allay the fever ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... high-nosed old locality, he realized with an added satisfaction that he had come back to Thackeray's London. One was apt, he reflected, with a charity which he would not have allowed himself always, to undervalue Thackeray in these days. After all, he once expressed London so well that now London expressed him, and that ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... fashion to undervalue Oxford and Cambridge prize-poems; but it is a stupid fashion. Many of them are most beautiful. Heber's 'Palestine!' A flight, as upon angel's wing, over the Holy Land! How fine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... the power of the enemy's guns; and the last, again, depends not merely upon the number and size of the guns, but also upon the fire with which they are met. In this same general order Farragut enunciated, in terse and vigorous terms, a leading principle in warfare, which there is now a tendency to undervalue, in the struggle to multiply gun-shields and other defensive contrivances. It is with no wish to disparage defensive preparations, nor to ignore that ships must be able to bear as well as to give hard knocks, that this phrase of Farragut's, embodying the experience of war in all ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... ignorant as a beast of the life and lustre of those things which he knew in the letter; nothing seemed more despicable to him in the world, than true godliness; but now he judgeth otherwise, because he hath the mind of Christ. The things which in his darkness he did undervalue as trifles to be mocked at, he now can only mind and admire, since he became a child of light; now being delivered from that blindness and brutishness of spirit, which possesseth the world, (and possessed himself till he was transformed by the renewing ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... prepossessions that lead to love. And, secretly, he ground his teeth in rage and jealousy, when he reflected on the youth, the fascinations, and the brilliancy of that formidable rival whom he pretended to undervalue. ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... is remarkable. In the land of his birth, by those who undervalue him the most, he is ranked as the second name in German literature; everywhere else he is ranked as the first. For us, who are aliens to Germany, Schiller is the representative of the German intellect in its highest form; and to ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... too diffident of their own abilities, or too indolent to exert them, would wish to have their reflections assisted, by pointing out what those useful purposes are. For the service of such, the following enumeration of particulars is entered upon. And if there should be any, who affect to undervalue the plan or the execution of our voyages, what shall now be offered, if it do not convince them, may, at least, check the influence of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... is, of the human race, with a few exceptions here and there. I like books,—I was born and bred among them, and have the easy feeling, when I get into their presence, that a stable-boy has among horses. I don't think I undervalue them either as companions or as instructors. But I can't help remembering that the world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men. The Hebrew patriarchs had small libraries, I think, if any; yet they represent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... sensitive disposition, which inclines towards the side of caution and also lacks self-confidence (2-2, Plate I.). Even the cleverest people with this sign seem to rein themselves in too tightly, and are always inclined to undervalue ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... difficult for me to understand you, Phaidor," I replied, "can you not understand that possibly it is equally difficult for you to understand the motives, the customs and the social laws that guide me? I do not wish to hurt you, nor to seem to undervalue the honour which you have done me, but the thing you desire may not be. Regardless of the foolish belief of the peoples of the outer world, or of Holy Thern, or ebon First Born, I am not dead. While I live my heart beats ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... much in request) till he could lead his own life again; nor should we forget the occasion on which he did not hesitate even to betake himself to Venice as a refuge. Yet M. Angelo was in every way a patriot, a philosopher, and a hero. I do not say this to undervalue the scope of your theory. I think possibilities are generally so much behind desirabilities that there is no harm in any degree of incitement in the right direction; and that is assuredly mental activity of all kinds. ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... which we have in contemplation in regard to the lately annexed Colonies in South Africa. This is, I suppose, upon the whole, the most considerable business with which this new Parliament has had to deal. But although no one will deny its importance, or undervalue the keen emotions and anxieties which it excites on both sides of the House, and the solemn memories which it revives, yet I am persuaded that there is no reason why we should be hotly, sharply, or bitterly divided on the subject; on the contrary, I think its very ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... example which was set by the most exalted and most formidable of our enemies. It is needless to name him. This sovereign never tried to undervalue our glory: he was only happy when he could bear testimony again and again to the talents and the courage of the French nation. When he received our officers he did not treat them with that ill-concealed disdain, so often lavished on the conquered, but with the honest esteem inspired by valour; ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... Inferno, and numerous other issues remain to testify, Dante's own countrymen were eager "to pay honours almost divine" to his memory. "The last age," writes Hobhouse, in 1817 (note 18 to Canto IV. of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 496), "seemed inclined to undervalue him.... The present generation ... has returned to the ancient worship, and the Danteggiare of the northern Italians is thought even indiscreet by the more moderate Tuscans." Dante was in the air. As Byron wrote in his Diary (January 29, 1821), ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... worship, he had been worshipping his ideal in the person of Miss Bruce. I do not say that he was capable of that highest form of adoration which seeks in the first place the unlimited sovereignty of its idol, and which, as being too good for them, women constantly undervalue; but I do say that he esteemed his fair client the most beautiful, the most attractive, and the most perfect of her sex, resolving that for him she was the only woman in the world, and that ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... Religion they are very indifferent. If their Gods answer not their Desires, they curse them. They undervalue and revile their Gods. A Fellow gives out himself for a Prophet. His Success. The King fends for one of his Priests. Flyes to Columbo. Pretends himself to be a former Kings Son. Flyes from the Dutch. The King catches and quarters him. The Peoples ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... it will, and in its own way too at last), mark, and see what attempts will be made to turn knowledge against itself, and to catechise the nation back into the schoolboy acquiescence of the good people of Germany. Much good is there in that people—I would not be thought to undervalue it—much bonhommie—and in the most despotic districts, as much sensual comfort as can make any people happy who know no other happiness. But England and France, the leaders of Europe, the peregrinators of the world, cannot be confined to those lazy and prospectless paths. They have gone through ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... me not be supposed to undervalue the female authors of the present day. There are some who, uniting great talents with personal worth, are justly entitled to our respect and admiration. The authoress of "Cecilia," or the Miss Lees, cannot be confounded with the proprietors of all the Castles, Forests, Groves, Woods, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... hardly acknowledge me a countryman?-we may boast that we have fought out our preferment, and gained that by the sword which we had not money to compass otherwise. The English are a wise people. While they praise themselves, and affect to undervalue all other nations, they leave us, luckily, trap-doors and back-doors open, by which we strangers, less favoured by nature, may arrive at a share of their advantages. And thus they are, in some respects like a boastful landlord, who exalts the value and flavour of his six-years'-old mutton, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... friendship to open hostility. In the Prince the Cardinal met his match. He found himself confronted by an intellect as subtle, an experience as fertile in expedients, a temper as even, and a disposition sometimes as haughty as his own. He never affected to undervalue the mind of Orange. "'Tis a man of profound genius, vast ambition—dangerous, acute, politic," he wrote to the King at a very early period. The original relations between himself and the Prince bad been ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... youthful poet passes very naturally into a long strain of foaming abuse against a certain class of English Poets, whom, with Pope at their head, it is much the fashion with the ignorant unsettled pretenders of the present time to undervalue. Begging these gentlemens' pardon, although Pope was not a poet of the same high order with some who are now living, yet, to deny his genius, is just about as absurd as to dispute that of Wordsworth, or to believe in that of Hunt. Above all ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... make themselves, and then receive as a present from the missionaries, constitutes their only clothing. Such is the happiness which the Catholic religion has brought to the uncultivated Indian; and this is the Paradise which he must not presume to undervalue by attempting a return to freedom in the society of his unconverted countrymen, under penalty of imprisonment ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... recommendations, however warm these may have been; and the missionary may go forth to the heathen, satisfied that in the confidence of the directors he has a testimonial infinitely superior to letters-apostolic from the Archbishop of Canterbury, or from the Vatican at Borne. A missionary, surely, cannot undervalue his commission, as soon as it is put ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... me, you always did, and—and—you undervalue Mr. Bainrothe, believe me; nay, I am sure you do. Let us part now, George. My father is calling me, you hear. Go home, my own dear boy, and rest and pray. Oh, be convinced that I love you better than all the world, except those I ought to love more.—Yes, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... sometimes deserved the praise which Dr. Johnson pronounced upon a good hater. He had no mercy for bad writers, and notably for bad poets, unless they were in want of money; in which case he became within his means, the most open-handed of patrons. He was too apt to undervalue both the heart and the head of those who desired to maintain the old system of civil and religious exclusion, and who grudged political power to their fellow-countrymen, or at any rate to those of their fellow-countrymen whom he was himself prepared ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... when the intellect fails there is a possibility of the practical problem of life being solved through a life of action, when life is directed towards the highest ideals. The danger of an activistic position, of course, is to undervalue the reasoning powers of man. Some critics hold that Eucken does this; the reader must judge for himself, but in doing so it will be well to remember that before trusting to intuitive revelation, Eucken demands the setting of one's face towards the ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... was to be traced to turn aside from them. The deeper religion and the deeper and more enterprising science of the day combined to lower them from their old evidential place. The one threw the moral stress on moral grounds of belief, and seemed inclined to undervalue external proofs. The other more and more yielded to its repugnance to admit the interruption of natural law, and became more and more disinclined even to discuss the supernatural; and, curiously enough, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... have a good home are apt to undervalue it. They do not realize the comfort of having their daily wants provided for without any anxiety on their part. They are apt to fancy that they would like to go out into the great world to seek their fortunes. ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... sea and safety. 'For me,' Scott adds, 'the lesson had been a sharp and, I have no doubt, a salutary one; we were here to fight the elements with their icy weapons, and once and for all this taught me not to undervalue the enemy.' During the forenoon the ship was within seven or eight miles of the high bold coast-line to the south of Cape Adare, but later she had to be turned outwards [Page 46] so that the heavy stream of pack-ice drifting along the land could ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... real author, all this would of course have been delightful to him; it was all so kind and so evidently sincere for the most part, that only a very priggish or cynical person could have affected to undervalue it, and any other, even if he felt it overstrained now and then, would have enjoyed it frankly while it lasted, remembering that, in the nature of things, it could not ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... could be found more brilliantly illuminating its substance than in our own hearts and lives. The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God. To undervalue God's Providence it is the most dreadful insult that a fool could dare conceive in his mind against God's existence. But the wise ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... now a few words as to the action of the last legislature on this subject. After an examination of the Geghan bill, we shall perhaps come to the conclusion that in itself it is not of great importance. I would not undervalue the conscientious scruples on the subject of religion of a convict in the penitentiary, or of any unfortunate person in any State institution. But the provision of the constitution of the State covers the whole ground. It needs no awkwardly ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... do worthy Minds in the domestick Way of Life deny themselves many Advantages, to satisfy a generous Benevolence which they bear to their Friends oppressed with Distresses and Calamities. Such Natures one may call Stores of Providence, which are actuated by a secret Celestial Influence to undervalue the ordinary Gratifications of Wealth, to give Comfort to an Heart loaded with Affliction, to save a falling Family, to preserve a Branch of Trade in their Neighbourhood, and give Work to the Industrious, preserve the Portion of the helpless ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... renowned Pinner of Wakefield, he was the village champion; carried off the prize at all the fairs, and threw his gauntlet at the country round. Even to this day the old people talk of his prowess, and undervalue, in comparison, all heroes of the green that have succeeded him; nay, they say that if Ready-Money Jack were to take the field even now, there is no ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... of the role of reproductive selection is insufficiently understood; in the lower animals scientists have tended still more to undervalue it. As a fact, no species ordinarily multiplies in such numbers as to exhaust all the food available, despite the teaching of Malthus and Darwin to the contrary. The rate of reproduction is the crux of natural selection; each species normally has such a reproduction rate as will suffice to withstand ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... Let Independence, Self-Conceit, and Go-ahead undervalue them, if they will; but I, Sola Foemina, (for that is the name I go by,) of Ignorance, (the place I hail from,) casting up my unbalanced accounts, (with a view to settling,) find a large credit due to this class of individuals, which (though I have not the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... Do not undervalue the headache. While it is at its sharpest it seems a bad investment; but when relief begins, the unexpired remainder is worth $4 a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... influence of ale or brandy, and by a few in default of that material aid; and they had a family pride in him. The pride was mixed with fear, which threw over it a tender light, like a mother's dream of her child. The people, I have said, are not so lost in self-contempt as to undervalue their best men, but it must be admitted that they rarely produce young fellows wearing the undeniable chieftain's stamp, and the rarity of one like Robert lent a hue of sadness to him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with whom he was to share the joys and sorrows of a domestic life. He was a man who thoroughly respected religion, and could well discriminate between the genuine servant of Christ and the mere sounding professor, while at the same time scientific studies had rather tended to make him undervalue clear dogmatic teaching as set forth in the revealed Word of God. Yet he was too profound a thinker to adopt that popular scepticism which is either the refuge of those who, consciously or unconsciously, use it as a screen, though it proves but ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... that is obscene be said, don't laugh at it, but keep your Countenance, as though you did not understand it; don't reflect on any Body, nor take place of any Body, nor boast of any Thing of your own, nor undervalue any Thing of another Bodies. Be courteous to your Companions that are your Inferiors; traduce no Body; don't be a Blab with your Tongue, and by this Means you'll get a good Character, and gain Friends without Envy. If the Entertainment shall be long, desire to ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... make man worse than he is, nor his condition more miserable than it is. But could I though I would? As a man cannot flatter God, nor overpraise him, so a man cannot injure man, nor undervalue him. Thus much must necessarily be presented to his remembrance, that those false happinesses which he hath in this world, have their times, and their seasons, and their critical days; and they are judged and denominated according ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... perpetual truce. My arms were forever laid down, and she, who had once so feared me, was now free to wander when she would within the lines of an honorable enemy. That she should walk there with increasing frequency as the days passed was a tribute to my powers of restraint which I was too wise to undervalue. I ignored the shyness of which she seemed unable to divest herself in my presence. It would have been easy not to ignore it, for there were times when, so little careful was she to guard herself, that this shyness suggested, invited, appealed, signalled; times when, ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... poor country-gentleman could not understand the terms on which he held his own estate without calling in an expert equal to such a task. The man who has acquired skill so essential to his employer's interests is not likely to undervalue it or to be over anxious to simplify the labyrinth in which he shone ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... step she had kept pace with her brother: sometimes he had excelled her, sometimes she thought that she was outstripping him. Now in the hour of his possible success (of which she would be proud and glad), why should her father seem to undervalue her powers and her industry? They would never bring her the guerdon that might fall to Sydney's lot; but she felt that she, too, had a right to ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... point then is this, that she should be so educated as to know her appropriate sphere. There are two errors in this respect, which she is liable to commit. She may undervalue her capacities, and imagine, that being able to acquire or perform little, nothing need be attempted; or that her influence is trifling, that she helps few and harms less, and therefore, whether she be ignorant or learned ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... reasons assigned in the last chapter, it is probable that the great horns possessed by the males of many Lamellicorn, and some other beetles, have been acquired as ornaments. From the small size of insects, we are apt to undervalue their appearance. If we could imagine a male Chalcosoma (Fig. 16), with its polished bronzed coat of mail, and its vast complex horns, magnified to the size of a horse, or even of a dog, it would be one of the most imposing animals ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... not forgotten; and I am grateful to you for giving my ideas a trial. But what has been done hitherto is purely superficial." Bessy's eyes clouded, and he added hastily: "Don't think I undervalue it for that reason—heaven knows the surface of life needs improving! But it's like picking flowers and sticking them in the ground to make a garden—unless you transplant the flower with its roots, and prepare the soil to receive it, your garden ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... have you misunderstand my poor little cousin in this way. You have no idea how faithful and devoted she is. She has actually refused a most advantageous offer of marriage to remain with us. She told me this in confidence; the girls do not know it: perhaps I ought not to have repeated it; but you undervalue Etta. Few women would sacrifice themselves ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... nature, attain so certain an expression as in Neoplatonism; and never before in the history of civilisation did its highest exponents, notwithstanding all their progress in inner observation, so much undervalue the sovereign significance of real science and pure knowledge as the later Neoplatonists did. Judged from the stand-point of pure science, of empirical knowledge of the world, the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle marks a momentous turning-point, ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... tractable. Nous verrons. I will not show Southey's letter to Lockhart, for there is to him personally no friendly tone, and it would startle the Hidalgo's pride. It is to be wished they may draw kindly together. Southey says most truly that even those who most undervalue his reputation would, were he to withdraw from the Review, exaggerate the loss it would thereby sustain. The bottom of all these feuds, though not named, is Blackwood's Magazine; all the squibs of which, which have sometimes exploded among the Lakers, Lockhart is rendered accountable for. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... over. I have determined to part with Louisiana. I shall give up not only New Orleans, but the whole colony without reservation. That I do not undervalue Louisiana I have sufficiently proved, as the object of my first treaty with Spain was to recover it. But though I regret parting with it, I am convinced that it would be folly to persist in trying to keep it. I commission ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... costly failure. Many a promising mechanic has been spoiled by the ill-considered attempts to make a passable engineer; and the annals of every profession abound in parallel instances of misdirected zeal. In saying this, however, one would not wish to undervalue enthusiasm, nor to deny that it sometimes reveals or develops ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... unjustly giving ourselves credit for many that elevate and refine the human character; but even the most solid and the most dazzling can scarcely compensate for that one universal sin, that want of charity, which leads English people upon all occasions to undervalue and disparage their most intimate acquaintance. How few will scruple to point out to others the follies and foibles of their dearest friends, weaknesses which they have discovered during long and familiar ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... whether we are or not, we have become so accustomed to the tacit acceptance of the phrase, "other things being equal," that we have come to forget that other things may not be equal at all; and that they certainly will not be on the day of trial, if we forget or undervalue those other things, ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... for one single moment I should be illiberal enough to undervalue a 'closet naturalist.' 'Non cuivis homini contingit adire corinthum.' It does not fall to every one's lot to range through the forests of Guiana, still, a gentleman given to natural history may do wonders for it in his own apartments on his native ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... of clever men,' continued General Ducrot sagely, 'to undervalue their opponents; but surely after yesterday the commonest prudence might have warned you to put the greatest possible distance between ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... thing, the very finest of all human things, to be very rich. A much smaller number, either from the exercise of their own reflective powers, or from the indoctrination of romantic novels and overdrawn religious books, run to the opposite extreme: undervalue wealth, deny that it adds anything to human comfort and enjoyment, declare that it is an unmixed evil, profess to despise it. I dare say that many readers of the Idylls of the King will so misunderstand that exquisite ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... as fatal with a couplet as with a double-barreled gun, and scatters as terribly. Judge Butts and Dr. Wilson have both discerned the resemblance of your gifts to those of Venus, and their own to Apollo. But don't undervalue those tributes, Miss Mulrady," he added, more seriously. "You'll have thousands of admirers where you are going; but you'll be willing to admit in the end, I think, that none were more honest and respectful than your subjects at Rough-and-Ready and Red Dog." He stopped, and added in a graver ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... assailed. He encouraged the study of the science wherever a desire to acquire it was manifested. In this particular he would sometimes gently reprove those who had no taste for it; but he would not spare those who attempted to undervalue it. His remark of one of his colleagues was keen and striking. When the latter somewhat reprehended Dr. Carey, to the medical gentleman attending him, for exposing himself so much in the garden, he immediately replied, that his colleague was conversant with the pleasures of a garden, ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... will also be over-praised. The reason will be that the race will so need these discoveries. Unlike the great cats, simians tend to undervalue the body. Having less self-respect, less proper regard for their egos, they care less than the cats do for the casing of the ego,—the body. The more civilized they grow the more they will let their ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... about? There are many kinds of enthusiasts, though but one quality of enthusiasm. Weak people show their enthusiasm too much on the surface. Powerful folk keep it too deep in their hearts to be seen at all. What then, are we to scout it in the impulsive because too obvious; to undervalue it in the reticent because almost invisible? Nay, let us be thankful for it in any form, for the thing is good, though the individual's manner of displaying it may be faulty. Let us hope that the ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... on the view of an excellent production, is to undervalue it, will never have one ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... sufficiently marked, or very perceptible; the excellence of the one elevating them almost to the dignity of saints, and the defects of the other sinking them almost to the meanness of sinners. But we should be cautious in passing our judgment, lest we also be judged. Let us not undervalue the sterling worth of the genuine Christian, because it is blended with some obvious, or even some glaring incongruities. Let us equally beware of attributing undue value to the good qualities of the worldling, and thus annihilate the distinction between the natural ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... a hermit, dwell, On a rock, or in a cell, Calling home the smallest part That is missing of my heart, To bestow it where I may Meet a rival every day? If she undervalue me, What care I ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... burden of his doom—how release him from his chains? Nothing of this could she perform—and what did she there? For sympathy, at such a moment, he cared little for such sympathy, at least, as he could command. His pride and ambition, heretofore, had led him to despise and undervalue the easy of attainment. He was always grasping after the impossible. The fame which he had lost for ever, grew doubly attractive to his mind's eye from the knowledge of this fact. The society, which had ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... pointed out the essential difference in their kinds of poetry, and the qualities which insured perpetuity to that of her husband. 'You can't persuade Campbell of that,' said she. 'He is apt to undervalue his own works, and to consider his own lights put out, whenever they come blazing out with their ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... following brief observations, it is neither my wish nor intention to undervalue or disparage the labours of Horace Walpole, and Granger, and Pennant, and Lodge, and the numerous writers who have followed in their train, and to whom we are so much indebted for their notices of a great variety ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... you may undervalue me and my medicine, because I don't appear upon a stage of rotten boards, in a shabby velvet coat, and tie-periwig, with a foolish fellow in a motley coat, to make you laugh, by making wry faces; but I scorn to use these dirty arts for engaging your attention. These paltry ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... be kept constantly in view, and the teacher should feel that these three fundamental branches stand by themselves, and stand first in importance. I do not mean to undervalue the others, but only to insist upon the superior value and importance of these. Teaching a pupil to read, before he enters upon the active business of life, is like giving a new settler an axe, as he goes ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... impart, and did impart, but so that mainly the human nature of it reached you. In this he was like the other great Cambridge men, though he was opener than the others to contact with the commoner life. He keenly delighted in every native and novel turn of phrase, and he would not undervalue a vital word or a notion picked up out of the road even if it had some ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... mean to undervalue the great horticultural novelties of the day, merely because I was unable to purchase, or because others were evidently realizing great sums by first originating them, and then spreading their merits before the world, though sometimes in extravagant terms. The world must ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... dwelt. For the mind and eyes of the average man this world is as lost as Eden and as sunken as Atlantis. There runs a strange law through the length of human history—that men are continually tending to undervalue their environment, to undervalue their happiness, to undervalue themselves. The great sin of mankind, the sin typified by the fall of Adam, is the tendency, not towards pride, but towards this ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... changes, I ought to be one of the last men to undervalue them after my map of coral islands, and after what I have seen of elevation on coast of America. Farewell. I hope my letters do not bother you. Again, and for the last time, I say that I should be extremely vexed if ever you write ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... useless to argue against such reasoners. I believe that, disappointed in not finding the field of licentiousness quite so open as formerly, they will not give credit to a morality which they do not wish to practice, or to a religion which they undervalue or despise.'' ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... easy word to mouth, but how precious in the sight of God! Liberty is one of the treasures of heaven and only committed to men at great cost, lest they should undervalue it. ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... lucky, tremendously lucky," he hastened to declare, laughing a little wryly. "Such a journey is a liberal education in itself, knocking the insularity out of a man—if he has any receptive faculty that is—and ridding him of all manner of stodgy prejudices. I don't the least undervalue my good fortune.—But you talk of remembering. That's stretching a point surely. You must have been a mere baby, my dear ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Sicilian fleet of 38 sail in the eastern waters. The government, however, were at a loss to discover an ostensible pretext for the war; a pretext which they needed in order to satisfy the people, even although they had not been far too sagacious to undervalue, as was the manner of Philip, the importance of assigning a legitimate ground for hostilities. The support, which Philip was alleged to have granted to the Carthaginians after the peace with Rome, manifestly could not be proved. The Roman subjects, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... were the letter itself. But we have yielded to the necessity of punctuating it. In the original there were neither commas nor stops of any kind, not even notes of exclamation,—a fact which tends to undervalue the system of notes and dashes by which modern authors have endeavored to depict the great disasters ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... as unlike each other in temperament and constitution as if they were not related. Neither Jane nor Elsie was likely to keep her health at a sedentary employment; it was the daily long walk that had kept them so well as they were. It was not right to undervalue private happiness, after all, for any public object whatever. Here was the best and dearest woman in the world suffering daily, both in herself and through her sister, and he could make her happy; he knew that he could do that. If she refused, however, it would interfere ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... and cheerful readiness to give of our substance to the needy poor. We must divide out, Brethren, to those who have, on account of the war pressure, been unable to provide for themselves. Think of the barefooted, half-clad and half-fed children in our land! I do not undervalue what you have already done. I know you have done much; but we should not feel that the burden of duty has all rolled from our shoulders so long as there is one needy brother or sister or child in our land. Brethren, ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... in himself led him to ignore or undervalue the fact, patent to others, that he was no bushman either by instinct or training. And he seemed to prefer for companions men like himself, who could not detect this failing, as is evident from a letter written ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... absurd for any of us, through the constant expression of regret for a fault, to impress the tendency to it more and more upon the brain? It is intensely sad when the consciousness of evil once committed has so impressed a man with a sense of guilt as to make him steadily undervalue himself and his ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... hope, would not be driven to any such wretched expedients; nor in fact does she condescend to them. They only thus undervalue her strength, who mistake her character, and are ignorant of her powers. It is her peculiar glory, and her main office, to bring all the faculties of our nature into their just subordination and dependence; that so the whole man, complete in all his functions, may be restored ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... President but his fiery utterances in favor of the Declaration of Independence? There were other speakers then in Virginia who would have had to this day a world-wide fame if they had spoken where the world could hear them. The tendency now is to undervalue oratory, and we regret it. We believe that, in a free country, every citizen should be able to stand undaunted before his fellow-citizens, and give an account of the faith that is in him. It is no argument against oratory to point to ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Incapable and dishonest assessors often work injustice by underestimating the value of some forms of property, and overestimating the value of other forms. In addition, political pressure is brought to bear upon the assessor to cause him to undervalue the property of the township or county as a whole, so that the local unit will bear a relatively small share of the ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... still only in being tasted that it becomes of use; and that men may easily starve in their own granaries, men of science, perhaps, most of all, for they are likely to seek accumulation of their store, rather than nourishment from it. Yet let it not be thought that I would undervalue them. The good and great among them are like Joseph, to whom all nations sought to buy corn; or like the sower going forth to sow beside all waters, sending forth thither the feet of the ox and the ass: ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... turned back again to their own right-hand extremes of error, which once they professedly gave up, but now persist in, an obstinate impugning the validity of their ministerial authority and protestative mission, undervalue the pure ordinances of the gospel dispensed by them, and live as if there were no church of Christ in the land, where they might receive the seals of the covenant, either to themselves or their children; and therefore, in ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... nature as hers has too little egotism and low-bred vanity to undervalue worthy love. The infinite heart of a Zoe Vizard can love but one with passion, yet ever so many more with warm ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... conducted us north-eastward from the town, I had an opportunity to estimate and admire the good qualities of my new friend. Although, like my father, he considered commercial transactions the most important objects of human life, he was not wedded to them so as to undervalue more general knowledge. On the contrary, with much oddity and vulgarity of manner,—with a vanity which he made much more ridiculous by disguising it now and then under a thin veil of humility, and devoid as he was of all the advantages of ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... some half-dozen volumes of sermons and polemical works, all the latter of which were vigorously as well as narrowly one-sided, and a few books that had been expressly written to praise New England, and to undervalue all the rest of the earth. As the family knew nothing of the world beyond the limits of its own township, and an occasional visit to Hartford, on what is called "election-day," Jason's early life was ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... the teachers; nor the doctors; nor the servants of modern industrialism. The classification is a biological one—into parents and non-parents. The non-parents may be invaluable in their way, if only they beget something that is valuable. Heaven forbid that I should undervalue the children of the mind. But if we are to classify any nation, the first and last classification of any moment is none of those in which we always indulge and which all our customs and traditions and prejudices are ever seeking to perpetuate; ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... these purely secondary subjects to fix our self-examination on the depth and strength of our faith, as incomparably the most important element in the conditions which determine our success or our failure? I do not undervalue the worth of wise methods of action, but the history of the Church tells us that pretty nearly any methods of action are fruitful in the right hands, and that without living faith the best of them become like the heavy armour which half-smothered a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... feeling, generous sympathy. The range of this work is so great as to include even pictures of the more conventional life, but mainly the writers keep to the life which is not conventional, the life of the fields, the woods, the cabin, the village, the little country town. It would be easier to undervalue than to overvalue them, as we believe the reader of the admirable pieces here ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... not know that I should undervalue politeness, especially when it takes the shape of ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... I do not undervalue what Oberlin, Antioch, Mt. Holyoke, and other schools have accomplished for woman's higher education. I would not willingly be ranked second to any in according to them the esteem and honor which their work richly merits; ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... metamorphosed on the way, passed over into his, and troubled him sorely. Neither was his mind altogether free of the dread of reproach. For self reproach he could find little or no ground, seeing that to pity her much for the loss of consideration her marriage with him would involve, would be to undervalue the honesty of his love and the worth of his art; and indeed her position was so independently based that she could not lose it even by marrying one who had not the social standing of a brewer or a stockbroker; but his pride was uneasy under the foreseen criticism that his selfishness ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... guide and encourage, is to be insensible to those influences of wealth, or rank, or station, by which the bulk of mankind are swayed. Our eyes have not been fixed upon virtue which lies apart from human nature, or transcends it. In fact there is no such virtue. We neither suppose nor wish him to undervalue or slight these distinctions as modes of power, things that may enable him to be more useful to his contemporaries; nor as gratifications that may confer dignity upon his living person, and, through him, upon those who love him; nor as they may connect his name, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... wished to remove his son altogether from the influence of Athenian life he took him to Lacedaemon, and placed him with the young men who were undergoing the Spartan training there. The Athenians were vexed at this, because Phokion appeared to despise and undervalue the institutions of his own country. Once Demades said to him "Phokion, why should we not advise the Athenians to adopt the Spartan constitution; if you bid me, I am quite willing to make a speech ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... bhairds, as aequiponderate with the evidence of ancient charters and royal grants of antiquity, conferred upon distinguished houses in the Low Country by divers Scottish monarchs; nevertheless, such was their outrecuidance and presumption, as to undervalue those who possessed such evidents, as if they held their lands in ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... yet in a very important sense they belong to the whole community, indeed, to universal humanity. It may be very undesirable and unwise to wish to imitate these institutions in America, and yet it may be illiberal to undervalue them as they stand in England. A man would not build a house, in this nineteenth century, on the pattern of a feudal castle; and yet where the feudal castle is built, surely its antique grace might plead somewhat in its favor, and it may be better to accommodate it to modern uses, than ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... about it, and repeating to each other what they overheard of a conversation between yourself and your husband, who seemed greatly shocked that you had done it. Susan Goldsborough remarked that if she had known that you had so little sense as to undervalue such a woman in that way, or so little feeling and good-breeding as to violate the laws of common hospitality and politeness so grossly, she would assuredly have declined the party for Julia when ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... otherwise unknown, because their part in the great conflict was an humble one, yet none the less grand and heroic. This is written during the brief and uncertain intervals of leisure that may be caught up here and there amid the pressing work of the pastorate. You will not, then, I trust, undervalue it because of literary blemishes. It is history as really as more pretentious works. It is a specimen of the minutiae of history, a story of the war as seen by a private in the ranks, not by one who, as a favored spectator, could survey the movements of a whole army at a glance, and ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... to a few of their neighbours and as many of the peasantry on the estate as could understand English.(63) The common people in England were so much accustomed in those days to hear Latin spoken in the pulpit, that they were sometimes led to undervalue a preacher who did not make some use of it. When Dr. Pollock, the celebrated orientalist, was presented to the rectory of Childry, near Oxford, he considered it to be his duty to adapt his instructions to what he thought to be the capacity of his rustic ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... he did not restrict himself to the examination of texts, but investigated the canonicity of the books of Scripture.(681) It is probable that the criticism commenced by R. Simon and Spinoza furnished hints for his views. He was one of the first to undervalue external evidence in the formation of the canon. The determination of the canon, i.e. of the list of books which are to be considered scripture, is a question of fact. What did the early church pronounce to be such; and does internal evidence bear out ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... how this arrogance comes. The genius is a genius by the first look he casts on any object. Is his eye creative? Does he not rest in angles and colors, but beholds the design—he will presently undervalue the actual object. In powerful moments, his thought has dissolved the works of art and nature into their causes, so that the works appear heavy and faulty. He has a conception of beauty which the sculptor cannot embody. Picture, statue, temple, railroad, steam-engine, existed first in an artist's ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... hand, if Edith had praised Aylmer, Bruce would have been the first to debiner his actions, undervalue his gifts, ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... Hotham is no such conjurer as they fancy in Berlin;—singular enough, how these English are given to undervalue the Germans; whilst we in Germany overvalue them" ( avons une idee trop vaste, they trap petite ). 'There is, for instance, Lord Chesterfield, passes here for a fair-enough kind of man (BON HOMME), ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... full of anxiety for the fate of others, is apt to go to much greater lengths in his preference of the objects of his immediate solicitude than Mr. Burke has ever done. A man so circumstanced often seems to undervalue, to vilify, almost to reprobate and disown, those that are out of danger. This is the voice of nature and truth, and not of inconsistency and false pretence. The danger of anything very dear to us removes, for the moment, every other affection from the mind. When Priam had his ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... Walter had secured order in England, but oversea Richard found himself face to face with dangers which he was too clear-sighted to undervalue. Destitute of his father's administrative genius, less ingenious in his political conceptions than John, Richard was far from being a mere soldier. A love of adventure, a pride in sheer physical strength, here and there a romantic generosity, jostled roughly with the craft, ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... many different kinds of merit, Mr. Starr," she returned, with a wistful dignity. "I do not undervalue that of character, but I do not think that even a good character can atone for the absence of family inheritance—of the qualities which come from refined birth and breeding. We have had the misfortune in our family of one experience ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... killed like a felon by the law, which He came to repeal. I was thinking about Joseph Bullar's doctrine after I went to bed, founded on what I cannot but think a blasphemous asceticism, which has obtained in the world ever so long, and which is disposed to curse, hate, and undervalue the world altogether. Why should we? What we see here of this world is but an expression of God's will, so to speak—a beautiful earth and sky and sea—beautiful affections and sorrows, wonderful changes and developments ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... the loving solicitude which had brought his cousin across the water to his dying bed, he almost seemed to undervalue the act of rare unselfishness by which so much money had been relinquished which might have been kept without fear of reproach. "Cobbler" Horn was not hurt by the seeming insensibility of his poor cousin to the great sacrifice he had made on his behalf. He did not ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... bestowing that attention to you which the warmest wishes for your welfare would dictate. If your errors have, on the contrary, created a wide distance between you, endeavor to restore the connection as soon as possible. I do not undervalue a father's counsel and guidance; yet however excellent his judgment may be, your mother's opinion is not only a help to your own; but as a woman's, it has its peculiar character, and may have its appropriate value. ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... had no confidence whatever in the courage or discipline of our allies; and we saw that in the very melee of the battle the efforts of the enemy were directed almost exclusively against our line, so confidently did they undervalue the efforts of the Spanish troops. Morning broke at length, and scarcely was the heavy mist clearing away before the red sunlight, when the sounds of fife and drum were heard from a distant part of the field. The notes swelled or sank as the breeze rose or fell, and many a conjecture ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... so much undervalue your Majesty's judgement as not to obey you herein, and I wish I could remember as much of this as when I ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... behind in the interior, a field army of 2,000,000 men could easily be organized in Europe. It cannot be stated for certain whether arms, equipment, and ammunition for such a host can be supplied in sufficient quantity. But it will be best not to undervalue an Empire like ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... on the English novelists (that is to say, those of the last century) is perhaps the best thing ever written on the subject; and is particularly valuable nowadays when there is a certain tendency to undervalue Smollett in order to exalt Fielding, who certainly needs no such illegitimate and uncritical leverage. I do not think that he is, on the whole, unjust to Campbell; though his Gallican, or rather Napoleonic mania made him commit the literary crime of slighting ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... the highest praise of the horsemanship and swordsmanship of the cavalry, who galloped their horses at speed over any ground, and leaped them over formidable obstacles, and of the bayonet practice, and especially of the marksmanship, of the infantry. He remarked that hunters were apt to undervalue the soldiers as marksmen, but that Wayne's riflemen were as good shots as any hunters he had ever seen at any of the many matches he had attended in the backwoods. [Footnote: Knoxville Gazette, August ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... however, none of that pride, which would make him ashamed of his poor and humble relatives. He had, indeed, a confidence in his own powers, approaching to arrogance, which led him to undervalue the abilities of others, and to look on them as his instruments rather than his equals. But he had none of the vulgar pride founded on wealth or station. He frequently alluded to his lowly condition in early life, with great humility, thanking Heaven, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... from men's lives than from their books, but nowadays care as to matters of hygiene has become in a valuable degree the common wisdom of a large part of my profession. Surveying our vast gains, we are a little apt to undervalue the men of older days, and no lesson is wiser than sometimes to go back and see how the best of them thought and acted amidst the ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... not undervalue the blessings of inheritance, mother, believe me, nor deny the general doctrine; though intelligence does not always descend, and manners die out, and that invaluable legacy, a name, may be thrown away. But this delicate thing ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... had had the luck to hit upon that way of doing it; indeed, where our aesthetic experience of it is complete, we feel as if we were doing it ourselves; our minds jump with the artist's mind; we are for the moment the artist himself in his very act of creation. But we are always apt to undervalue this true and complete aesthetic experience, because it seems so easy and simple, and we mistake for it a painful sense of the artist's skill, of his professional accomplishment. So we demand of artists, ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... consider our behaviour to our inferiors, in which condescension can never be too strongly recommended; for, as a deviation on this side is much more innocent than on the other, so the pride of man renders us much less liable to it. For, besides that we are apt to overrate our own perfections, and undervalue the qualifications of our neighbours, we likewise set too high an esteem on the things themselves, and consider them as constituting a more essential difference between us than they really do. The qualities of the mind do, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding |
