"Confusing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... long comfortable words that save modern people the toil of reasoning have one particular aspect in which they are especially ruinous and confusing. This difficulty occurs when the same long word is used in different connections to mean quite different things. Thus, to take a well-known instance, the word "idealist" has one meaning as a piece of philosophy and quite another as a piece of moral rhetoric. In the ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... exchanged a "Hallo" with the leading man and passed on until a much bigger white shape loomed up in the obscurity of the noon-twilight, the going underfoot changed and skis fetched up against a great lump of ice which was scarcely discernible in the confusing darkness, and one realised that what little light there was to the northward had been blotted out by one of the big grounded icebergs. Directly one realised which berg it was a new course would be shaped, say to the end of the Barne Glacier; the cliffs of this ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... was quite, quite all right. But my comforting protestations profited nothing, and the poor man retired in great confusion, murmuring incoherently. If I had seen "doctor" on his card I might have been prepared, but who would expect a Colonel to be a doctor? This confusing India! ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... a psalm. 6 The god of holy songs, Lord of religion and worship 7 seated a thousand singers and musicians: and established a choral band 8 who to his hymn were to respond in multitudes ... 9 With a loud cry of contempt they broke up his holy song 10 spoiling, confusing, confounding, his hymn of praise. 11 The god of the bright crown [1] with a wish to summon his adherents 12 sounded a trumpet blast which would wake the dead, 13 which to those rebel angels prohibited ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... she felt the least repugnance to the match, she need not consider her obliged to submit. More followed about the religious duty of full consideration and prayer before deciding on what would fix her destiny for life, but all was so confusing to the girl, entirely unprepared as she was, that after hastily glancing on in search of an explanation which she failed to find, she laid it aside, and opened the other ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the time he didn't know what he was saying to Winifred Stuart or to anybody else. Nor could he seem to see anybody very distinctly, for the mental phantoms of Athalie and Captain Dane floated persistently before him, confusing everything at moments except the smiling and deadly ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... Laudibus Legum Angliae, chap. cxxiv.] By using the general word villas ("vills") he evaded one of the greatest difficulties in the description of English local government in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the confusing and conflicting use of terms for the smallest subdivision of civil government. Shall we use parish, town, township, manor, or tithing when we speak of a neighborhood organized for the affairs of petty government? All these terms are used abundantly in the records of the time and ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... "I am confusing and confused. I shouldn't be—I shouldn't care if there weren't something in you, in me, in our—friendship, something I can't explain, something that shines still through the fog and the smoke in which we have lived our lives—something ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... arms lifted the two shivering lads on board, and their sister fell to weeping and laughing over them in the most confusing fashion. ...
— Harper's Young People, July 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... illustrating a grammatical principle and affording an easy and pleasant subject for conversation. The more difficult aspects of French grammar and syntax are treated in the Third Year, and unusual attention is given to all points likely to prove especially confusing. The progressive reading lessons are such as will prepare the student to read the masterpieces of French literature. Each ...
— Contes et lgendes - 1re Partie • H. A. Guerber
... sir, that a man who makes an induction holding up a lady to ridicule is probably a cad, and that the cad who makes a deduction confusing patriotism with ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... space. To his amazement she began to laugh. Nettled at this, he put his hand beneath the heavy table and lifted it. Rozsi clapped her hands. "Ah I now I see—how strong you are!" She made him a curtsey and whisked round to the window. He found the quick intelligence of her eyes confusing; sometimes they seemed to look beyond him at something invisible—this, too, confused him. From Margit he learned that they had been two years in England, where their father had made his living by teaching languages; they had now been a year ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Comforter, here also do thine office: I know not what to ask for as I ought; help mine infirmities as thou hast said; suggest the prayer, be in me the spirit of prayer and supplication, and especially in that hour of need, when sickness saps the clay tabernacle, discomposing the spirit, and confusing perhaps the ideas: still, still let my thoughts rise to my God. Oh, let no unhallowed subject get hold of me in that hour, but keep my Saviour's name in my heart, and on my lips. Is not this according to thy will? watch over it then, and keep ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... the religion of the Egyptians, because there were so many different deities worshipped in different places and at different periods that the subject is a very confusing one, and is indeed the most difficult ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... man's being." It is admirably said, and let us hold fast to it. In poetry, which is thought and art in one, it is the glory, the eternal honor, that charlatanism shall find no entrance; that this noble sphere be kept inviolate and inviolable. Charlatanism is for confusing or obliterating the distinctions between excellent and inferior, sound and unsound or only half-sound, true and untrue or only half-true. It is charlatanism, conscious or unconscious, whenever we confuse or obliterate these. ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... marked with the letters of the alphabet separated by certain spaces. A priest, linen clad, bowed himself over the table, balancing a ring tied to a thin thread. The ring, bounding from letter to letter, picks out letters forming hexameters, like those of Delphi.' This is confusing. Probably the movements of the table, communicated to the thread, caused the bounds of the ring, otherwise there was no use in the table moving. At all events the ring touched THEO (which is not a word that could begin a hexameter) when ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... Motor and Gas Gazette was of an overwhelming mass of desks and files and books, and a confusing, spying crowd of strange people, among whom the only safe, familiar persons were Miss Moynihan, the good-natured solid block of girl whom she had known at the commercial college, and Mr. S. Herbert Ross, the advertising-manager, ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... sailors swung easily to the motion. From below came the quick dull sounds of planks thrown down, the grind of car wheels, the movement of feet, the varied, complex sound of men working together, the clapping of waters against the structure. It was confusing, confusing as the noise of many hammers. Yet two things seemed to steady it, to confine it, keep it in the bounds of order, to prevent it from usurping more than its meet and proper proportion. One was the tingling lake breeze singing through the rigging of the ship; the other was ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... the succession of possessives is unpleasant or confusing, the substitution of a prepositional phrase should be made; as, the house of the mother of Charles's partner, instead of, Charles's ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... the words—in the tone. The chairman let fall the hand which had been raised to his face, holding on his eye-glasses; and a sort of self-condemning fear arose, confusing his brain. His son, proved innocent of one part, might be proved innocent of the other; and then—how would his own harsh conduct show out! West Lynne, in its charity, the justice in his, had cast more odium to Richard, with ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... confusing my little girl," he said. "Allow me to answer your questions—or excuse ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... could have passed from the moment that the snow began to move, till Short and I, and the rest, found ourselves, with the body of the bear, rolling over and over, and bounding from rock to rock, amid confusing heaps of snow, down into the bottom of the glen. How I am alive to tell the tale I do not know, and that fact makes people listen to me with no small amount of incredulity. I was more blinded, stunned, and confused than I had ever been in my life before, and each bound I made I thought would ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... perhaps intentionally confusing, the committee inquired, how could the original formulas really be known? This quest seemed so fruitless that it was not pursued. Instead the pharmacists turned to American experience in making the English ...
— Old English Patent Medicines in America • George B. Griffenhagen
... so confusing that I slipped in front of Frau Kellermann—and walked in the peaceful knowledge that she was blossoming and I was under no obligation to inform even my nearest and dearest as to the precise capacity of my affections. "What right have ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... superannuated ideas of Country, Justice, Truth, and Patriotism. All real progress tends toward simplification; and how simple are the idea of party and the associations clustering around this sacred word, compared with the confusing and embarrassing unreality of those ideas and juvenile feelings we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... his Head drawn in, turtle-fashion, his Legs spraddled, and oh, the hard, vicious Expression on that Face, as he Fiddled Short and looked intently at the Coming Champion's Feet. This was a very confusing and unprofessional Thing to do, as the Boy had not been accustomed to boxing with People who looked at his Feet. He wondered if there was anything the ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... what he had seen there. He went away hurriedly, with a great many vague fears in his mind. Mr Wodehouse's sudden illness seemed to him a kind of repetition and echo of the Squire's, and in the troubled and uncertain state of his thoughts, he got to confusing them together in the centre of this whirl of unknown disaster and perplexity. Perhaps even thus it was not all bitterness to the young man to feel his family united with that of Lucy Wodehouse. He went ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... words which I can't quite understand,' Charlie replied, for the cookery-book was an extraordinary work. The writing was bad, the spelling was worse, and the abbreviations were confusing. But the cook went right through the book with ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... a hand which might be trickless as an aid to, or defense against, a No-trump declaration, and one which would produce seven or eight tricks under such circumstances. This kind of bidding was found to be much too confusing for the partner, and prevented him from ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... wailing sound of the sugarloaf shot, and on the plateau beyond, slender lines of infantry, diverging very far apart, could be seen moving swiftly onward. They ran forward, flung themselves down, there was a succession of sudden flashes, little clouds of white smoke rose, a confusing medley of sharp, rattling reports followed, contrasting disagreeably with the deep, rolling thunder of the artillery; then the men were on their feet again, rushing on, no longer in a perfectly straight line, some in advance, others ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... frustrated their purpose by confusing their language and causing them all to express their words by different sounds; hence arose the numbers of different languages spoken by the nations of the earth; and thus what they imagined would be a monument of ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... transcendentalist, born in Massachusetts; a friend of Emerson's and founder of BROOK FARM (q. v.); took to Carlyle as Carlyle to him, though he was "grieved to see him" taken up with the "Progress of Species" set, and "confusing himself" ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... we see this minute division of feelings, impulses, workings of the mind, obstacles and aids to advancement so much used in the Buddha's teachings? It is very confusing to a beginner. ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott
... make up my mind to obey the commands of a sinful person. He that causeth a superior person arrived of his own will and obedient from love, to yield to a sinful wight, certainly incurreth the sin of confusing the superior with the inferior. Brahman created the Brahmanas from his mouth, and the Kshatriyas from his arms. He created the Vaishyas from his thighs and the Shudras from his feet. In consequence of the intermixture of those four orders, O Bharata, from those four ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... and a half of irritation and positive pain. Stretched out on my bunk and delivered over to the tender mercies of these personages, I stiffen myself and submit to the million imperceptible pricks they inflict. When by chance a little blood flows, confusing the outline by a stream of red, one of the artists hastens to staunch it with his lips, and I make no objections, knowing that this is the Japanese manner, the method used by their doctors for the wounds of both man ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... of the four galliasses loses her rudder, and drifts helpless to and fro, hindering and confusing. The duke, having (so the Spaniards say) weighed his anchor deliberately instead of leaving it behind him, runs in again after awhile, and fires a signal for return: but his truant sheep are deaf to the shepherd's pipe, and swearing and praying by turns, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the crisis was upon him, and confusing speed with intensity, and sound with passion, he rushed his words, with ever-increasing speed, into a ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... was very stupid, but it was terribly confusing to me for the most part. I grasped very well the fact that a plus quantity killed a minus quantity if they were of equal value, and that a little figure two by the side of a letter meant its square, and I somehow blundered through some simple equations, but when Mr Hasnip lit a scholastic ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... new-mown hay, with broad-brimmed hats, and dresses trimmed with wild-flowers. And now the advance-guard is coming down again; they have just turned at the head of the line, and it is already a little confusing. But the judges! How can they keep cool, or even think, with such a clamor of voices, and guests chattering thoughtlessly to them. Here comes a big basket on wheels, handle and all covered with moss and roses. Four girls in pink silk trimmed with moss stand within, bearing shields ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... in which they were executed, as commonly received; but who ever has tried to comprehend the movements of the vessels on June 1st, as I elicited them? Assuming their correctness, it was a mere mental diversion, in result rather confusing than illuminative to a student; whereas ships arranged like beads on a string can give an impression fundamentally correct, and to be apprehended at a glance. So far from tending to lucidity, accumulation of detail ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... feed too much on the inward sources; I live too much with the dead. My mind is something like the ghost of an ancient, wandering about the world and trying mentally to construct it as it used to be, in spite of ruin and confusing changes. But I find it necessary to use the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... beautiful wife were not confusing him now. He spoke to the helpless husband quietly and seriously, without his customary harshness, and with a grave compassion in his manner which presented him at his best. The sight of ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... apprehensions when they pass into the grave, that to many a man it would be maddening terror to meet those whom he loved and still loves. So there must have been a spasm of fear even among Christ's friends when they heard of Him as risen again, and much confusing doubt as to what would be the amount of resemblance to His old self. They probably dreaded to find Him far removed from their familiar love, forgetful perhaps of much of the old life, with other thoughts than before, with the atmosphere of the other ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... fat man, who was being assisted by Eradicate had reached the top of the gang plank. He must have been expected, for several friends rushed to greet him, and for a moment there was a confusing little throng at the place where the passengers came abroad. Tom and Ned hurried up, intent on getting a closer view of the man and youth who seemed ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton
... defined theology. For they had not progressed beyond the stage of magic as far as any concept of religion, that is of praying for intercession to any power greater than themselves; whereas the mental state of the Wongolo was half-way between magic and religion, mixing and confusing the two as exemplified in the Rain-making ceremony of employing magic and alternately invoking the god and threatening him with dire penalties if he did not behave. There seemed to be no royal family or clan ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... out to my sister something confusing in her way of expressing the fact, but my kindness seemed ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... "Papa talked it into the box, and the man writed it down when he talked," confusing the telephone at home with the cablegram, which, directed to Miss Eunice Ward, as the eldest representative, had been the occasion of much excitement on ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... hardly call it suitable myself to such an audience as this," replied Edna, who was possibly confusing it with Othello. "No, Miss Heritage, I really think something less—less objectionable would be—There's As you like it, now, quite a pleasant play. I think I can remember the outline of that. Let me see. Yes, it's about a girl called "Rosalind," ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... waxed black as a charcoal-burner's, when he again heard the most irreverent oath ever proposed to mortal king. The question presently attracted his attention, and he turned over the Baital's words in his head, confusing the ties of filiality, brotherhood, and ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... any man, however blind he be, who will humbly lay himself at Jesus' feet. Let this be my prayer, O Lord, "Cleanse Thou me from secret faults." Deliver me from self-deception, save me from confusing the fixed light of heaven with the wandering beacon-lights of hell. And again and again will I pray, "Lord, that I might ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... hearer. Only, let it be remembered that an "introduction" should introduce; that "divisions" should divide, and sub-divisions sub-divide. Needless and trifling "majors" or "minors" are irritating and confusing. "Firstly," "Secondly," "Thirdly," and—under very special circumstances—even "Fourthly" may contribute to the making of the dark places plain, but the days have long since passed away in which "Ninthly" and "Tenthly" could be borne; though there ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... should have let himself get into the position of trying to mollify Steering. "By God!" he was saying to himself with a convulsive anger, "Me to have to mollify! By God! Me!" Then the thought of Sally came back to him, goading him and confusing him. On a sudden impulse of candour he cried out to Steering, as he came on to ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... reapers and harvest-women at dinner. Here, said he, are the true Arcadians; and advanced courteously towards them, as afraid of confusing them by the dignity of his presence. They acknowledged his superiority by no other token than that of asking him for something to drink. He imagined that he had now purchased the privilege of discourse, and began to descend to familiar ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... morning of the 28th one party of Americans pulled across to the ferry a mile below Fort Erie, and then, sheering off after being fired at by the Canadian militia on guard, made for Red House a mile and a half lower down. There they landed at three and fought a most confused and confusing action in the dark. Friend and foe became mixed up together; but the result was a success for the Americans. Meanwhile, the other party landed near Frenchman's Creek, reached the bridge, damaged it a little, and had a fight with the 41st, who could not ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... sense of coldness and horror stole into his veins like the approach of death,—the strange impressions he had felt, the haunting and confusing memory he had always had of her face and voice, the supernatural theories he had lately heard discussed, all rushed at once upon his mind, and he uttered ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... it we offer God as a sacrifice the gratification of our own revenge and the protection of our own lives without cost to ourselves; and cost to ourselves is the essence of sacrifice and expiation. However much the Philistines have succeeded in confusing these things in practice, they are to the Salvationist sense distinct and even contrary. The Baronet's cousin in Dickens's novel, who, perplexed by the failure of the police to discover the murderer of the baronet's solicitor, said "Far better hang wrong fellow than no fellow," was not only expressing ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... army to be placed by one Ally in a position to attack another Ally." The last phrase put the facts in a nutshell, and illustrates well Nelson's power of going straight to the root of a matter, disregardful of confusing side-issues, of policy or timidity. To Hamilton he wrote passionately concerning the manifold difficulties caused to all, except the Turks and the Smiths. "If all the wise heads had left them to ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... magic sounds woven into one 340 Oblivious melody, confusing sense Amid the gliding waves and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... This often makes a man rash and headlong, and hence not reliable; but when combined, as in him, with perfect self-possession and self-control, imparts enormous power. It matters not how nervous and excitable a man is, if danger and responsibility instead of confusing and unsettling him, only winds him up to a higher tension, till he becomes like a tightly-drawn steel spring. Excitement then not only steadies him, but it quickens his perceptions, clears his judgment, gives rapidity ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... and doth alight, Flies past the porter to the stair, But, ere he mounts the marble flight, With hurried hand smooths down his hair. He enters: in the hall a crowd, No more the music thunders loud, Some a mazurka occupies, Crushing and a confusing noise; Spurs of the Cavalier Guard clash, The feet of graceful ladies fly, And following them ye might espy Full many a glance like lightning flash, And by the fiddle's rushing sound The voice of ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... easy to take, the space was so confined, the movement so continuous, the commotion so confusing. How it was taken I know not; the women massed on the floor were not still for more than a moment. In that moment it was done. Then we persuaded three of them to risk the peril of being caught alone. ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... of the sermons of Nanak, the founder of the sect, who died in the year 1530. It is full of excellent moral precepts; it teaches the brotherhood of man, the equality of the sexes; it rejects caste, and embraces all of the good points in Buddhism, with a pantheism that is very confusing. It would seem that the Sikhs worship all gods who are good to men, and reject the demonology of the Hindus. They believe in one Supreme Being, with attributes similar to the Allah of the Mohammedans, and recognize Mohammed ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... the new wisdom, the new points of view, and the new interests must, of course, be from time to time bewildering and confusing. Today those who have a voice in the body politic have expressed their wishes and sufferings. The result has been a smaller or greater balancing of their conflicting interests. The appearance of new interests ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... compositors were not always able to follow and apprehend. The only authority for the text of 'Macbeth' is the folio of 1623, the apparent corruptions of which must be restored with a more than usually cautious hand. Without being multitudinous or confusing, they are sufficiently numerous and important to test severely the patience, acumen, and judgment of any editor."—"The Works of William ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... constitutes a region of our earth still more vast than the astral portion of it. As the astral sphere encloses the physical globe, the mental encompasses both, enclosing them and also interpenetrating them to the earth's center. The term "mental world" may seem confusing to some because we are accustomed to think of the mental and the material as being opposites. The mental world, or sphere, or plane, of theosophy, is a world of matter, not merely thought. It is matter, however, of such remarkable ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... onward movement. Dermot was awake even before Badshah's trunk touched his face to arouse him, and as soon as he was mounted the march began again. The route lay through the new mountain range; and all day, except for a couple of hours' halt at noon, the long line wound up a confusing jumble of ravines and passes. When night fell a plateau covered with tall deodar trees had been reached, ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... Dorothy had not offered the least resistance to this cruel treatment. Her brain seemed stupefied by the whirling, confusing events taking place so rapidly around her. She only realized two things: that she had betrayed her presence in the conservatory when she fell to the floor upon hearing her lover speak words of affection to her rival, and that Harry was bitterly angry with her for being there. She did not ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... confusing conditions her plan would be to present to them, as an affectionate surprise, the unheralded visit, which might appear a trifle uncalled for. She felt happily sure of herself under any circumstances not partaking of the nature of collisions at sea. Yet she had not behaved absolutely ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of so varied a nature, requiring so great a knowledge of anatomy, and so much experience and aptitude, that I have deemed it advisable to reserve for a separate chapter the explanations of the processes to be learned, to avoid, at the outset, confusing the learner by asking him to attempt too much. This chapter may therefore be considered a finishing one, and, perhaps, it will be best to be candid, and say at once, that no one should attempt the mounting of animals by this method ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... condemned, or whether his wealth, coveted by a greedy prince, did not in some degree contribute to his undoing, there is nothing in his life that resembles what we find in Bluebeard's; this alone is enough to prevent our confusing them or merging the ...
— The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard - 1920 • Anatole France
... sage-brush and sand-hills. The grey and yellow desert was varied only by occasional ruins of deserted towns, and the little red boxes of station-houses, where the spindling trees and sickly vines in the blue-grass yards made little green reserves fenced off in that confusing wilderness of sand. ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... and kind, as if he were reassuring and encouraging me to go on! It transformed him from a terrifying presence into something beautiful. It made me forget the others and the room and, curiously, in their place, came the confusing memory of a ball-room and a slim boy with black brows whirling down the polished floor with his splendid partner, both in a gale of laughter. Those long white hands, now linked together with a chain,—hadn't I seen them holding ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... of confusing the trail. Possibly he hoped to suggest that he'd escaped by the fire-escape. Presumably he was on the balcony when Mrs. Hale came out into ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... thought and the idea of a Divine Creator prove that no glasses are required to contemplate God in His works. Well! scientists have felt obliged to direct theirs upon these simple notions, and have thus, i.e., by force of reasoning, succeeded in confusing out of all recognition a question sparkling with evidence, so much so that they will fall into such a state of blindness that they can no longer see in this world any trace of the Supreme Intelligence which is yet manifested with glory in the least of His creatures. Consequently, they will bluntly ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... year a commoner, as it was described at court. She became the wife of L. Pierson Dana, a prominent dealer in hides and leather, and a man of culture and standing in the community. King George, with a senile confusing of terms, always insisted on speaking of the ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... poor devil went astray in his conjugation, and confusing the first with the third person, said, "God, I do not wish," which in the context had no meaning. "God does not wish," being ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... again comes to the weary Commander-in-chief of finding a leader who could lead, in whom the troops and the country would have confidence, and who could be trusted to do his simple duty as a general in the field without confusing his military responsibilities with political scheming. The choice first fell upon Burnside. Burnside was neither ambitious nor self-confident. He was a good division general, but he doubted his ability for the general ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... the statutes unless a crime has actually been committed. Thus, the police regulations deliberately compel every officer either to violate the law or to be made the subject of charges for dereliction of duty. A confusing state of things, truly, to a man who wants to do his duty by himself ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... a frantic bustle at this port, increasing a hundredfold when once they set foot upon the land. Men—men were everywhere; men in various uniforms, men who spoke various tongues in a confusing babel, yet they all seemed intent upon one purpose, the import of which Kan Wong could but vaguely guess. All about them was endless movement, but no confusion, and once ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... Hotel in a victoria, drawn by a pair of lean grey horses with long manes and tails. The coachman was an Arab much pitted with smallpox, who wore the tarbush with European clothes. It was about three o'clock in the afternoon, and the streets of the enticing and confusing city were crowded. Isaacson sat up very straight and looked about him with eager eyes. He felt keenly excited. This was his very first taste of Eastern life. Never before had he set foot in his "own place." Already, despite the zest shed through him by novelty, he had an odd, ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... overthrown? Either conception, if consistently worked out, might have sufficed for the groundwork of a good historical tragedy. What Schiller did, however, was to vacillate between the two, to blend them in a confusing way, and finally to let the interest of his play turn largely upon the hero's mental struggle between selfish ambition and ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... appreciate his act—Here into the midst of these meditations came an abrupt memory that she had screamed—she could not be sure when. She rehearsed the adventure from the beginning, and found one or two further uncertainties—how it had all been while she was on the horse, for instance. It was confusing to determine precisely what she had done with her arms. She knew where one of his arms had been. And the handkerchief with the flowers was gone. She made a few rapid dives in search of it. Had she, ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... remind us of Michael Angelo; but Tintoretto's imagination far outran that of the great Florentine master. Yet there is a singular sense of reality in his most imaginative works, and it is this, I think, that is sometimes so confusing and overwhelming. His paintings here are so many that I cannot talk long about any particular one. I will only try to tell you what qualities to look for—then you must, for yourselves, endeavor to understand and come under the spell of ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... produced by the time-binding energies of humanity, and according to which nearly all the wealth of the world at any given time is the accumulated fruit of the toil of past generations—the living work of the dead. It seems unnecessary to warn the reader against confusing the "making" of money by hook or crook, by trick or trade, with the creating of wealth, by the product of labor. In calling the old conceptions childish, I do not mean that they contain no element of truth whatever; ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... is all I can vouch for. It happened to be so dark that we might as well have been groping about in a coal-pit. My companions, however, knew the ground, which was fortunate, for walking over a rugged surface in the dark is not only confusing, but trying to the nerves, to say nothing of the temper. I followed faithfully and "close to ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... silly, teazing or puzzling answers; the questioner remaining at the end rolled up in the repartees, gasping as a fly caught in a spider's web. The Court fool or buffoon had for his principal merit his clever knack of returning witty or confusing answers; the best of them were preserved; itinerant minstrels remembered and repeated them; clerks turned them into Latin, and gave them place in their collections of exempla. They afforded amusement for a king, an amusement of ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... so much a magnification of the object as a simplification of it. Confusing details are stripped away. Contradictory facts are eliminated, until heart answers to heart across ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... hold the attention of the masses. One advocates one plan, and another an entirely different, and sometimes a directly opposite plan—such as uncooked vs. thoroughly cooked food; a strictly vegetarian diet, and mental culture in place of attention to either, etc. Such a state of affairs makes it confusing to average people and gets them to believe that health reformers are all at sea, and what is good for one is not good for another, or, in common language, "what is one man's meat is ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... from the little war-encompassed capital there rose a distant drumming and bugling as the missionary boy king, unsafe even under the guns of Britain and America, took his precautions against a night attack. After the stillness of Oa there was something confusing in the stir and bustle of Mataafa's big camp—in the constant passing of armed men, the change of guards, and the rousing choruses around the fires. There was, besides, an atmosphere of recklessness and gayety, engendered by excitement, by danger, by the very desperation of their ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... kindly upon them, and the scene was really very pretty and comfortable, Maggie thought, only she hoped they would soon set out the tea-cups. It was a little confusing, though, that the young woman began to speak to the old one in a language which Maggie did not understand, while the tall girl who was feeding the donkey sat up and stared at her. At last ...
— Tom and Maggie Tulliver • Anonymous
... returned to boyhood as he faced the marble-topped table, the cabinet organ, and the enlarged family portraits on the walls, for of such quality were his mother's adornments in the old home at Circle Bend. Something vaguely intimate and a little confusing filled his mind as he listened to the voice of the woman before him. Only by an effort could he connect her with the cabin in the high valley. She was becoming each moment more alien, more aloof, but at the same time more desirable, ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... subjects, and however uncouth they may be in the reality, they make no impression in the picture; the thin and sere sward may appear rather like a closely shaven lawn or a new-mown meadow. And again, the picture sets a limit to the scene; it frames it, and thereby cuts off all extraneous and confusing or ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... continually from one fete to another it was almost confusing. The rejoicings over the baptism were followed by a fete given by the Emperor in the private park of Saint-Cloud, and from early in the morning the road from Paris to Saint-Cloud was covered with carriages and men on foot. The fete took ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... the problem in both is substantially the same, the solution also is the same. David and Asaph both point onwards to a period when this confusing distribution of earthly good shall have ceased, though the one regards that period chiefly in its bearing upon himself as the time when he shall see God and be at rest, while the other thinks of it rather with reference to the godless rich as the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... with pleasure. But don't call her Annie; we've got so many Annies in the parish already it's quite confusing—and so many Whites too. We should have to say 'Annie White on the hill' every time we spoke of her. I'm always mixing them up as it is. Don't call her Annie, Mrs White, Lilac's far better. Ask your husband what he ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... not say that. You are confusing things. And your rights do not cover all the ground. There is a corner, somewhere, where mine grow. Now'she raised her head, drawing a long breath,how fast the gathering tide of anxiety and sorrow came rolling in!'See here. I know you have nothing so womanish as a vinaigrette about you,but ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... Just as the democrats made a sort of fetich of the words, 'the people,' so you make one of the word 'proletariat.'" John Spargo quotes this statement in his "Life." Marx, we are told, could use phrases like "democratic miasma." He never seems to have made the mistake of confusing democracy with demolatry. Spargo is perfectly clear about this characteristic of Marx: "He admired most of all, perhaps, that fine devotion to truth as he understood it, and disregard of popularity which marked Owen's life. Contempt for popular opinion was one ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... saying anything against your step-paw, Jason," the old woman broke in anxiously. "He was an awful good man. It seems queer to think it was the way it was. Dear me, it's all so kind of confusing!" ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... long quitted school. Outwardly they were not unlike other young ladies with wits alert. They were at the commencement of their labours on this night of the expedition when they were fated to meet something greatly confusing them. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... leaves the line between the aesthetic and the sensuous clearly marked. Beneath a straighter sun the line is blurred and sometimes vanishes: no orchid-musk, no azure and distant hill, no tinted bay but accosts the senses, confusing one with another, mingling all the emotions in a single cup, persuading man that he knows good from evil as little as though he lived still in Eden. From such stealthy influences the man of rigid convictions is often in more danger than the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... been a charming river if there had been a drop of water in it. I never knew before how much water adds to a river. Its slimy bottom was quite a ghastly spectacle, an ugly gash in the land that nothing could heal but the friendly returning tide. I should think it would be confusing to dwell by a river that runs first one way and then the other, and then ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... have; but those who have fallen into this error are hardly worth considering. The true complaint is that Mr. Darwin has too often written of "natural selection" as though it does induce variability, and that his language concerning it is so confusing that the reader is not helped to see that it really comes to nothing but a cloak of difference from his predecessors, under which there lurks a concealed identity of opinion as to the main facts. The reader is thus led to look upon it as something positive and special, and, in spite of ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... two o'clock the car was at the side door, and Nina and Amy came downstairs with their wraps, and Saunders and Ward ran about laughing and confusing things. Blondin watched the performance lazily from a basket chair on the porch, but when Nina called him a half-laughing, half-daring, "We're ready, Mr. Blondin!" he sauntered down to the car with his pleasantest expression, but with the regretful statement that he was ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... the night were confusing, and a simple man could not dare prophesy what might follow," said Kit, who had drawn up a chair and easily fell into Rotil's manner of jest. "But I fancy if that courier had known who would follow after, he would have spent the ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... mastering this impulse he passed on. Later an idea struck him that it would save fatigue to take a cab, and he started back with that intention, but the cabs seemed already so far away and the lanterns were so bright and confusing that he gave it up, and pulling himself ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... of catatonia and manic-depressive insanity with inelastic boundaries, calls all stupor reactions akinetic psychoses with varying prognosis. He does not make Kraepelin's mistake of confusing the apathy of stupor with the retardation of depression, stating distinctly that the processes ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... to other men: all Blake's philosophy is but a desperate effort to persuade us to exchange the false world of "Nature" on which we usually look—and which is not really Nature at all—for this, the true world, to which he gave the confusing name of "Imagination." For these, the contemplation of the World of Becoming assumes the intense form which we call genius: even to read their poems is to feel the beating of a heart, the upleap of a joy, greater than anything that we have known. Yet your own ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... thread of the plot, its meaning, and values, cannot be grasped by the editor. Even when the story itself is not utterly lost to the script reader, he is too busy a man to wade through it bit by bit, struggling to make something out of a jumble of confusing words. The demand for good scripts is greater than the supply—but the supply is increasing, and the standard is rising. This means that although there are dozens—to put it mildly—of men and women entering ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... he passed, at least until assured they had no interest for him; he peered into shops; he reviewed equipages. In those days it was possible to do this to some purpose, if a man were looking for somebody; the streets were not as now filled with a confused and confusing crowd going all ways at once; and no policeman was needed, even for the most timid, to cross Broadway where it was busiest. What a chance there was then for the gay part of the world to show itself! A lady would heave in sight, ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... she said, taking up a remark Dick had just made, "is that too much philosophizing about life gets one worse than nowhere. A philosophic atmosphere is confusing—at least to a woman. One hears so much about everything, and against everything, that nothing is sure. For instance, Mendenhall's wife is a Lutheran. She hasn't a doubt about anything. All is fixed, ordained, immovable. Star-drifts ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... the arrangement of The Clintons and Others (COLLINS) at first a little confusing, because Mr. ARCHIBALD MARSHALL, instead of keeping his Clinton tales consecutive, has mixed them democratically with the Others. Our first sight of the family (and incidentally the most agreeable thing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... doing that. Confusing them...." He dropped the tray where it belonged, shoved his hands into the chef's cleaning recess and waved them around, then came back, still looking absent-minded, and stopped before Trigger's chair. He studied her face ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... you are! That's true. It's the fashion now to discount instinct, I know; well—but you can't get away from it. I've thought about the thing—a lot. Men are brave against their better reason, against their conscience. It's a mixed-up thing. It's confusing and—and sort of damnable," he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... matter of ordinary good manners, the least she could do was to treat Mr. Hazard civilly in his own church, and listen with respect to his lectures on Christian art. She even did her best to obey his wishes in all respects in which she understood them, but here an unexpected and confusing play of cross-purposes came in to mislead her. Wharton suddenly found that Hazard let Miss Dudley have her own way to an extent permitted to no one else. Esther was not conscious that the expression of a feeling or a wish on her part carried any special weight, but there could be no doubt that if ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... draw it rudely in outline, as it would be set for a side-wind on the boat you probably know best,—the boat of burden on the Lake of Geneva (Fig. 3), not confusing the drawing by adding the mast, which, you know, rakes a little, carrying the yard across it (a). Then, with your permission, I will load my boat thus, with a few casks of Vevay vintage—and, to keep them cool, we will put an awning over them, so (b). Next, as ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... natural dishes he ordered—they taxed the culinary resources of the inn to the utmost—he broached a comprehensive generalisation. "The animal kingdom and the vegetable kingdom are easily distinguished, and for the life of me I see no reason for confusing them. It is, I hold, a sin against Nature. I keep them distinct in my mind and I keep them distinct in my person. No animal substance inside, no vegetable without;—what could be simpler or more logical? Nothing upon me but leather and allwool garments, within, cereals, fruit, ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... Fletcher, the head girl, was arranging a program for the Parents' Afternoon, the efficient performance of which was, in her eyes, of infinitely greater public importance than the cricket match. She also required numerous rehearsals, and the conflicting claims on the girls' time became so confusing that after one or two struggles between rival "whips," who contended hotly for possession, the chiefs were obliged to strike a bargain, Winona releasing two members of the team in order that they might act, and filling up their places from her reserve, while Linda undertook to leave the ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... too confusing to follow all these grants and charters, or all the attempts at settlements made by Mason and Gorges and others. The land granted to them was often very vaguely outlined, the fact being that the people who applied ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... the Lieutenant, Count de Bourdon, with another bow and then a quick recovery as he saw that he must take the hand of Buzz, held out to him in great cordiality. These handshakes of America are very confusing to those ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... disturbing him. Within this tranquil domicile can be heard the noise of the Parisian faubourg with its thousand different dins; the bustle of the street; the clatter of a factory; the voice of the workshop; the cries of the pedlers intermingled with the chimes of the bells of a near-by convent-a confusing buzzing noise, which the author, however, seems to enjoy; for Coppee is Parisian by birth, Parisian by education, ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... serge, and a coat of green baracan with gold buttons. The waistcoat of gold cloth was cut out of my father's bridal waistcoat. My hair had been frizzled and powdered, and my curls stuck out from my head like little wings; but I could not finish dressing myself, because I kept confusing the different articles, the first always falling off as soon as I was about to put on the next. In this dilemma, a young and handsome man came to me, and greeted me in the friendliest manner. "Oh! you are welcome," said I: "I am very glad to see you here."—"Do you know me, then?" ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... fever played its favorite game by confusing his brain and tangling his thoughts. He wandered down to the docks and aboard a tramp steamer about to lift anchor. When the vessel was far away the fateful disease released its grip on his body. ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... holiness of labour and of joy in work. It extended far beyond the limits of pure industrialism; it moulded and controlled society in all its forms, destroying ideals old as history, reversing values, confusing issues and wrecking man's powers of judgment. Until the war it seemed irresistible, now its weakness and the fallacy of its assumptions are revealed, but it has become so absolutely a part of our life, ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... mind, the true disciplinarian runs no risk of confusing harshness with the exercise of justice. He understands the difference between an overbearing arrogance, arising from unconscious ignorance, and the pride which springs from a justified self-respect. ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... the Slav. There are so many varieties of him that he is confusing. He comes from the various provinces of Russia, from the conglomerate empire of Austro-Hungary, and from the Balkan states. In physique he is sturdier than the Italian and mentally he is less excitable and nervous, but he drinks heavily and is often murderous when not sober. ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... high and low notes, are combined—or, again, when they make complex variations of rhythms, which they adapt to the notes of the lyre—all that sort of thing is not suited to those who have to acquire speedy and useful knowledge of music in three years; for opposite principles are confusing, and create a difficulty in learning, and our young men should learn quickly, and their mere necessary acquirements are not few or trifling, as will be shown in due course. Let the director of education attend to the principles ...
— Laws • Plato
... in the front of the picture were additions of this kind, and are very injurious, confusing the organization and concealing the power of the sea. The merits of the drawing are, however, still great as a piece of composition. The left-hand side is most interesting, and characteristic of Turner: no other artist would have put the round pier so exactly under the round cliff. It is under ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... seemed to be a great deal of disagreement among the medical authorities who have attempted to say when a woman should not have children. This disagreement has been rendered even more confusing by a babel of voices from the ranks of sociologists. Within the past few years, however, so much light has been shed upon the subject that it is now comparatively easy for the student to separate the well-founded conclusions from those ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... "It was two nights after the battle. All the camp was at rest; I was occupied as usual, by my honored watch in my sovereign's tent. The king was sleeping soundly, and a strange drowsiness appeared creeping over me too, confusing all my thoughts. At first I imagined the wind was agitating a certain corner of the tent, and my eyes, half asleep and half wakeful, became fascinated upon it; presently, what seemed a bale of carpets, only doubled up in an extraordinary small space, appeared within the drapery. It ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... it very hard to write this letter. There are so many things I want to tell you, and they stand on such different levels, that the effect is necessarily confusing and discordant, and I find myself doubting if I am really giving you the thread of emotion that should run through all this letter. For although I must confess it reads very much like an application or a testimonial or some such thing as that, I can assure you I am writing this in fear and ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells |
