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More "Confuse" Quotes from Famous Books



... not ungrateful to Lucy, for it was the praise of her lover. But Clifford scarcely listened, for a thousand thoughts and feelings contested within him; and the light touch of Lucy's hand upon his arm would alone have been sufficient to distract and confuse his attention. The darkness of the night, the late excitement, the stolen kiss that still glowed upon his lips, the remembrance of Lucy's flattering agitation in the scene with her at Lord Mauleverer's, the yet warmer one of that unconscious embrace, which still tingled through every nerve of ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Here we are.—You are to understand that we are this very day virtually complete. We shan't be legally for a day or two. Call it at the outside a week. We've been at it night and day for I don't know how long. Mr Rugg, you know how long? Never mind. Don't say. You'll only confuse me. You shall tell her, Mr Clennam. Not till we give you leave. Where's that rough total, Mr Rugg? Oh! Here we are! There sir! That's what you'll have to break to her. That man's your ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... own horse and guided the young girl for half an hour at full gallop; making turns and half turns, and striking into wood-paths, so as to confuse their traces, until they reached a spot where ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac

... it fine: just waitin' here, To gar the evil waur appear, To clart the guid, confuse the clear, Mis-ca' the great, My conscience! an' to raise a ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the lover of beauty, in their particular problems of selecting and arranging elements of aesthetic value. It is no more a practical science than logic. The supposition that it is so is probably favoured by the idea that aesthetic theory has art for its special subject. But this is to confuse a general aesthetic theory—what the Germans call "General Aesthetics''—-with a theory of art (Kunstwissenschaft). The former, with which we are here concerned, has to examine aesthetic experience as a whole; which, as we shall ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... landmarks, such as these railway arches that you have noted, by which the actual distance can be settled after the route is plotted. You had better read out the entries, and, opposite each, write a number for reference, so that we need not confuse the chart by writing details on it. I shall start near the middle of the board, as neither you nor I seem to have the slightest notion what ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... rises above or he sinks below his usual condition, and the same thing occurs in nations at large. Extreme perils sometimes quench the energy of a people instead of stimulating it; they excite without directing its passions, and instead of clearing they confuse its powers of perception. The Jews deluged the smoking ruins of their temple with the carnage of the remnant of their host. But it is more common, both in the case of nations and in that of individuals, to find extraordinary ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... a question on which Mill (vide Subjection of Women, last third of Chapter I) has endeavoured to confuse the issues for his reader, first, by representing that by no possibility can man know anything of the "nature," i.e., of the "secondary sexual characters" of woman; and, secondly, by distracting attention from the fact that "acquired ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright

... I said. 'How do you dare to confuse labour and prayer? Learn from me, my friend, that work is work, and prayer is prayer. It is written in the old wisdom—"Six parts of thy time shalt thou work for thy bread, and on the seventh thou shalt pray." Orare est orare; ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... "Consul, your son has just died of sickness in the camp." All who heard this were grieved, but Horatius, undisturbed, merely said, "Fling his corpse where you please, for I cannot grieve for him," and completed the dedication service. The story was false, invented by Marcus to confuse Horatius. His conduct is a remarkable instance of presence of mind, whether it be that he at once saw through the trick, or believed the story and ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... person or ascertaining the secret of his power, in accordance with my previous suggestion. It would be well to send as delegates to this Conference No. 2 several professors of physics who can by plausible arguments and ingenious theories so confuse the matter that no determination can be reached. I suggest Professors Gasgabelaus, of Muenchen, ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... that he was too deep for her. Bean was on the point of inventing a close acquaintance with an actress, which he considered would be scandalous enough to compel a certain respect he seemed to find lacking in the old lady, but he saw quickly that she would confuse and trip him with a few questions. He was obliged to content himself with looking the least bit smug when ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... plane, rendered more cautious by the fate of the first, which was now descending a mass of flames, began a series of divings, wrigglings, and even nose dips, in its efforts to confuse Erwin and find a good position from which to shower the ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry

... am the State," but he announced his position frankly. He was an autocrat and he said so. It was a more honest and therefore less harmful position than that of a majority of voters in our country today. Can it help but confuse and deteriorate one sex, trained to believe and call itself living in a democracy, to say silently year by year at the polls, "I am the State"? Can it help but confuse and deteriorate the other sex, similarly trained to acquiescence year after year in a national misrepresentation ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... clear remembrance of a gentle voice:— 'And O! my child, should ever a flatterer Tap with his wares, and promise of all joys And vain sweet pleasures that on earth may be; Seal up your ears, sing some old happy song, Confuse his magic who is all mockery: His sweets are death.' Yet, still, how she doth long But just to taste, then shut the lattice tight, And hide her eyes ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare

... required to pass the ligature without unnecessarily raising the vessel from its bed, especially as the vessel itself may very possibly be diseased, and the aneurism of the iliac trunk for which the operation is required will displace and confuse the parts, and may ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... about him is at once a puzzle and a surprise. It is his own, yet not his own. It seems to him a caricature of English, a phantom speech, ghostly but familiar, such as he might hear in a land of dreams. He recognises its broad lineaments; its lesser details evade, or confuse, him. He acknowledges that the two tongues have a common basis. Their grammatical framework is identical. The small change of language—the adverbs and prepositions,—though sometimes strangely used in America, are not strange to an English ear. And there the ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... To confuse the instrument with its function and the operation with its meaning has been a persistent foible in modern philosophy. It could thus come about that the function of intelligence should be altogether misconceived and in consequence denied, when it was discovered that figments of reason could ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... she ran up to him. "Are you well? Why are you so gloomy?" she asked him; she pressed her questions, she hinted about Zosia, and began to jest with him. Thaddeus was unmoved; leaning on his elbow, he kept silent, frowned, and puckered his lips: so much the more did he confuse and amaze Telimena. Suddenly she changed her countenance and the tone of her discourse; she arose in wrath, and with sharp words began to shower on him sarcasms and reproaches. Thaddeus, too, started up, as if stung by a wasp; ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... Mikah shouted, leaping to his feet and pacing back and forth before Jason, clasping and unclasping his hands with agitation. "You seek to confuse me with your semantics and so-called ethics that are simply opportunism and greed. There is a Higher Law that cannot ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... all-speaker circuit, "that we got the ship which could have reported our action off Meriden. I'm sure we've sent four shiploads of food back to the fleet, besides the passenger-ship we'd rather have missed. But there's still something to be done. To confuse Mekin and keep it busy, and therefore off Kandar's neck, we have to start trouble elsewhere. From now on we are ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... universal, forms in which it is accustomed to manifest itself: I mean that of an exhaustive study of the contents of the morning and evening papers. It is certainly remarkable that any person who has nothing to get by it should destroy his eyesight and confuse his brain by a conscientious attempt to master the dull and doubtful details of the European diary daily transmitted to us by "Our Special Correspondent." But it must be remembered that this is only a somewhat ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... her tempting self, unknown! The winds were silent, all the waves asleep, And heaven was traced upon the flattering deep; But whilst he looks, unmindful of a storm, And thinks the water wears a stable form, What dreadful din around his ears shall rise! What frowns confuse his picture of ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... these notes. If you are an impatient reader, skip to them at once. In reading aloud, omit, if you please, the sixth and seventh verses. These are parenthetical and digressive, and, unless your audience is of superior intelligence, will confuse them. Many people can ride on horse-back who find it hard to get on and to get off without assistance. One has to dismount from an idea, and get into the saddle again, at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... MULL of anything," meaning thereby to spoil or confuse it, if it be derived, as is said, from the Gipsy, must have come from Mullo meaning dead, and the Sanskrit Mara. There is, however, no such Gipsy word as mull, in the ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland

... not understand you, madam," said the stranger. "I am certainly John McAllister; but I am no captain, neither have I been at sea. Good God! is it my grandfather whom you confuse me with?" cried he. "He was Jack McAllister, and was lost at sea more than seventy years ago, while my own father was a baby. I am told that I am wonderfully like his portrait; but he was a younger man than I when he ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various

... keep her promise to Terence?—the Hill Terence, she called him now, when she thought of him, so as not to confuse him with Terence Sullivan. She went to the pool again and again and tried to find the door in the rocks open and the water so that she could walk on it, but she never found them so. Yet she could not think of any other ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost

... great drama was approaching and both sides were preparing for the coming struggle. Nearly all military authors so overload their narrative with details that they confuse the mind of the reader, to the extent that, in most of the published works on the wars of the Empire which I have read, I have been unable to understand the description of several of the battles in which I myself have taken ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... the Liverpools. The positions of many regiments have been changed, certain battalions being now kept always ready as a flying column to co-operate with the relieving force. Last night's movement appears to have been a kind of rehearsal for that. It was also partly a feint to puzzle the Boers and confuse the spies in ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson

... spirit hinders men with all his powers. Oh, how often will he here prevent the desire to pray, not allow us to find time and place, nay, often also raise doubts, whether a man is worthy to ask anything of such a Majesty as God is, and so confuse us that a man himself does not know whether it is really true that he prays or not; whether it is possible that his prayer is acceptable, and other such strange thoughts. For the evil spirit knows well how powerful one man's truly believing prayer ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther

... as if paying the deepest attention to his discourse. All of a sudden, however, he cried with a sharp, cracked voice, "that won't do, sir; that won't do—more vehemence—your argument is at present particularly weak; therefore, more vehemence—you must confuse them, stun them, stultify them, sir"; and, at each of these injunctions, he struck the back of his right hand sharply against the palm of the left. "Good, sir—good!" he occasionally uttered, in the same sharp, cracked tone, as the voice of Francis ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... Curran, only as I see him through the lapse of years. Time has had no other effect on my recollection, than raising my estimate of his genius. I admit, too, that in judging of an extraordinary man, time may exalt the image as well as confuse the likeness. The haze of years may magnify all the nobler outlines, while it conceals all that would enfeeble their dignity. To me, his eloquence now resembles those midsummer night dreams, in which all is contrast, and all is magical. Shapes, diminutive and grotesque for a moment, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... people. Indeed, so likely has the term been to mislead that in a recent national survey of religious conditions, the term was abandoned and "town and country" substituted. The simpler plan is to arrive at a definition of the word "rural" which will include what the latter term connotes. To confuse "rural" with "agricultural" is to ignore both the past and the present in movements of population and in organization of interests. To an increasing degree the interests of the open country are centering in the village, ...
— Church Cooperation in Community Life • Paul L. Vogt

... course of history went into the welter of religious wars which gradually merge into dynastic wars and confuse the record of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century. At the end of the last of these divisions of time ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... though one would not be so rude as to call him an old boy, yet, being always clad in a middle-aged habit, an elderly coat, and adult pantaloons, one would as little fancy him a young man. Perhaps the fact of his wearing his father's wardrobe in all its unaltered amplitude might help to confuse one's ideas ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... in some respects would seem to belong to an enormous rodent; 5th, also some smaller teeth belonging to the same order. If it interests you sufficiently to unpack them, I shall be very curious to hear something about them. Care must be taken in this case not to confuse the tallies. They are mingled with marine shells which appear to me identical with what now exist. But since they were deposited in their beds several geological changes have taken place in the country. So much for the dead, and now for the living: there is a poor specimen of a ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... she was, lent herself to the fashion of the day, and delighted in practical jokes and tricks. At the splendid masquerade given by the queen she continued to plague her cousin, Lady Muskerry; to confuse and expose a stupid court beauty, a Miss Blaque; and at the same time to produce on the Count de Grammont a still more powerful effect than even her charms had done. Her success in hoaxing—which we should now think both perilous and indelicate—seems to have only riveted the ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... forced to use these terms in somewhat of a popular sense, for to attempt in a little book like this to define everything with strict scientific accuracy would simply confuse and mislead. ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.

... my most gracious Princess Turandotte!" said he; "has your highness no little riddle at hand with which to confuse weak heads?" ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... they confuse us! It is their perfection that bewilders us; it is their completeness that carries ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth

... saying that he did not want her to decide in haste, but to take time to know what she was doing! What other man would not have stayed to urge her, to hurry her, to impose his will on hers, masterfully to use his personality to confuse her, to carry her off? For an instant, through all her wretched bewilderment, she thrilled to a high, impersonal appreciation of his saying: "If I had stayed with you, I should have tried to take you by force—but you are too fine for that, Sylvia! What you could be to the man you loved ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... chalice that suggests a trap for catching sunbeams from fiery old Sol. Defiant of his scorching rays in its dry habitat, it neither nods nor droops even during prolonged drought; and yet many people confuse it with the gracefully pendent, swaying bells of the yellow Canada Lily, which will grow in a swamp rather than forego moisture. La, the Celtic for white, from which the family derived its name, makes this bright-hued flower blush to own it. Seedsmen, who export quantities of our superb native ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... will ne'er become great when he doth so confuse justice with viciousness;—but, nurse, I would have thee haste. Tell my lord that I beg his presence, if for a moment only; he surely would not refuse so trifling ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... much ingenuity, and some truth, here, but the reader, as in other of Lord Lindsay's speculations, must receive his conclusions with qualification. It is the natural character of strong effects of color, as of high light, to confuse outlines; and it is a necessity in all fine harmonies of color that many tints should merge imperceptibly into their following or succeeding ones:—we believe Lord Lindsay himself would hardly wish to mark the hues of the rainbow ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... must be tamed. He must be softened; his divine fire shaded by the friendly screens of more prudent, more conventional talent. Even among men of genius up on the heights it is the personality of each that enters largely into the equation of their work. No one can confuse Whistler the etcher with the etcher Rembrandt; the profounder is the Dutchman. Yet what individuality there is in the plates of the American! What personality! Now, Felicien Rops, the Belgian etcher, lithographer, engraver, designer, and painter, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... cut through his clothes, and punctured his side. Seeing his associates thus hard beset, Dr. Grant, who was behind, ran up and brought his riding whip with such force across the villain's eyes, as to confuse him for the moment, and in the confusion the party ran into a house and barred the doors. The priest received a cut in the head, but Mr. Perkins was not seriously wounded. Through the efforts of the British ambassador, the Lootee received ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson

... in united voices they would accept the invitation and go whirling around the room with exactly the same steps, laughing at the same instant and enjoying the dance equally. But if one youth asked his partner a question, both the twins would make answer, and that was sure to confuse and embarrass the youth. Still, the maids managed very well to adapt themselves to the ways of people who were singular, although they sometimes became a little homesick for Twi, where they were like ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum

... Bowring (late Governor of Hong-Kong) affirms that the Chinese respect their writings and traditions, whilst they do not believe a lie to be a fault, and in some of their classical works it is especially recommended, in order to cheat and confuse foreign intruders (vide "A Visit to the Philippine Islands," by Sir John Bowring, LL.D., F.R.S. Manila, 1876 Spanish ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... wall, and numerous batteries occupied the commanding ground in rear, was selected for assault. Neither feint nor demonstration, the ordinary expedients by which the attacker seeks to distract the attention and confuse the efforts of the defence, was made use of; and yet division after division, with no abatement of courage, marched in good order over the naked plain, dashed forward with ever-thinning ranks, and ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... make Emerson use social, political, and even economic phenomena, as means of expression, as the accidental notes in his scale—rather than as ends, even lesser ends. In the realization that they are essential parts of the greater values, he does not confuse them with each other. He remains undisturbed except in rare instances, when the lower parts invade and seek to displace the higher. He was not afraid to say that "there are laws which should not be too well obeyed." To him, slavery was not a social or a political or an economic question, ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... done is to confuse cash with produce, then paper money with cash; and from these two confusions it is pretended that ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat

... delays them and makes easier our defense and—they do not know which of all the holes you see are deep enough for pegs—the others are made to confuse our enemies and are too shallow ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... will take the hint. I have no doubt you will get through the business very well, Mr Hoaxem, particularly if you be 'frank and explicit;' that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and to confuse the minds of others. ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... patterned drapery confuses you, keep for a time to the simple white one; but if it helps you, continue to choose patterned stuffs (tartans and simple checkered designs are better at first than flowered ones), and even though it should confuse you, begin pretty soon to use a pattern occasionally, copying all the distortions and perspective modifications of it among the ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin

... to defend Christian virtues when they are sneered at under the guise of "jokes." Let us exercise charity by not quoting instances, but let us be watchful of our laughter and our fellowship, which are both gifts of God, and see that we do not confuse pagan pleasure with Christian joy, the evil sneer with the tender recognition of the absurd in ourselves and in others. It is Mr. Chesterton again who points out the fact that the pagan virtues of justice and the like ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... though, and I will explain what I mean and not confuse you more. I landed with a thud on a pile of soft dirt some twenty feet down, in a dark place which seemed open, not cavernous and cramped as I would have expected. My eyes adjusted to the darkness, and as ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn

... out-of-door sports, where it would seem that convention would rest practically at the zero point, the bugbear of good form, although mashed and disguised, rises up to confuse the directed practicality. The average man is wedded to his theory. He has seen a thing done in a certain way, and he not only always does it that way himself, but he is positively unhappy at seeing any one else employing a different method. From the swing at golf to the manner of lighting a ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... mean, Tamarochka! ... Have you paid no attention to the fact that during all the time of our acquaintance I never permitted myself, not only to hit you, but even to address you with a rude word? ... What do you mean, what do you mean? ... I don't confuse you with this poor Russian trash ... Glory be to God, I am an experienced person and one who knows people well. I can very well see that you are a genuinely cultured young lady; far more educated, for example, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... not confuse this work with that of the Intuition, which is a very different mental phase or plane. This sub-conscious working, just mentioned, plays an entirely different part. It is a good servant, and does not try to be more. The Intuition, on the contrary, is more like a higher friend—a ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... was given to be a helpmeet, and as the bride, the Church to her Bridegroom? Look high enough, Gillian, and the popular chatter will not confuse your mind. You own ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... himself upon a convenient log. In order not to confuse his faculties by endeavouring to read and write simultaneously, he turns his back upon the fluttering flag, and bends low over his field message-pad. Private Wamphray stands facing him, and solemnly spells out the message over ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... he in a tone of authority, "you should not confuse things, nor seek offence where there is none intended. We must distinguish in the words of Father Damaso those of the man from those of the priest. The latter per se can never offend, because they are infallible. In the words ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... night. Like most men who systematically overtax their brains, he was a poor sleeper. He would sometimes go through a whole book of Euclid in bed; he was so familiar with the bookwork that he could actually see the figures before him in the dark, and did not confuse the letters, which ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... been drinking; and the suddenness of this encounter seemed for a moment to confuse him; but as he caught sight of the injured doctor, the policeman peering at him with a sternly inquiring look, and the tall, handsome girl, with wild eyes and parted lips, pointing towards the consulting-room door, he threw back ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn

... his friend whispered. Churchill coughed tentatively. The two voices drew nearer. To confuse the sentries, should they be listening, the one officer talked nonsense, laughed loudly, and quoted Latin phrases, while the other, in a low and distinct voice, said: "I cannot get out. The sentry suspects. It's all up. Can ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... Southern society generally, that a clear judgment of the new order of things should have come to them at once. The total overturning of the whole labor system of a country, accomplished suddenly, without preparation or general transition, is a tremendous revolution, a terrible wrench, well apt to confuse men's minds. It should not have surprised any fair-minded person that many Southern people for a time clung to the accustomed idea that the landowner must also own the black man tilling his land, and that any assertion of freedom of action on the part of that black man was insubordination ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various

... the French people is that of all Europe, or rather of the whole world; but the governments of all those countries are by no means favorable to it. It is important that we should never lose sight of this distinction. We must not confuse the peoples with their governments; especially not the English people ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... the crudely splotched canvas from which his ideal of her was presently to emerge, he had thought better of it, soothing her with caresses as if she were a child, and like a child dismissing her. She felt that she never wanted to see again the man who could so confuse and humiliate her. But this mood did not last. As the days went on, and she feverishly recapitulated the circumstances of the episode, she began to feel that it was she who had failed to respond to the beautiful opportunity of that hour. She had inspired the soul ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley

... mistake, to ask every person all of the questions. Any incidents or facts he can recall should be written down as nearly as possible just as he says them, but do not use dialect spelling so complicated that it may confuse the reader. ...
— Slave Narratives, Administrative Files (A Folk History of - Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves) • Works Projects Administration

... case it could not affect you, Miss Hawkins," said the chairman gallantly. "Fame does not place you in the list of ladies who rank below perfection." This happy speech delighted Mr. Buckstone as much as it seemed to delight Laura. But it did not confuse him as much ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... was, the music seemed to confuse him as much as the game, which grew every moment more and more intricate; the players, brandishing their brushes, flew round, and the balls flashed about, and at last all that Felix could see was a mass of dazzling rainbow colours whirling ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various

... edict of death that he had issued against the wise men of Egypt, and he sent and called Joseph. He impressed care upon his messengers, they were not to excite and confuse Joseph, and render him unfit to interpret the king's dream correctly.[168] They brought him hastily out of the dungeon, but first Joseph, out of respect for the king, shaved himself, and put on fresh raiment, which an angel brought him from Paradise, and then ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... would not catch your love with a lie, but force you to love me as I am, faulty, imperfect, human, so I would not cheat your inward being with untrue hopes nor confuse pure truth with a legend. This only I have: I am true to my truth, I have not faltered; and my own end, the sudden departure from the virile earth I love so eagerly, once such a sombre matter, now appears nothing beside this weightier, more ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... Duke—"My good friend Christian, you have kept company with the Puritans so long, that you confuse the ordinary titles of ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... there is no oppressive misgovernment, there is no land question in the sense in which Nitti applies the term, there is no poverty to account for a declining birth-rate or to confuse the problem. There is prosperity on every hand, and want is almost unknown. And yet, fewer and fewer children, in proportion to the population, and in proportion to the number of marriages, are born into the colony ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple

... his part, would joyfully have asked her, for he could not quite "unlove" the beautiful face he had once adored, though he knew now exactly what a fierce spirit lived behind it. He was well aware of his own weakness and was humble enough to confuse with it the kindness of heart which permitted such treatment as ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... not prize you, you elude me in a thousand ways. Lest I should confuse you with the crowd, you stand aside. I know, I know your art, You never walk the path ...
— The Gardener • Rabindranath Tagore

... is, therefore, a perfect homogeneity between the Empire and myself."—"However," says Metternich, "I have often thought that Napoleon, by talking in this way, merely sought to study the opinion of others, or to confuse it, and the direct advance which he made to Louis XVIII., in 1804 seemed to confirm this suspicion. Speaking to me one day of this advance he said, 'Monsieur's reply was grand; it was full of fine traditions. There is something in legitimate rights which appeals to more than ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... sat up at attention; Sergeant Payne swore quite audibly; and I experienced a sudden illumination respecting a certain basin and kitchen spoon which had so puzzled me on the night of Thorndyke's arrival.) "As I thought that liquid plaster might confuse or even obliterate the prints in sand, I filled up the respective footprints with dry plaster, pressed it down lightly, and then cautiously poured water on to it. The moulds, which are excellent impressions, ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman

... of soul. And then the fancies raised in different natures, some saying 'this is so,' others denying it, and this condition of uncertainty is called the state of darkness. Then there are those who say that outward things are one with soul, who say that the objective is the same as mind, who confuse intelligence with instruments, who say that number is the soul. Thus not distinguishing aright, these are called excessive quibbles, marks of folly, nature changes, and so on. To worship and recite religious books, ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... the king. His clear, piercing glance instantly remarked the cloud which lowered upon the brow of Fredersdorf. "But what will you have? The King and Fate, as Deus ex machina, appear without warning and confuse ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... support whatever that honest judgment may decide to be best for the emergency. No doubt, errors have been made, but they are errors inconceivably less in their results than would be the unpardonable sin of the people, should they, because differing in opinion, weaken the hands and confuse the purposes of the powers that be. With secret and treacherous foes in our very midst, hidden behind the masks of a painted loyalty, the President, after deep and earnest consultation and reflection, deemed it his duty to authorize arrests under circumstances ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... anxieties. That is the danger of all sensitive people. You can't attain to proved certainties in this life—at least, you can't at present. I don't say that there are not certainties—indeed, I think that it is all certainty, and that we mustn't confuse the unknown with the unknowable. As you go on, if you are fair-minded and sympathetic, you will get intuitions; you will discover gradually exactly what you are worth, and what you can do, and how you can do it best. But don't expect to know that too soon. And don't yield to the awful temptation ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... killed any women or children. He was a fair fighter, and while not prominent in battle after his young manhood, he was the brains of the Sioux resistance. He has been called a "medicine man" and a "dreamer." Strictly speaking, he was neither of these, and the white historians are prone to confuse the two. A medicine man is a doctor or healer; a dreamer is an active war prophet who leads his war party according to his dream or prophecy. What is called by whites "making medicine" in war time is again a wrong conception. Every warrior carries a bag ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... "You confuse cause with effect," said he. But he got no farther... Binet's cane, viciously driven, descended and broke upon his shoulder. Had he not moved swiftly aside as the blow fell it must have taken him across the head, and possibly stunned him. As he moved, he dropped his hand to his pocket, and swift ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... worse for drink. He was not really tipsy, but he had taken enough slightly to confuse his brain; and the altered aspect of the room and the sudden apparition of his ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade

... be a good plan," suggested Bob, "to mount a searchlight or two on the motor truck. At the right minute you could turn these on the crooks, and while it would confuse them, it would give your men in the woods a big advantage, as they'd be able to see the hold-up men ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman

... to do so. What they did was to sell them a sea-passage, giving very good value for the money. Nothing more. As long as men will travel on the water, the sea-gods will take their toll. They will catch good seamen napping, or confuse their judgment by arts well known to those who go to sea, or overcome them by the sheer brutality of elemental forces. It seems to me that the resentful sea-gods never do sleep, and are never weary; wherein the seamen who are mere mortals condemned to ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... a collection of specimens large enough to illustrate all the most important truths of Natural History, but not so extensive as to weary and confuse ordinary visitors. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... class," said Ayre, "I quite agree. I object to titles. They only confuse ranks. A sweep is made a lord, and ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope

... Many people confuse Liebknecht with his father, now dead. Liebknecht, the son, is a man of perhaps forty-three years, with dark bushy hair and moustache and wearing eye-glasses, a man of medium height and not at all of strong build. In the numerous interruptions made by him during the debates in the Reichstag, ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard

... of Toba after a fashion. He had the lay of the land in his mind. He had never seen it in midwinter, but the snow, the misty vapors drifting along the mountain sides, did not confuse him. ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... to lowering the lights at night, the authorities intend, in order to confuse the enemy, to alter the names of some of our thoroughfares, and a start is to be made with Park Lane, which is to be changed to ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various

... readings' in fact is a term which belongs of right to the criticism of the text of profane authors: and, like many other notions which have been imported from the same region into this department of inquiry, it only tends to confuse ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... whom he talked understood. He was themselves become expressive and he moved them as no other leader had ever moved them before. His very lack of glibness, the things in him wanting expression and not getting expressed, made him seem like one of them. He did not confuse their minds but drew for them great scrawling pictures and to them he cried, "March!" and for marching he promised them ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson

... Man's work-time and delight, Begun. Ho, ye of the van there, veterans great of cheer, Look to your footing, when, from yonder verge, The wish'd Sun shall emerge; Lest once again the Flower of Sharon bloom After a way the Stalk call heresy. Strange splendour and strange gloom Alike confuse the path Of customary faith; And when the dim-seen mountains turn to flame And every roadside atom is a spark, The dazzled sense, that used was to the dark, May well doubt, 'Is't the safe way and the same By which we came From Egypt, and to Canaan mean to go?' But know, The clearness then ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore

... point. I may or may not have a gun licence, but our present controversy relates to a certificate to kill game. Do not let us confuse the issue." ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various

... accomplished their design upon the lives of Louis and of Charles or at least have taken the two prisoners. But a pause at a French nobleman's tent created a disturbance which roused the archers in the granary. The latter sallied out, to meet with a fierce counter-attack. In order to confuse them the mountaineers echoed the Burgundian cries, Vive Bourgogne, vive le roy et tuez, tuez, and they were not always immediately identified by ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... important dates here that we must not confuse, but clearly differentiate, namely, the beginning of "the time of the end" and of "the presence of the Lord". "The time of the end" embraces a period from A.D. 1799, as above indicated, to the time of the complete overthrow of Satan's empire and the ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford

... There on a throne he sate, of marble blue, Round him his men, full twenty thousand, stood. Called he forth then his counts, also his dukes: "My Lords, give ear to our impending doom: That Emperour, Charles of France the Douce, Into this land is come, us to confuse. I have no host in battle him to prove, Nor have I strength his forces to undo. Counsel me then, ye that are wise and true; Can ye ward off this present death and dule?" What word to say no pagan of them knew, Save Blancandrin, of ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous

... venerable navigator Noah discharged his ballast of salt bags. As for the settlers on its borders, they were the followers of Joe Smith, a veritable descendant of Ham, who never was known for the good he did. That clever mouthpiece of English opinion, the Times, says they will one day confuse and cause much trouble to the people of the United States; but this is only the offspring of that one strong idea so characteristic of Mr. John Bull. Now these descendants of the veritable Smith have a fantastic appreciation of many wives—a strange ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... skeleton maps published, which have merely the principal cities, towns, and rivers, &c., marked down, so as not to present too many objects to confuse the young eye. There are also picture maps in which the chief productions of a country, both vegetable and animal, are delineated in their proper places. These would form a great aid in nursery instruction, and also ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... yet. So I ask you, for a time, to let what sleeps within us both lie sleeping, undisturbed. There is a love more natural, more imperious, more passionate still; and—it has led me here! And I will not confuse it with any other sentiment; nor share it with any man—not even with you—dear as you have become to me—lonely as I am,—no, not even with you will I share it! For I have vowed that I shall never slake my thirst with love save first in her dear embrace.... After these wistful, stark, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... come. Duty would be absolute pleasure, and all they who see now no light beyond the grave, would by this unerring hand be led to the mountain top of truth's divine and eternal habitation. In your soul, Mr. Davis, you ask and long for this. Doctrinal points confuse you when you think upon them, and you have lain aside these thoughts and said, 'the mysteries of godliness may not be understood;' but my dear sir, if this be true, why are we told to be perfect even as our 'Father in Heaven is perfect;' for would not that ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell

... the pillars";[9] the handmaids of the Sacrament, but not essential to the Sacrament. To deny that the Church of England rightly and duly administers the Sacrament because she omits any one of these ceremonies, is to confuse the picture with the frame, the jewel with its setting, the ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes

... inevitably stray from the true direction, striking into that infernal circle which imprisons all things blind and all things compassless. Even should they, by a miracle, strike the isthmus of woods, the forest would take them, confuse them, hand them from tree to tree and glade to glade, and lose them at last and for ever in one of the million pockets which a forest holds open ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... taken out at once, the rush from all the hives is so much like a swarm, that it appears to confuse them. Some of the stocks by this means will get more bees than actually belong to them, while others are proportionably short, which is unprofitable, and to equalize them is some trouble; yet it may be done. Being all wintered in one room, the scent or the means of distinguishing ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby

... later he had hidden but which Whitney's detectives had stolen in turn from him; writer of anonymous letters, even to himself to throw others off the trail; maker of stramonium cigarettes with which to confuse the minds of his opponents, Whitney, Mendoza, and the rest; secret lover of Inez whom he demanded as the price of the dagger; and murderer of ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve

... see its characteristics, its interests, and its organization, is to study sociology in the most natural way and to obtain the necessary data for generalization. To attempt to study sociological principles without this preliminary investigation is to confuse the student and leave him in a sea ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... to the impressiveness of the scene, it was about this time that Charlestown, set on fire a little while before, that it should not give cover to the Americans, and that the smoke should confuse the rebels, burst into general conflagration. The town had been for weeks almost deserted, in dread of this fate; now at the command of Howe red-hot shot were thrown in among the houses, and marines ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French

... Mary I wrote also, and to her I offered my heart. Looking backward, I have sometimes wondered that I felt so little hesitation; not that I have ever doubted since, that what I did then was the one perfectly right thing which I have done in my life, but because it was my habit so to confuse myself with meditative indecision. I had doubted before. I remember once being so near engaging myself to a girl that the desk was open and the paper under my hand. But I held back, could not make up my mind, ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford

... some very coarse specimens of his client's alleged conversation, in a tone so bold and free, that he was called to order with great austerity by one of the leading members of the Venerable Court. This seemed to confuse him not a little; so when, by and by, he had to recite a stanza of one of M'Naught's convivial ditties, he breathed it out in a faint and hesitating style; whereupon, thinking he needed encouragement, the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... houses, as I once remember, in the case of a pony at Seonee, but it is nevertheless sufficiently bold to hang about the outskirts of villages. Those who have seen this animal once would never afterwards confuse it with what I would call the panther. There is a sleekness about it quite foreign to the other, and a brilliancy of skin with a distinctness of spots which the longer, looser hair does not admit of. But with all ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... why life should be judged by its last trailing thread of vitality.... I know it for the splendid thing it is—I who have been a diseased creature from the beginning. I know it well enough not to confuse it with its husks. Remember that, Gardener, if presently my heart fails me and I despair, and if I go through a little phase of pain and ingratitude and dark forgetfulness before the end.... Don't believe what I may say at the last.... If the fabric is good enough ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... to be so truly sensible, and for which you are justly thankful! May it throw round the shores of your enviable little Eden, 'cherubim and a flaming sword,' to guard its approaches from those who would endanger your peace; and above all, shield you from those, who would perplex and confuse your unsophisticated minds, by mysterious doctrines which they do not themselves comprehend! Remain steadfast to the faith, which your late father and benefactor has instilled into your minds, culled from the precepts of your Bible, and be content for the present ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow

... supremely unimportant. At the same moment, to confuse little things with big ones, Mrs. Lazarus suddenly decided to die. She had been unwell for many months and her brain had been very clouded and temper uncertain—but now suddenly she felt perfectly well, her intelligence was as sharp and bright as it had ever been and the doctor gave her ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... characterization. But if we looked for a pithy embodiment of the difference between Irving and Hawthorne, we might call the former a "polite writer," and the latter a profound poet: as, indeed, I have called him in this essay, though with no intent to confuse the term with that given to poets who speak in verse. Pathos is the great touchstone of humor, and Irving's pathos is always a lamentable failure. Is it not very significant, that he should have made so little of ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... us make no mistake. I know that there are certain persons who confuse between Miss Folly and Miss Fun, and fancy that these are names for one and the same person. I assure you that this is not the case; Folly and Fun are perfectly distinct. I own that laughing, singing, playful little Fun, is rather a pet of my own; ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker

... has an experienced friend to give him a few hints or advice, is apt to be dismayed. He does not even know how to make a start in the work of preparation, and his sense of inability and fear of blundering go far to confuse and paralyze whatever native faculty he may have. A book like this comes to him at such a time as reinforcements to a sorely pressed army in the very crisis of a battle. As he reads, some ideas which seem practical, flash upon him. He learns what others before ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger

... double refraction is very large also, so that the doubling of the edges of the rear facets may easily be seen through the table with a lens. The dichroism is feeble too, whereas that of tourmaline is strong. No one would be likely to confuse the stone with true emerald ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade

... which are not inborn. As they are inculcable, so they are eradicable; and it is only by a loose terminology that we apply the term characteristics to them without distinction between them and the inherent traits. In considering the characteristics of the Negro people, therefore, we must not confuse the constitutional with the removable. Studied with sympathy and at first hand, the black man of America will be seen to possess certain predominant idiosyncrasies of which the following form ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.

... for science from the rapidly increasing use of the microscope (and similarly the telescope), if thinking was not developed correspondingly but left at the mercy of these instruments. His concern over the state of affairs speaks from his utterance: 'Microscopes and telescopes, in actual fact, confuse man's ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... to confuse the two forms of memory which Bergson distinguishes in the second chapter of his "Matter and Memory," namely the sort that consists of habit, and the sort that consists of independent recollection. He gives the instance ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell

... them. It was sepia from the cuttlefish's ink sacs—the weapon with which these monsters of the underseas blind and confuse their victims. ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... very brief, and, to my mind, the effort to be concise has tended to somewhat confuse. It may, however, be well enough for the army, where there are plenty of instructors ready to explain the meanings of terms, etc. For ordinary beginners it is certainly better to take the old target ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn

... outcroppings the horses slipped. Frequently to get his bearings, Laramie felt his way forward by reaching for trees and scraped his knees against them as he pushed his horse close. And in spite of everything to confuse, intimidate and hold them back, they slipped and floundered on their way, until quite suddenly a new roar from out of the impenetrable dark ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... "I think 'twas the fountain was Diomed: I know not. And as for persuasion; he was a man forked, vain, and absolute as all. Let the waterless stone be sudden Diomed—you will confuse my wits, Mariner; where, then, were I?" She smiled, stooping lower. "You have ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... the clue to this objection in the natural impulse of mankind to confuse the intensity of an experience with a difference in kind. But first of all, there must be added to our list of definite emotions from music, those which attach themselves to the internal relations of the notes. Gurney has said that ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... tinkle of pleasant sounds that please your ear; and I'm sure I don't wonder, because, as your mother and I both know, you play charmingly. But I feel confident that your better mind does not really confuse the mere diversions of life ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... all due," replied Alka, "to the alarm sounded by the statue, because you have entered the town. There will be a great meeting held to-morrow, where all the wise men will assemble, to attempt to discover the whereabouts of the intruder; but by God's help, I will guide them wrong, and confuse their counsels. Go to our neighbour the fisherman," added she to her daughter, "and see what he has caught." She went, and brought news that he had taken a large fish, of the size of a man. "Take this piece of gold," ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... here, yo'! Dat's twice yo' called me Jackson! If yo' don't know no moah dan to confuse me wif dat wall-eyed, knock-kneed, bandy-legged, fiat-footed, paraletic nigger Jackson, we'll call dis game ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... letter, considers the writings of Harrington, More and Hume, as justifiable and legal publications, because they reasoned by comparison, though in so doing they shewed plans and systems of government, not only different from, but preferable to, that of England; and he accuses me of endeavouring to confuse, instead of producing a system in the room of that which I had reasoned against; whereas, the fact is, that I have not only reasoned by comparison of the representative system against the hereditary system, but I have gone further; for I have produced an instance ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... that comes under a yet wider law, viz. that we are all blind, strangely blind, to our own faults. Why that is so I do not need to spend time in inquiring, except for a distinctly practical purpose. Let me just remind you how a strong wish for a thing that seems desirable always tends to confuse to a man the plain distinction between right and wrong; and how passions once excited, or the animal lusts and desires once kindled in a man, go straight to their object without the smallest regard to whether that object is to be reached by the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... understand the real nature of our inmost being, we should see how absurd it is to desire that individuality should exist eternally. This wish implies that we confuse real Being with one of its innumerable manifestations. The individuality disappears at death, but we lose nothing thereby, for it is only the manifestation of quite a different Being—a Being ignorant of time, and, consequently, knowing neither life nor death. The loss of intellect ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... it was indispensable to his comfort in reading, not only that the light should come from the right side, but that the left should be shielded from any luminous object, like the fire, which even at the distance of half the length of a room would strike on his field of vision and confuse the ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... these dead wives again appearing to them in open court. Though small of size, Burroughs was remarkably strong, instances of which were given in proof that the devil helped him. Stoughton treated him with cruel insolence, and did his best to confuse and confound him. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... at everything before I carried it over to the grate. I wanted to make sure that nothing of value was destroyed. Here and there came a good chance to read some of the contents. Piece by piece from the memoranda the different men had made, always being careful not to confuse individual notes, thus learning one by one their train of thought, the thing began to piece itself together for me. There were extensive notes on army and navy matters. Churchill, for instance, had carefully noted the full strength that Austria and Germany ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves

... indifference or rather of entire composure. Indeed every step they took proved conclusively that they were wholly ignorant with regard to boat searching. At this point, with remarkable shrewdness, Captain F. saw wherein he could still further confuse them by a bold strategical move. As though about out of patience with the mayor's blunders, the captain instantly reminded his Honor that he had "stood still long enough" while his boat was being "damaged, chopped up," &c. "Now if you want ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... habit of determining things for himself. He will soon find that he will be surrounded with many well-meaning advisers who, if they have their own way, may serve to confuse him. Some virtuosos regard their well-meaning admirers and entertainers as the worst penalties of the virtuoso life. Whether they are or are not must, of course, depend upon the artist's character. If he accepts their compliments ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... demanding that an artist should take an intelligent attitude to his work, but you confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly. It is only the second that is obligatory for the artist. In "Anna Karenin" and "Evgeny Onyegin" not a single problem is solved, but they satisfy you completely because all the problems are correctly stated in them. It is the ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... would have been more than sufficient to enlarge or confuse the minds of those pale, miserable children; but Reb Moshe in his zeal did not content himself with exercising the memory of his scholars; he wanted also to develop their imagination, and sometimes treated them to extracts from the metaphysical Kabala. The reading ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko

... Acquaintance with the structure of the eye does not help seeing. To determine beforehand just how polite we should be would not facilitate human intercourse. And possibly a completed scheme of goodness would rather confuse than ease our daily actions. Science does not readily connect with life. For most of us all the time, and for all of us most of the time, instinct is the better prompter. But if we mean to be ethical students and to examine conduct scientifically, we must evidently ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer

... govern the physical body and "the thousand ills that flesh is heir to" obstruct, confuse, conceal, and distort the soul and hold the gods at a distance. But although the brain and the senses may be tortured, atrophied, perverted; and although the soul may be driven back into its unfathomable depths and held there as if in prison; and although madness intervene ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... bas-reliefs would have tended to mar the contrasts of light and shade, and blended them too much; for example, color a photograph of a statue, which exhibits a marked contrast of light and shade, and it will tend to confuse and blend the two. The taste for polychrome sculpture in the period of the decline of art was obviously but a returning to the primitive imperfection of art, when an attempt was made to produce illusion in order to please the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... are neglected which we Stoics have thoroughly examined, but which your school has only slightly touched upon. But they are not thought essential to the question in hand; therefore, if you think proper, do not confuse them together, that we in this discussion may come to a clear explanation of the subject ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... there was no change in the situation. Not that no attempts were made to change it. One night friends from the shore came out in a skiff and attempted to confuse us while the two Italians escaped. That they did not succeed was due to the lack of a little oil on the ship's davits. For we were drawn back from the pursuit of the strange boat by the creaking of the davits, and arrived at the Lancashire Queen just as the Italians were ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London

... miserable about their duty to their children, and who end by neither making their children happy nor having a tolerable life for themselves. A selfish tyrant you know where to have, and he (or she) at least does not confuse your affections; but a conscientious and kindly meddler may literally worry you out of your senses. It is fortunate that only very few parents are capable of doing what they conceive their duty continuously or even at all, and that still fewer are tough enough to ride roughshod ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... Oakboys, Peep-o'-day Boys, Defenders—some Catholic, some Protestant, some mixed; but each representing an inarticulate protest against agrarian or ecclesiastical aggression. Notice, however, that the customary dragging in of these irrelevancies, to confuse the main issue, is not to be wondered at, seeing that Orangeism itself is based, in a large, general way, on the Bible. But again, what fanatical lunacy or class-atrocity of Christendom was ever based ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... invisible foe. European examples, as usual misapplied or misunderstood, have contributed largely to the persistency of this fatal illusion, and Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos have served but as incantations to confuse many a mind to which these sounding syllables were no more than names; ignorant, therefore, of the stern necessities that drove Wellington to these victories, forgetful of their fearful cost, and above all ignoring or forgetting the axiom, on which rests the whole art and science of military engineering—that ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin

... confuse my life with rebellion, but through thy guidance find peace. Help me through the perplexities that may keep me from the quietness of to-day. Keep me in sight of the great plan of life, that I may grow ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz

... and give an extremely forced interpretation to their words: those on the other hand, who would make reason and philosophy subservient to theology, will be forced to accept as Divine utterances the prejudices of the ancient Jews, and to fill and confuse their mind therewith. (5) In short, one party will run wild with the aid of reason, and the other will run wild ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza

... Robert Cairn sat at his writing-table, endeavouring to puzzle out a solution to the mystery of Ferrara's motive. His reflections served only to confuse his mind. ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer

... Jimmy had to strain forward to catch the quick phrase. This was not altogether pleasant for him, as he had nearly always to make a deft guess at the meaning and shout back a suitable answer in the face of a high wind. Besides Villona's humming would confuse anybody; the noise ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce

... where the Confederate infantry found shelter behind a stout stone wall, and numerous batteries occupied the commanding ground in rear, was selected for assault. Neither feint nor demonstration, the ordinary expedients by which the attacker seeks to distract the attention and confuse the efforts of the defence, was made use of; and yet division after division, with no abatement of courage, marched in good order over the naked plain, dashed forward with ever-thinning ranks, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... down, frost cleans the air, My sky is black with small birds bearing south; Say what you will, confuse me with fine care, Put by my word as but an April truth,— Autumn is no less on me that a rose Hugs the brown bough and ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... likewise taken into account,—and they say so themselves,—that Mr. Seward's oracular vaticinations about the end of the rebellion from sixty to ninety days confuse the judgment of diplomats. Mr. Seward's conversation and words have an official meaning for the diplomats, are the subject of their dispatches, and they continually find that when Mr. Seward says yes the events ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... make common truths as easy to discern and adopt as common errors. But if we effect this, which we all allow is so easy, with our children; if we strengthen their minds, instead of weakening them, and clear their vision, rather than confuse it, from that moment, we remove the prejudicial effects of fiction, and just as we have taught them to use a knife, without cutting their fingers, we teach them to make use of fiction without perverting it ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... point to which I desire particularly to draw the reader's attention in this comparison of the Indo-Germanic languages with the branches of the vertebrate stem is, that one must never confuse direct descendants with collateral branches, nor extinct forms with living. This confusion is very common, and our opponents often make use of the erroneous ideas it gives rise to for the purpose of attacking evolution generally. When, for instance, we say ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel

... introduction of a sharp or a flat was likely to alter the character of the ancient scales, that she must not judge the ancient scales by what had already been written in them; it was nowise his intention to imitate the character of the plain chant melodies; she must not confuse the sentiment of these melodies with the modes in which they were written. It might be that in adding a sharp or a flat the musician destroyed the character of the mode which he was leaving and that of the mode he was passing into, but that proved nothing except his ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... enough to stand without being propped by Currer Bell, and would have disdained what Ellis himself of all things disdains—recourse to trickery. However, Ellis, Acton, and Currer care nothing for the matter personally; the public and the critics are welcome to confuse our identities as much as they choose; my only fear is lest Messrs. Smith & Elder should in some way be annoyed ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... why not to do these things, and why to do just what you have done, which constituted your power of design; and like all the people I have ever known who had that power, you are entirely unconscious of the essential laws by which you work, and confuse other people by telling them that the design depends on symmetry and series, when, in fact, it depends entirely on your own sense ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... dubium mihi est quin vos, ornatissimi consiliari S. M., quum in maximi momenti negotiis praeclare ac sapienter agere soleatis, ubi has de fide controversias, quas adversarii nostri non sine fuco et confuse plerumque pertractant, bona fide delectas et fuco nudatas perspexeritis, luce meridiana clarius cognituri sitis, quam solidis et firmis fundamentis fides catholica nitatur. Et quia e contrario protestantium argumenta sunt omnino ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion

... hurried along, trying to push the pace while Ross delayed all he could. He realized that in his recognition of the power of the gun back in the control chamber, his surrender to its threat, he had betrayed his real origin. So he must continue to confuse the trail to the project in every possible way left to him. He was sure that this time they would not leave him in the first ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton

... it is," said Tom; "we must agree on something, or we shall both get left. All we're doing now is to confuse the poor girl. She evidently likes us both the same. What I mean is, we're both so alike that she can't possibly make a choice unless one of us chucks it. You don't feel like chucking ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... Nevill advised, at the hotel door. "He's got too much Arab blood in him to stand that. You'd only make him tell you lies. We must seem to know things, and ask questions as if we expected him to confirm our knowledge. That may confuse him if he wants to lie. He won't be sure what ground ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... clearly understand the real nature of our inmost being, we should see how absurd it is to desire that individuality should exist eternally. This wish implies that we confuse real Being with one of its innumerable manifestations. The individuality disappears at death, but we lose nothing thereby, for it is only the manifestation of quite a different Being—a Being ignorant of time, and, consequently, knowing neither life ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... analysis a case which was neither dementia praecox nor paranoia but a combination of the two, he reaches conclusions which are valuable additions to our knowledge of psychotic processes but merely confuse the issue as to the specific mechanisms of paranoia and dementia praecox. In Schreber a profound psychotic reaction corresponded to crude formulations of his fancies, whereas, when he built these ideas into constructive speculations, ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... bones of the saints, Count Corti, thou dost confuse me the more! With such odds against thee, what preparations were at ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... plans ran on. She would pack her own pretty things—out of sight! They must not confuse, or call for pity. There would be no note. She, that woman at the bungalow would explain, and would tell him that there could be no reconsideration, for she, Joyce, had ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... Asquith, speaking at Bury St. Edmunds on the 12th of December, declared that "the sole issue at that moment was the supremacy of the people," and he added, in deprecation of all the talk about Ireland, that "it was sought to confuse this issue by catechising Ministers on the details of the ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... waterproof cloak, and slipped out of the house unperceived. The rain was falling steadily along the descending trail where she walked, but beyond, scarcely a mile across the chasm, the wintry distance began to confuse her brain with the inextricable swarming of snow. Hurrying down with feverish excitement, she at last came in sight of the arching granite portals of their domain. But her first glance through the gateway showed it closed as if with a white portcullis. ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte

... which you take in ornament with that which you take in construction or usefulness. They have no connection; and every effort that you make to reason from one to the other will blunt your sense of beauty, or confuse it with sensations altogether inferior to it. You were made for enjoyment, and the world was filled with things which you will enjoy, unless you are too proud to be pleased by them, or too grasping to care for what you cannot turn to other account than mere delight. Remember that the most beautiful ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... horror and alarm, even pretended to see these dead wives again appearing to them in open court. Though small of size, Burroughs was remarkably strong, instances of which were given in proof that the devil helped him. Stoughton treated him with cruel insolence, and did his best to confuse and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... its original causes, but when once established it reacted powerfully to reenforce and maintain the institution. How the religious sanction came about we can readily see when we remember that very commonly religions confuse the practice of the nobility with what is noble or commendable morally. The polygynous practices of the nobility, therefore, under certain conditions came to receive the sanction of religion. When this ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... began from the upper batteries of the enemy. At 11.16 the great guns began, slowly at first, but soon more rapidly. A few moments later a large fire was lit on the point, bringing the vessels, as they passed before it, into bold relief, and serving to confuse, to some extent, the pilots of the fleet. Each ship as she brought her guns to bear on rounding the point, opened her fire, first from the bow and then from the port battery. The engagement thus soon became general and animated. The confusion of the scene was ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan

... start with the players sitting in consecutive order, or they may change places at the outset to confuse the blindfold player, although the changing of places takes place very rapidly in the course of the game. The blindfold player calls out two numbers, whereupon the players bearing those numbers must exchange places, the blindfold player trying meanwhile either to catch one of the players ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... altogether. But no kind of camouflage will hide a ship. Nor is there any point in making a boat look like anything else; for everybody knows that ships are the only things at sea. Camouflage afloat was therefore meant to confuse the submarine commander's aim by deceiving his eye as to his target's speed and course. By painting cunning arrangements of stripes and splashes of different colours a ship's course and speed could be so disguised that the torpedoist was puzzled in getting his ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... Tanite line has been complicated in the minds of most Egyptologists by the tendency to ignore the existence of the sacerdotal dynasty of high priests, to confuse with the Tanite Pharaohs those of the high priests who bore the crown, and to identify in the lists of Manetho (more or less corrected) the names they are in search of. A fresh examination of the subject has led me to adopt provisionally the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... had been built up; the Prussian nobles were, he maintained, not, as so often was said, unpopular; a third of the House belonged to them; they were not necessarily opposed to freedom; they were, at least, the truest defenders of the State. Let people not confuse patriotism and Liberalism. Who had done more for the true political independence of the State, that independence without which all freedom was impossible, than the Prussian nobles? At the end of the Seven Years' War boys had stood at the head of the army, the only ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... assure him he's wrong." Drew saw a chance to confuse the enemy. "We're very much around. You'll be seem' a lot of us from now ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton

... ribs; and that if the said EDWIN would return, with a brass ferule slightly worn, the finder should receive earnest thanks, and be seen safely to his home by J. BUMSTEAD. Mr. Gospeler SIMPSON and Judge SWEENEY agreed that a handbill should be issued: but thought it might confuse the public mind if the missing nephew and the lost umbrella were not ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various

... to them prejudicial! Not on such terms will Englishmen be willing to spread civilization across the ocean! I do not pretend to understand Wheaton and Phillimore, or even to have read a single word of any international law. I have refused to read any such, knowing that it would only confuse and mislead me. But I have my common sense to guide me. Two men living in one street, quarrel and shy brickbats at each other, and make the whole street very uncomfortable. Not only is no one to interfere with them, but they are to have the privilege of deciding that their brickbats have the ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... and there was no change in the situation. Not that no attempts were made to change it. One night friends from the shore came out in a skiff and attempted to confuse us while the two Italians escaped. That they did not succeed was due to the lack of a little oil on the ship's davits. For we were drawn back from the pursuit of the strange boat by the creaking of the davits, and arrived at the Lancashire Queen just as the Italians were ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London

... effect of calm, "to save a small nest-egg from the wreck, to keep me from the poorhouse in my old age. I did not wish to tell you this because, with your lack of acquaintance with business methods, the details would only confuse, and possibly mislead, you. I had, too, another reason for wishing to keep it a surprise. You have forced me, against my preferences, to tell you. As to this small pittance," he said, without the flicker of an eye-lash, "any court in the country would tell you ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... ship which could have reported our action off Meriden. I'm sure we've sent four shiploads of food back to the fleet, besides the passenger-ship we'd rather have missed. But there's still something to be done. To confuse Mekin and keep it busy, and therefore off Kandar's neck, we have to start trouble elsewhere. From now on we are pirates ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... materialism, atheism, and the morality of interest, to the criticism of revelation. Why, in addition to natural religion, with its three fundamental doctrines, God, freedom, and immortality, should other special doctrines be necessary, which rather confuse than clear up our ideas of the Great Being, which exact from us the acceptance of absurdities, and make men proud, intolerant, and cruel—whereas God requires from us no other service than that of the heart? ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... be held that the Red Men derived their bear from the European settlers. But, as we have seen, an exact knowledge of the stars has always been useful if not essential to savages; and we venture to doubt whether they would confuse their nomenclature and sacred traditions by borrowing terms from trappers and squatters. But, if this is improbable, it seems almost impossible that all savage races should have borrowed their whole conception of ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang

... chime of bells had pealed! The frozen songs within the breast Of silent birds that hid in leafless woods, Melt into rippling floods Of gladness unrepressed. Now oriole and blue-bird, thrush and lark, Warbler and wren and vireo, Confuse their music; for the living spark Of Love has touched the fuel of desire, And every heart leaps up in singing fire. It seems as if the land Were breathing deep beneath the sun's caress, Trembling with tenderness, While all the woods expand, In shimmering clouds of rose and ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke

... not to confuse the colour of the bismuth iodide with that of free iodine. If the yellow colour is removed by boiling and returns on standing it is due altogether to iodine; if it is lessened by the addition of a few drops of the dilute sulphurous acid, it is ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer

... especially in their later works, the idea that links the group together is sufficiently similar to impart to all a certain resemblance. In other words, you can nearly always pick out a "Birmingham" illustration at a glance, even if it would be impossible to confuse the work of Mr. Gaskin with that of ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White

... creation. My strength lies in my fortune. I am new, like the Empire; there is, therefore, a perfect homogeneity between the Empire and myself."—"However," says Metternich, "I have often thought that Napoleon, by talking in this way, merely sought to study the opinion of others, or to confuse it, and the direct advance which he made to Louis XVIII., in 1804 seemed to confirm this suspicion. Speaking to me one day of this advance he said, 'Monsieur's reply was grand; it was full of fine traditions. There is something in legitimate rights which appeals to more ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... support that Steptoe strangely clung to in his designs for the future, and a wild idea seized him. The surveyor was really the only disinterested witness between the two parties. If Steptoe could confuse his mind before the actual fighting—from which he would, of course, escape as a non-combatant—it would go far afterwards to rehabilitate Steptoe's party. "Very well, then," he said to Marshall, "I shall call this gentleman to witness that we have been attacked here in peaceable possession ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte

... which preserves or destroys them, undoubtedly do, in some remote and roundabout way, hang together. What Darwin means is, that, since that environment is a perfectly known thing, and its relations to the organism in the way of destruction or preservation are tangible and distinct, it would utterly confuse our finite understandings and frustrate our hopes of science to mix in with it facts from such a disparate and incommensurable cycle as that in which the variations are produced. This last cycle is that of occurrences before the animal is born. It is the cycle of influences ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... Roland should be a ghost-seer; for that generally means a hysterical temperament and weak health, and all that men most hate and fear for their children. But that I should take up his ghost and right its wrongs, and save it from its trouble, was such a mission as was enough to confuse any man. I did my best to console my boy without giving any promise of this astonishing kind; but he was too sharp for me: he would have none of my caresses. With sobs breaking in at intervals upon his voice, and the rain-drops ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

... come in afterward, I suppose," replied Miss Shelton; but Bessie said to herself that he would do no such thing. How thoughtful he was for her comfort! He was staying away purposely, that his presence might not confuse her; and Bessie felt grateful to him for the delicacy that shielded ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... many times. She had made up her mind with the right instinct that the thing to do was to blunt her sensibilities. By the third day she had ordered the earlier associations on duty, and managed to confuse them somewhat with those which had held possession for so brief a time. She was determined to succeed. She had no right to love the husband of another woman, and suffering was something so much more ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... such a situation, and the jurisdictional disputes attending upon it, tend to bewilder and confuse the public and create the impression that service differences ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower

... Salem, Vienna, Lexington, Paris, Vernon, Dupont, and Sumanville to Harrison, near the Ohio State line and twenty-five miles from Cincinnati. Detachments were sent to Madison, Versailles, and other points, to burn bridges, bewilder and confuse those before and behind us, and keep bodies of military stationary that might otherwise give trouble. All were drawn in before we reached Harrison. At this point Morgan began demonstrations intended to convey the impression ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... us of the stimulus, but we are concerned with the response. The facts of color-blindness and color mixing show very clearly that the response does not tally in all respects with the stimulus. Physics, then, is apt to confuse the student at this point and lead him astray. Much impressed with the physical discovery that white light is a mixture of all wave-lengths, he is ready to believe the sensation of white a mixed sensation. He says, "White is the sum of all the colors", meaning that the sensation of white ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... of fairyland. But the existing tales give no hint of this, and, after being carefully examined, they show that Elysium had always been a place distinct from that of the departed, though there may have arisen a tendency to confuse ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... either, Willis. I was just thinking whether you couldn't manage this wretched man rather better alone. I—I'm afraid I confuse you; and he gets things out ...
— The Albany Depot - A Farce • W. D. Howells

... his way into an orchard cool; There on a throne he sate, of marble blue, Round him his men, full twenty thousand, stood. Called he forth then his counts, also his dukes: "My Lords, give ear to our impending doom: That Emperour, Charles of France the Douce, Into this land is come, us to confuse. I have no host in battle him to prove, Nor have I strength his forces to undo. Counsel me then, ye that are wise and true; Can ye ward off this present death and dule?" What word to say no pagan of them knew, Save Blancandrin, of th' Castle of ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous

... divide poetry, the office of imagination is to disengage what is essential from the crowd of accessories which is apt to confuse the vision of ordinary minds. For our perceptions of things are gregarious, and are wont to huddle together and jostle one another. It is only those who have been long trained to shepherd their thoughts that can at once ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... verses to that effect at the end of these notes. If you are an impatient reader, skip to them at once. In reading aloud, omit, if you please, the sixth and seventh verses. These are parenthetical and digressive, and, unless your audience is of superior intelligence, will confuse them. Many people can ride on horseback who find it hard to get on and to get off without assistance. One has to dismount from an idea, and get into the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... religion, are not of such a nature that they can be said to be absolutely convincing. But they are also of such a kind that it cannot be said that it is unreasonable to believe them. Thus there is both evidence and obscurity to enlighten some and confuse others. But the evidence is such that it surpasses, or at least equals, the evidence to the contrary; so that it is not reason which can determine men not to follow it, and thus it can only be lust or malice of heart. And by this means there is sufficient evidence ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal

... glass of wine without the trivial fact being announced all over the country as indisputable proof that he was an habitual drunkard, though the most remarkable characteristic of his speeches is their temperance,—their "total abstinence" from all the intoxicating moral and mental "drinks" which confuse the understanding and mislead the conscience. He could not borrow money on his note of hand, like any other citizen, without the circumstance being trumpeted abroad as incontrovertible evidence that Nick Biddle had paid him that sum to defend ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... hit a spot so absolutely invisible as the ruin seemed quite incomprehensible to me; but there is no doubt he was specially gifted in that respect, it being apparently impossible for him to forget or confuse the slightest details of any locality ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... seemed to confuse her, but she finally said it was because she wondered whether Miss Eva had gone away on purpose. According to Perry the affair with Edward Cayley was a serious one. To some extent her young mistress had confided ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner

... emergency. No doubt, errors have been made, but they are errors inconceivably less in their results than would be the unpardonable sin of the people, should they, because differing in opinion, weaken the hands and confuse the purposes of the powers that be. With secret and treacherous foes in our very midst, hidden behind the masks of a painted loyalty, the President, after deep and earnest consultation and reflection, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... during the year than the day above mentioned; so that, for all purposes, it is sufficient to give the day and its number in the week. We notice, however, that the last five columns of figures for week days of thirteen are just the same as the first five. But this did not confuse any, for the last five columns of days belong to the "sun-reckoning," the others to the moon-reckoning. And though the number of the day in the week was the same, yet a different deity ruled over them than in the corresponding days ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... language necessary in addressing the king at the first audience, which he had signified his readiness, to grant on the morning of the fourth day. The general insisted that it be interpersed with so much latin as to confuse both the king and the interpreter, though both were profound scholars. "I have rare skill in mixing latin, as your excellency knows but you grind it up so in the delivery that neither the king nor the devil can understand a word of it. And as your English is good enough for the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... rock outcroppings the horses slipped. Frequently to get his bearings, Laramie felt his way forward by reaching for trees and scraped his knees against them as he pushed his horse close. And in spite of everything to confuse, intimidate and hold them back, they slipped and floundered on their way, until quite suddenly a new roar from out of the impenetrable dark ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... cordial. The chief drawbacks with her were that cynical tone, which made it always doubtful whether she were making game of her hearers, and the philanthropy, not greatly tinged with religion, so as to confuse old-fashioned minds. She used to bring down strange accounts of her startling adventures in the slums, and relate them in a rattling style, interluded with slang, being evidently delighted to shock and puzzle her hearers; but still she was always good-natured in deed if not in word, and Lord Northmoor ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge

... at first to remember the turns, and their direction, but there were so many that I very soon lost count. I think they took me in a round-about way purposely, to confuse me. I have no idea how long we drove, but it must have been well over two hours. At last we struck a long up-grade, and one of my companions announced that ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... pronouns is complicated. Even if we knew the original power and derivation of every form of every pronoun in a language, it would be far from an easy matter to determine therefrom the paradigm that they should take in grammar. To place a word according to its power in a late stage of language might confuse the study of an early stage. To say that because a word was once in a given class, it should always be so, would be to deny that in the present English they, these, and she are personal pronouns ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham

... voices which are now bound up in our public opinion, and the many different representatives of its interests, naturally appear very different views on militarism and its object—war. The propertied classes are inclined to confuse even the intellectual movement against militarism with aspirations for the subversion of social order; on the other hand, agitators, seeking influence on the minds of the masses, deny all existing rights, and promise to the masses more than the most perfect institutions could give ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... people the illusions of the higher classes were reflected without the ballast of mentality. Ready to fight on any provocation, yet circumscribed by their own natures, not understanding life, unable to picture to themselves different types and conditions, these people were as prone as children to confuse the world of their own desire with the world of fact. When hardship came, when taxation fell upon them with a great blow, when the war took a turn that necessitated imagination for its understanding and faith for its pursuit, these people with childlike simplicity immediately ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... make one idea the centre of thought for the week,—not to confuse the minds of the children by too much at once," said the Directress. "This week it is pansies." In the garden children were watering pansies in bloom, and pansies were cut and dug for use in the house, where they were the materials for play and work. In one room the children had cards in ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton

... Some of the women in the room in which I was placed had belonged to papa's Sunday-school, and they were all very kind to me, and told the others who I was; so from the outset I felt myself among friends. In two weeks I had grown used to the work; the noise of the looms did not frighten or confuse me, and it did not tire me to stand so many hours. I found that I should soon be able to do most of my work mechanically, and think about what I pleased in the mean time. So I hoped to be able to study at home and recite my lessons to myself in the mill. The only thing that troubled me was that ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... intelligent as she was, lent herself to the fashion of the day, and delighted in practical jokes and tricks. At the splendid masquerade given by the queen she continued to plague her cousin, Lady Muskerry; to confuse and expose a stupid court beauty, a Miss Blaque; and at the same time to produce on the Count de Grammont a still more powerful effect than even her charms had done. Her success in hoaxing—which we should ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... horseback; with extraordinary promptness and accuracy, his topographical glance has discerned "the best direction for the projected canal, the best site for the construction of a factory, a harbor, or a dike."[4140] To the difficulties which confuse the best brains in the country, to much debated, seemingly insoluble, questions, he at once presents the sole practical solution; there it is, ready at hand, and the members of the local council had not seen it; he makes ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... they threatened, because it was not worth while. But they won't want to let you out of their sight in the final hours, so they will almost certainly come here to be on the spot. Our object is to keep them out and confuse their plans. Somewhere in this neighbourhood, probably very near, is the man you fear most. If we nonplus the three watchers, they'll have to revise their policy, and that means a delay, and every hour's delay is a gain. Mr. McCunn has found out that ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... overtax their brains, he was a poor sleeper. He would sometimes go through a whole book of Euclid in bed; he was so familiar with the bookwork that he could actually see the figures before him in the dark, and did not confuse the letters, which is perhaps ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... or (w l^{2})/20, according to the degree of fixture of the slabs at the four sides. Inasmuch as fixed ends are rarely obtained in practice, the formula, (w l^{2})/24, is generally adopted, and the writer cannot see any reason to confuse the subject by the introduction of a new ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey

... double capacity of composer and 'impressario,' the latter duty charging him with the selection and engagement of singers. The new society was to be called the Royal Academy of Music, but we must not confuse this body with the Royal Academy of Music existing at the present day, which was founded ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham

... he?' replied Drake. 'The man by the fireside is apt to confuse sentiment with humanitarian principles; and sentiment, I admit, you have to get rid of when you ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason

... boys started down the track after the flying contestants, but Ruth darted after them and begged them to keep out of the way so as not to confuse the racers when they should come back up the ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... Satan!" Mikah shouted, leaping to his feet and pacing back and forth before Jason, clasping and unclasping his hands with agitation. "You seek to confuse me with your semantics and so-called ethics that are simply opportunism and greed. There is a Higher ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... shows, on near approach, a face unknown to the searcher, the hurried exit and the quick passage through the dark night air to the next halting-place—all these impressions, following hurriedly upon each other, confuse the mind ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford

... You confuse me!—But why should I play the prude? I will own there was a time, when I thought myself handsome. 'Tis past. Alas! the enchanting beauties of a female countenance arise from peace of mind—The look, which captivates an honourable ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue

... have all of us forgotten the meaning of necessity. Gladstonians have come honestly to confuse the needs of a party with the necessities of the country. This is a delusion that at all times and in all lands affects great political connections which, having once rendered high services to the nation, have outlived the valid reasons for their existence. The Republicans saved the United ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... cruel error to confuse her with the sinful woman of whom Luke has just been writing. Mary had suffered from demon possession, as here stated, but there is nothing in the Gospels to indicate that she had ever been a woman of ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman

... returned to his mind as the surprise of the moment calmed down. He had a great deal to think about. Old difficulties which seemed to have passed away for long years were now coming back again to embarrass and confuse him. "Our pleasant vices are made the whips to scourge us," he said to himself. The past had come back to him like the opening of a book, no longer merely frivolous and amusing, as in the Contessa's ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... very important thing. I am sure that Midwinter—I must call him by his ugly false name, or I may confuse the two Armadales before I have done—I am sure that Midwinter is perfectly ignorant that I and the little imp of twelve years old who waited on Mrs. Armadale in Madeira, and copied the letters that were supposed ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... Centerville and Manassas, when he digged mud and graves for our soldiers before Yorktown, and in the Chickahominy, the Times was extatic beyond measure and description, extatic over the matured plans, the gigantic strategy of McClellan—and at that epoch the Times powerfully contributed to confuse the public opinion. ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... he said. "A well-directed blow on the head would confuse a man's thoughts. It is time to depart. When thou art free, Philip, as, if possessing courage, thou art sure soon to be, forget not the friend who helped thee ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... of morality that knowledge cannot be converted into the highest kind of knowledge, or aproksha jnanam, and thus lead to the attainment of mukti. It availeth naught to intellectually grasp the notion of your being everything and Brahma, if it is not realized in practical acts of life. To confuse meum and teum in the vulgar sense is but to destroy the harmony of existence by a false assertion of "I," and is as foolish as the anxiety to nourish the legs at the expense of the arms. You cannot be one with all, unless all your acts, thoughts, and feelings synchronize with the ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... of the geological formation of mountains and their various methods of origin in language so clear and untechnical that it will not confuse even the ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... statements of Nicol Brinn, his theory that Sir Charles Abingdon had not died from natural causes rested upon data of the most flimsy description. From Phil Abingdon he had learned nothing whatever. Her evidence merely tended to confuse ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer

... sweetest, truest little voice; and by the time she was eight or nine, she had learned both to write and read, though M. Linders took care that her range of literature should be limited, and chiefly confined to books of fairy-tales, in which no examples drawn from real life could be found, to correct and confuse the single-sided views she received from him. This was almost the extent of her learning, but she picked up all sorts of odd bits of information, in the queer mixed society which M. Linders seemed everywhere to gather round him, and which appeared to consist ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... ear close to the grate, is a round, smoothly developed Italian head, with that rather tumid outline of features which one often sees in a Roman in middle life, when easy living and habits of sensual indulgence begin to reveal their signs in the countenance, and to broaden and confuse the clear-cut, statuesque lines of early youth. Evidently, that is the head of an easy-going, pleasure-loving man, who has waxed warm with good living, and performs the duties of his office with an unctuous grace ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... words, returned to her The clear remembrance of a gentle voice:— 'And O! my child, should ever a flatterer Tap with his wares, and promise of all joys And vain sweet pleasures that on earth may be; Seal up your ears, sing some old happy song, Confuse his magic who is all mockery: His sweets are death.' Yet, still, how she doth long But just to taste, then shut the lattice tight, And hide her eyes ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare

... the reader to confuse me for a moment with those vague persons who imagine that Ibsen is what they call a pessimist. There are plenty of wholesome people in Ibsen, plenty of good people, plenty of happy people, plenty of examples of men acting ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... she said, smiling, "that you are trying to confuse me. Of course, I have not thought much about such things, but when I am a little older, if there was anything I could do I should simply try to do it in the best possible way, and I should feel that I was doing what was right. There is room for a ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... ground, but the rebels had cut them, probably that very day, and had arranged them so as to form a very effective abatis,—thereby clearing the spot and thus enabling them to see our movements. Up to this point there had been no firing sufficient to confuse or check the battalion, but here the rebel musketry opened. A sheet of flame, sudden as lightning, red as blood, and so near that it seemed to singe the men's faces, burst along the rebel breastwork, and the ground and trees ...
— The County Regiment • Dudley Landon Vaill

... carefully followed. In my later works I omitted the metronome and merely described the main tempi in general terms, paying, however, particular attention to the various modifications of tempo. It would appear that general directions also tend to vex and confuse Capellmeisters, especially when they are expressed in plain German words. Accustomed to the conventional Italian terms these gentlemen are apt to lose their wits when, for instance, I write "moderate." Not long ago a Capellmeister complained of that term ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)

... preposterous length, might well be severed from the book and made into a separate poem. Moreover, these long illustrations are often but faintly connected with the subject they are used to illumine; and they delay the movement of the poem while they confuse the reader. The worst of these, worst as an illustration, but in itself an excellent fragment to isolate as a picture-poem, is the illustration of the flying slave who seeks his tribe beyond the ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... induced largely by blind greed, which allowed the friar orders to confuse the objections to their repressive system with an attack upon Spanish sovereignty, thereby dragging matters from bad to worse, to engender ill feeling and finally desperation. This narrow, selfish policy had about as much soundness in it as the idea upon which it was based, so ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... we invent by the free decree of our will; they thus regard ideas as though they were inanimate pictures on a panel, and, filled with this misconception, do not see that an idea, inasmuch as it is an idea, involves an affirmation or negation. Again, those who confuse words with ideas, or with the affirmation which an idea involves, think that they can wish something contrary to what they feel, affirm, or deny. This misconception will easily be laid aside by one, who reflects on the nature of knowledge, and seeing that it in no wise involves the conception ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza

... is weak and unsteady," said he, "perhaps they may question and confuse her, and thus may death ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... at all," cried Riddell, whom the bare mention of those ladies' names was sufficient to confuse hopelessly. ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed

... hears spoken about him is at once a puzzle and a surprise. It is his own, yet not his own. It seems to him a caricature of English, a phantom speech, ghostly but familiar, such as he might hear in a land of dreams. He recognises its broad lineaments; its lesser details evade, or confuse, him. He acknowledges that the two tongues have a common basis. Their grammatical framework is identical. The small change of language—the adverbs and prepositions,—though sometimes strangely used in America, are not strange ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... tiny thread of a trail, transformed by sleet and snow until it was scarcely recognizable, Phil pressed on steadily. Charles, seeing that she would not go back, ceased his entreaties, fearing to confuse or alarm her. Her hands caught strong boughs with certainty; the tiny twigs slapped her face spitefully. Here and there she flung herself flat against the rocky surface and crept guardedly; then she was up dancing ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... Three men with magazine rifles extended in this manner, opposed to a hostile patrol collected in one party, should be able to deal with the latter without much difficulty. Their fire would be converging, and coming from different directions would confuse the hostile patrol, especially if the advance was made from a flank. The men of the patrol when creeping up the hill should avoid exposing themselves in the direction of the ground behind the hill, if possible, ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... youth lies behind us. A strong reaction has set in and the leading companies among the photoplay producers fight everywhere in the first rank for suppression of the unclean. Some companies even welcome censorship provided that it is high-minded and liberal and does not confuse artistic freedom with moral licentiousness. Most, to be sure, seem doubtful whether the new movement toward Federal censorship is in harmony with American ideas on ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg

... doubt about the Trinity: and they say—I will not torment my soul, and perhaps endanger my soul, by doubts. I will take the doctrine of the Trinity for granted, because I am bidden to do so: but I leave what it means to be explained by wiser men. If I begin thinking about it I shall only confuse myself. So it is better for me not to think ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... enough lass the moment before, and a frightened expression came into her eyes. She looked down again at once, and went on reading in a hurried, puzzled way, as if she was scarcely taking in much. Of course I knew she had the will, and I did not want to hurry or confuse her, so I pretended to turn my attention to something else. It must have been quite a couple of minutes before I looked again, and then—I confess that I am not easily startled, but I did have to smother an exclamation—the poor girl must have discovered the baseness and the fraud ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade

... unsouled— Speak, through the press, to a tribunal far More honorable than their Honors are,— A court that sits not with assenting smile While living rogues dead gentleman revile,— A court where scoundrel ethics of your trade Confuse no judgment and no cheating aid,— The Court of Honest Souls, where you in vain May plead your right to falsify for gain, Sternly reminded if a man engage To serve assassins for the liar's wage, His mouth with vilifying ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... that "at no time of his life was Lord Byron a confirmed unbeliever" it has been objected that his writings prove the direct contrary. But this is to confuse the words "unbeliever" and "sceptic," the former of which implies decision of opinion, and the latter only doubt. Many passages in his "Journal" show doubt strongly inclined to belief. "Of the immortality of the soul it appears to me there can ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... these, it is only natural that, rather than entangle the poet in them, we should regard them as the sophistries of a philosophical Don Juan, powerful enough, under the stress of self-defence, to confuse the distinctions of right and wrong. But, as we shall try to show in the next chapter, such an apparent justification of evil cannot be avoided by a reflective optimist; and it is implicitly contained even in those religious utterances of Rabbi Ben Ezra, Christmas Eve, and ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... view before a great moose showed himself in full sight in a wide opening, where the fire, years before, had burned away the once dense forest. In response to his loud calls the three Indians with their horns replied, and this seemed to greatly confuse him. He would move first a little in one direction and then in another, and then hesitated and sent out his great roar again. Quickly, and in a lower strain, did the Indians closely imitate the female's call. Before there could be the responsive answer on his part to them there dashed ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young

... agree that pure observation is more rare than is believed? We are apt to confuse our sensations, our opinion, our judgment, with what we experience, so that we do not remain long in the passive attitude of the observer, but soon go on to make reflections; and upon these no greater weight can be placed than may be more or less justified ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... wots that this— this adventurer who has so strangely interested her with his hypnotic power is the man who twenty years ago forged her father's name to the title-deeds of Burnington, drove him to his ruin, and subsequently, through a likeness so like as to bewilder and confuse even a mother's eyes, has forced the rightful Earl of Puddingford out into a cruel world, to live and starve as ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs

... has shown the great discoverer most truthfully as he appeared after he had discovered and filed on the ocean. No one can look upon this picture for a moment and confuse Balboa, the discoverer of the Pacific, with Kope Elias, who first discovered in the mountains of North Carolina what is now known ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... running. Oftener than not they would stand, braced, and glare at the oncoming collie from out their evil little red-rimmed eyes; the snouts above the hideous masked tushes quivering avidly. That meant Lad must circle them, at whirlwind speed; barking a thunderous fanfare to confuse them; and watching his chance to flash in and nip ear or flank; or otherwise get the ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... in Scots. There is also a very great point made of the difference between Scots and English, which seems to have been very slight indeed, a difference of spelling more than anything else, nothing that could confuse any but the most ignorant reader. The following sentences from Buchanan's "Admonition direct to the Trew Lordis, maintaineris of justice" will throw some light on the latter question, the difference between ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... was called 'Encaenia'.[12] So pleased was the University with the performance that the Chancellor next year (1670) ordered that it should be repeated annually, on the Friday before the 'Act'. From the very first there was a tendency to confuse the two ceremonies; even the accurate antiquarian, Antony Wood, speaks of music as part of 'the Act', which was really performed at the preliminary gathering, the Encaenia. The new function gradually grew in importance, and additions were made to it; the munificent Lord Crewe, prince-bishop ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells

... and of military parsimony. President Jefferson in America met the occasion precisely as did Monroe in London, with the same result of a sharp correspondence, abounding in strong language, but affording Canning further opportunity to confuse issues and escape from reparations, which, however just and wise, were distasteful. It was a Pyrrhic victory for the British minister, destroying the last chance of conciliating American acquiescence in a line of action forced upon Great ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... American educational system we take little account of the time of the child.... We have eight or nine elementary grades for work which would be done in six if we were working mainly for productivity and power. We have shaped our secondary schools so that they confuse the thinking of youth and break the equilibrium between education and vocations, and people and industries.... In the graded elementary schools of the State of New York, less than half of the children remain to the ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing

... the velocity of shot. If snow falls, as it does frequently, it does not need much to obscure the path; at all times the path is merely a track, and the ruts worn down to the white chalk and the white snow confuse the eyes. Flecks of snow catch against the bunches of grass, against the furze-bushes, and boulders; if there is a ploughed field, against every clod, and the result is bewildering. There is nothing to guide the steps, nothing to give the general direction, and ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... mind that this is but another way of expressing the second of our first two fundamental principles of mental efficiency, and that we are engaged in a scientific demonstration of its truth so that you will not confuse it ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton

... appointed ways obedient to the laws of cause and effect. They are not named in the book to be learned and recited, but to be known. She causes her pupils to know them as they would come to know people in her home. Nor do they ever mistake one for the other or confuse their actions. They know them too well for that. These characters are made to stand wide apart, so that, being thus seen, they will ever after be known. History is not a directory of names, but groups of people going about their tasks. They hunger, and thirst, and love, ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... regulate, systematize. Adj. orderly, regular; in order,in trim, in apple-pie order, in its proper place; neat, tidy, en regle[Fr], well regulated, correct, methodical, uniform, symmetrical, shipshape, businesslike, systematic; unconfused &c. (see confuse &c. 61); arranged &c. 60. Adv. in order; methodically &c. adj.; in -turn, - its turn; step by step; by regular -steps, -gradations, -stages, -intervals; seriatim, systematically, by clockwork, gradatim[Lat]; at stated periods &c. (periodically) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... was beyond comparison with anything that had been seen for ages in Carlingford. The deep border of fur round the velvet, the warm waddings and paddings, the close fit up to the throat, were excellencies which warranted Janey's tour of inspection. Phoebe perceived it very well, but did not confuse the girl by taking any notice, and in her heart she was herself slightly pre-occupied, wondering (as Ursula had done) what the man had come here for, and what he would say when he saw her. Both of these young ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... take unfair advantage of that agreement, for they know well that when the simple folk have said, "German militarism," they have said all. They stop there. They amalgamate the two words and confuse militarism with Germany—once Germany is thrown down there's no more to say. In that way, they attach lies to truth, and prevent us from seeing that militarism is in reality everywhere, more or less hypocritical and unconscious, but ready to seize everything ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... leaping to his feet and pacing back and forth before Jason, clasping and unclasping his hands with agitation. "You seek to confuse me with your semantics and so-called ethics that are simply opportunism and greed. There is a Higher ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... we confuse the single experience with the real line that we fall into absurdities. What the mathematician tells us about real points and real lines has no bearing on the constitution of the single experience and its parts. Thus, when he tells us that between any two points on a line there are ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton

... as Representative Federal Prince. Now Tsin abandons this system, and makes a tripod, which tripod—will henceforth govern the people's acts. How can they now respect their superiors (having book to go by)? How can the superiors maintain their patrimonies? If superiors and commoners confuse degree, how can the state go on? Moreover, Suean-tsz's punishments date from the spring revision (of 621 B.C.), when confusion and change was going on in Tsin state; how can they take ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker

... invaders. Without doubt, thus suddenly attacked, Tu Kiu must give way; should victory declare for them decisively, it was easy to foretell what would happen. Tu Kiu falling back in disorder would confuse the regiments of Choo Hoo coming to his assistance, a panic would arise, and the incredible host of the barbarians would ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... verses often slanted across the page. In such a mood I preferred to get hold of a lead pencil, because I could write most readily with it; whereas the scratching and spluttering of a pen would sometimes wake me from a poetic dream, confuse me, and so stifle some trifling ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown

... Nathan, his countenance losing much of the equanimity that had begun to cover it, and assuming a darker and disturbed expression, "thee doth confuse both theeself and me with many questions. Do thee be content for awhile, till I chafe thee poor legs, which is like the legs of a dead man, and tie up thee wounds. When thee can stand up and walk, thee shall know ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... DEIRDRE—You confuse my mind, dear fostermother, with your speech of joy and sorrow. It is not your wont. Indeed, I think my dream ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell

... were the woman whom we had loved in vain. For the woman whom when we were young we loved in vain is the one woman that we can never see quite clearly, whatever happens. So we might easily, I suppose, confuse her with some ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... saints, Count Corti, thou dost confuse me the more! With such odds against thee, what ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... of them sits up and moves his lips. You can see then that he is putting a sly question to the barrister who is talking at the counter, though you can't hear anything because they all whisper. While the barrister is answering, another old man wakes up and puts a sly question, so as to confuse the barrister. That is the game. The barrister who gets thoroughly annoyed first ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various

... safer to make the application more specific by advising the young conductor to adhere fairly closely to beating the pulse unless a much slower tempo makes extra beats necessary. The additional movements may be of some service in certain cases, but in general they tend to confuse rather than to clarify, this being especially true in the case of syncopated rhythms. The only exceptions ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens

... to turn the leaves for any one playing unless you can read music rapidly; otherwise you may confuse the performer by turning too soon ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost

... whether I believe any child of any race is born incapable of improvement, and beyond benefit from the charities we owe to each other, I should deny my faith if I could say yes. I shall not, madam, confuse the end of your connection with him with the end of your training in him, even if he runs away, or fancy that I see the one because I see the other. I do not pretend to know how much evil he inherits from his forefathers as accurately as our graphic ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various

... the old conundrum that the enthusiasts over everything German confuse one with. The German's fondness—gobbling-down fondness—for food does not prove that he is a gourmet. The Teuton sentimentality is like mush. It's principally for children. As Fritz keeps a good deal of his childishness about him as he grows up, he keeps ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... therefore impossible to keep track of the number of Japanese who entered the country in this way, more especially as the official emigration figures issued at Tokio were purposely inaccurate, so as to confuse the statistics ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff

... reflections, not always acute, but, as far as they reach, medicinal to the fever of the restless and corrupted life around him. Water to parched lips may be better than Samian wine, but do not let us therefore confuse the qualities of wine and water. I much doubt there being many inglorious Miltons in our country churchyards; but I am very sure there are many Wordsworths resting there, who were inferior to the renowned one only in caring ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... critical situation of public affairs may expose their places, their apprehensions from the hazards to which the discontents of a few popular men at elections may expose their seats in Parliament,—all these causes trouble and confuse the representations which they make to ministers of the real temper of the nation. If ministers, instead of following the great indications of the Constitution, proceed on such reports, they will take ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... its net of crime;—Devouring insects, who weary and confuse men's minds, Ignorant, oppressive, negligent, Breeders of confusion, utterly ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... has the face and bearing of a day-laborer. His blue woollen shirt does not confuse him, as he is used to it. He has an oldish face, wrinkled by fearful anticipations, and his hair is thin. He is awkwardly built, and watches the trial earnestly, as if striving to catch between the links of evidence vistas of a life ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... yeux que le ver ronge, Oh! ce vaisseau, construit par le chiffre et le songe, Eblouirait Shakspeare et ravirait Euler! Il voyage, Delos gigantesque de l'air, Et rien ne le repousse et rien ne le refuse; Et l'on entend parler sa grande voix confuse. ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo

... flutter was there, for his head was clear and cool. He knew exactly what to do. He knew exactly what was being done. Surprise did, indeed, fill him when he reflected that it was his own house which had caught fire, but that did not for a moment confuse him as to the certainty that the engine must be already out, and his comrades rushing to ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne

... "boss," having an army or apolitical "machine" at his command, can do much. It is possible, also, to confuse or mislead public opinion, but neither the king nor the boss will, if he be wise, challenge the mores and the common ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... pretended to do so. What they did was to sell them a sea-passage, giving very good value for the money. Nothing more. As long as men will travel on the water, the sea-gods will take their toll. They will catch good seamen napping, or confuse their judgment by arts well known to those who go to sea, or overcome them by the sheer brutality of elemental forces. It seems to me that the resentful sea-gods never do sleep, and are never weary; wherein the seamen who are mere mortals condemned to unending ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... of death that he had issued against the wise men of Egypt, and he sent and called Joseph. He impressed care upon his messengers, they were not to excite and confuse Joseph, and render him unfit to interpret the king's dream correctly.[168] They brought him hastily out of the dungeon, but first Joseph, out of respect for the king, shaved himself, and put on fresh raiment, which an angel brought ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... the greenhouse to receive water twice a week, or even less often, but on the coming of warm spring days, more frequently, until care is needed daily. There are some old fogy ideas about soft and tepid water, which may help confuse the beginner: they accomplish nothing more. Recent experiments, made by one of the State experiment stations, have confirmed the experience of practical florists, that the temperature of water used, even to ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell

... same juncture her hair became unfastened, and rolled down about her shoulders. The least accident at such critical periods is sufficient to confuse the overwrought intelligence. She lost sight of his intended direction for one instant, ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... overworked and underslept, that his nervous system was disordered, that in the meantime he had been fool enough to attend that abominable sensation meeting, and the man actually had wonderful power over the common mind, and used his eloquence in a way that was quite calculated to confuse a not perfectly balanced brain. It was no wonder, then, in his state of bodily disorder, that the sympathetic mind should take the alarm. So much for the disease, now for the remedy. He would study less, at least he would stop reading half the night away; he would begin ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)

... 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. And in poetry, more than anywhere else, it is impermissible to confuse or obliterate them. For in poetry the distinction between excellent and inferior, sound and unsound or only half-sound, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... hits—hits harder than the Lusitania, or any other of the gigantic panels of the war. The pin-pricks we feel; the sledge hammer merely stuns. And the danger is that those who have felt the pin-pricks may confuse them with the sledge hammer; may lose the right road in the bypaths of personal emotion. War means so infinitely much to the individual; the individual means so infinitely little to war. Only it is sometimes hard to remember that simple fact. ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... cataclysm. To keep the outline clear I have deliberately avoided mentioning the names of many subordinate actors; thinking that if nothing essential was connected with them the mention of their names would only tend to confuse matters. Similarly with incidents, I have omitted a few, such as the troubles at Avignon, and changed the emphasis on others, judging freely their importance and not following the footsteps of my predecessors, as in the case ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... of its striking beauty, this vivid lily lifts a chalice that suggests a trap for catching sunbeams from fiery old Sol. Defiant of his scorching rays in its dry habitat, it neither nods nor droops even during prolonged drought; and yet many people confuse it with the gracefully pendent, swaying bells of the yellow Canada Lily, which will grow in a swamp rather than forego moisture. La, the Celtic for white, from which the family derived its name, makes this bright-hued flower ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... numerous batteries occupied the commanding ground in rear, was selected for assault. Neither feint nor demonstration, the ordinary expedients by which the attacker seeks to distract the attention and confuse the efforts of the defence, was made use of; and yet division after division, with no abatement of courage, marched in good order over the naked plain, dashed forward with ever-thinning ranks, and then, receding ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... (See Var. ii. 24). So called because it was collected three times in the year. See Dahn, Koenige der Germanen iii. 140; and Sartorius, Regierung der Ostg. 200. The latter seems however to confuse it with the 'tertiae,' from which Dahn very ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... officer, who was delighted at this unexpected change in affairs, though he had only heard enough of the conversation to confuse him as to the cause ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne

... always see the plan on which He builds my life; For oft the sound of hammers, blow on blow, The noise of strife, Confuse me till I quite forget he knows And oversees, And that in all details with his good ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... hour's tramp brought us to the bush-veld where I feared that our troubles might begin, since if the Amahagger were cunning, they would take advantage of it to confuse or hide their spoor. As it chanced, however, they had done nothing of the sort and a child could have followed their march. Just before nightfall we came to their first halting-place where they had made a fire and eaten one of the herd of farm goats which ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... remember the turns, and their direction, but there were so many that I very soon lost count. I think they took me in a round-about way purposely, to confuse me. I have no idea how long we drove, but it must have been well over two hours. At last we struck a long up-grade, and one of my companions announced that we were ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... Thy simple words confuse and mar, Thy tenderest thoughts delude, Draw a long cloud athwart thy star, Still with loud timbrels heaven's ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare

... variations, and they are true specimens of spielerei, despite the cleverness of design in the arabesques, their brilliancy and euphony. Op. 2 has its dazzling moments, but its musical worth is inferior. It is written to split the ears of the groundlings, or rather to astonish and confuse them, for the Chopin dynamics in the early music are never very rude. The indisputable superiority to Herz and the rest of the shallow-pated variationists caused Schumann's passionate admiration. It has, however, given us an interesting page of music criticism. Rellstab, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... for the changes are great and the speech of Florentines would sound as a riddle in your ears. Or, if you go, mingle with no politicians on the marmi, or elsewhere; ask no questions about trade in the Calimara; confuse yourself with no inquiries into scholarship, official or monastic. Only look at the sunlight and shadows on the grand walls that were built solidly, and have endured in their grandeur; look at the faces of the little ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... classic writers, as optimus or optumus, maximus or maxumus. This is but a simple and natural thing. The same obscurity occurs often in English, as, for instance, in words ending in able or ible. How easy, for instance, to confuse the sound and spelling in such ...
— The Roman Pronunciation of Latin • Frances E. Lord

... a certain scoffing finesse of which he makes effective use, sometimes with his equals, and almost invariably with his superiors. He puts questions to power as embarrassing as are those which infancy puts to mature age. He affects excessive humility, in order to confuse him whom he addresses with the very height of his isolated elevation. He exaggerates the awkwardness of his manner and the rudeness of his speech, as a means of covering his real thoughts under the ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny

... warranted in concluding from these facts that in very many cases, perhaps in most, our system of taxonomic classification of animals and plants has gone altogether too far, and that scientists have erected specific distinctions which are wholly uncalled for and which confuse and obscure the main issues of the species problem. Among the workers in botany and in every department of zooelogy there have always been the "splitters" and the "lumpers," as they are familiarly called; the former insisting on the most minute distinctions ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price

... dear!" cried Madame. "Do you think I could confuse you in my dislike of this Woodhouse? Oh no! You are not Woodhouse. On the contrary, I think it is unkind for you also, this place. You look—also—what shall ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... to pause and parley. It invariably disarms suspicion. At the first every pistol or musket is levelled at your head; but if you stop to talk, these are lowered. Then, when you have put the enemy a little off guard, make a dash for it; take them by surprise, drop a few, and confuse the rest, and you almost invariably ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... both to write and read, though M. Linders took care that her range of literature should be limited, and chiefly confined to books of fairy-tales, in which no examples drawn from real life could be found, to correct and confuse the single-sided views she received from him. This was almost the extent of her learning, but she picked up all sorts of odd bits of information, in the queer mixed society which M. Linders seemed everywhere to gather round him, and which ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... irrepressible exclamation of horror from Ishmael and a low cry of anguish from Judge Merlin. But neither ventured to speak, lest by doing so he should confuse ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... whom we should follow, Are not the ones who make so much vain show. What! Will you find no difference between Hypocrisy and genuine devoutness? And will you treat them both alike, and pay The self-same honour both to masks and faces Set artifice beside sincerity, Confuse the semblance with reality, Esteem a phantom like a living person, And counterfeit as good as honest coin? Men, for the most part, are strange creatures, truly! You never find them keep the golden mean; The limits of good sense, too narrow for them, Must always be passed by, in ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere

... comin' along like that," he observed. "If it hadn't been because of my missus I wouldn't have been out so early." He blew a puff of smoke and continued: "This Blue Disease seems to confuse folk. My missus was took with it last night." He paused to examine us at his leisure. ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne

... both history and tradition confuse the two Douglasses together, and confer on George the successful execution of the escape from the castle, the merit of which belongs, in reality, to the boy called William, or, more frequently, the Little Douglas, either from his youth or his slight ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... declared: "I am the State," but he announced his position frankly. He was an autocrat and he said so. It was a more honest and therefore less harmful position than that of a majority of voters in our country today. Can it help but confuse and deteriorate one sex, trained to believe and call itself living in a democracy, to say silently year by year at the polls, "I am the State"? Can it help but confuse and deteriorate the other sex, similarly trained to acquiescence year after year in a national ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... consciousness of a former life comes sharply upon us, in swift, lightning flashes, too sudden to be tangible, too dazzling to leave an impress, or mayhap, in troubled dreams that bewilder and confuse with vague remembrances. If only a burst of memory would come upon some mortal, that the tale might be fully told, and these theories established as facts. It would unfold great possibilities of historical lore; of ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore

... of one very important thing. I am sure that Midwinter—I must call him by his ugly false name, or I may confuse the two Armadales before I have done—I am sure that Midwinter is perfectly ignorant that I and the little imp of twelve years old who waited on Mrs. Armadale in Madeira, and copied the letters that were supposed to arrive ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... appropriate title of kings odious; the title of a magistrate, who had the care of the public granaries of corn, at length was applied to a wretched flatterer for a dinner; and absurd philosophers occasioned a mere denomination to become a by-name. To employ such terms in their primitive sense would now confuse all ideas; yet there is an affectation of erudition which has frequently revived terms sanctioned by antiquity. Bishop Watson entitled his vindication of the Bible "an apology:" this word, in its primitive sense, had long been lost for the multitude, whom he particularly addressed in this ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... secondary affair, because there was another railway communication between the two cities. But as my main object was to obtain permission to go, I tried to make the most of all results which might follow, while it was very clear that the raid would harass and confuse the enemy, and be the means of bringing away many of the slaves. General Hunter had, therefore, accepted the project mainly as a stroke for freedom and black recruits; and General Gillmore, because anything ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... that he was hotly pursued, Keona had taken advantage of the first rocky ground he reached to diverge abruptly from the route he had hitherto followed in his flight; and, the farther to confuse his pursuers, he had taken the almost exhausted child up in his arms and carried her a considerable distance, so that if his enemies should fall again on his track the absence of the little footprints might induce them to fancy they were following ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... illusions of the higher classes were reflected without the ballast of mentality. Ready to fight on any provocation, yet circumscribed by their own natures, not understanding life, unable to picture to themselves different types and conditions, these people were as prone as children to confuse the world of their own desire with the world of fact. When hardship came, when taxation fell upon them with a great blow, when the war took a turn that necessitated imagination for its understanding and faith for its pursuit, these people with ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... ever lived! Some forgitful, but everybody's liable to forgit. Only tell him one thing at once, and don't confuse him, and he'll git through an amazin' sight ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... which these passages occur, he will find that a considerable part of it is devoted to the exposure of the familiar trick of the "counsel for creeds," who, when they wish to profit by the easily stirred odium theologicum, are careful to confuse disbelief in a narrative of a man's act, or disapproval of the acts as narrated, with disbelieving and vilipending the man himself. If I say that "according to paragraphs in several newspapers, my valued ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... grimace Soon joined the race, And followed the game at a lively pace! Then Puss, who knew A thing or two, Prepared to follow the noisy crew, And never before or since, I ween, Was ever beheld such a hunting scene! The Hare was swift; and the papers went This way and that, to confuse the scent; But Tony, keeping his nose in air, In a very few moments betrayed the Hare, Which the children told ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various

... enemy undertook to hinder the work, God marvelously helped us. At one time a certain minister came to try to look me out of countenance while I was preaching. His plan was to confuse me so that I could not preach. The enemy knew that if I became the least bit confused, I would stammer so that I could hardly talk. God was present to help me. He so confounded the man that before ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole

... Do not confuse these two words. Character means one's moral condition. Reputation means the morality that others believe ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood

... about him like flies, and literally mob him back into his dusky retreat. Silence is as the breath of his nostrils to him, and the uproar that greets him when he emerges into the open day seems to alarm and confuse him as it does the ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... recognize that the civilizations of China, Japan, and India have qualities worth studying and that they may have something worth while in life that the Western civilization has not. Also there has been a tendency to confuse the terms Christian and heathen with civilized and uncivilized. This idea arose in England, where, in the early history of Christianity, the people of the towns were more cultured than the people ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... room behind him awaiting a claimant who meant never to return. Even if they should be found and identified as having been worn by the slayer of Sonntag, their presence there, he figured, would but serve to confuse the man hunt. Broadway's living tides flowed by, its component atoms seemingly ignorant of the fact that just round the corner below a man had been done to death. Only at the intersection of Thirty-ninth Street was there evidence, in the quick movement of pedestrians ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... like some dreadful mistake. Where is the courtly manner of the lover in the book? What is the matter with this red-faced boy? Where is the pretty pleading, the gracious speech? Why should a lover stammer and confuse ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed

... 731. No sooner did he find himself settled upon the throne, than he levied an army, and marched against Southern Mesopotamia, which appears to have been in a divided and unsettled condition. According to the Canon of Ptolemy, Nabonassar then ruled in Babylon. Tiglath-Pileser's annals confuse the accounts of his two campaigns; but the general impression which we gather from them is that, even in B.C. 745, the country was divided up into a number of small principalities, the sea-coast being under the dominion of Merodach-Baladan, who ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... captain's foresight. He started us promptly for the range, surely the oddest sight that we have presented so far. In front went a huddle of men with benches, chairs, and tables, lamps for blacking the sights (lest they glitter and confuse the eye), the captain's megaphone, and the ammunition. We followed at route step in our greatcoats, some of us carrying ponchos, and except for our rifles and belts, no other equipment. Discipline was relaxed ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French

... were a bard a bard because he's smart, Laberius' mimes were products of high art. 'Tis not enough to make your reader's face Wear a broad grin, though that too has its place: Terseness there wants, to make the thought ring clear, Nor with a crowd of words confuse the ear: There wants a plastic style, now grave, now light, Now such as bard or orator would write, And now the language of a well-bred man, Who masks his strength, and says not all he can: And pleasantry will often cut clean through Hard knots that gravity would scarce undo. ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... evil conscience of their arts,—everything gradually became the echo of his thought and of his indefatigable efforts to attain to fruitfulness in the future. Although this echo often sounded so discordant as to confuse him, still the tremendous power of his voice repeatedly crying out into the world must in the end call forth reverberations, and it will soon be impossible to be deaf to him or to misunderstand him. It is this reflected sound which even now causes the art-institutions of ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... in reading the lesson and questioning the class should not exceed thirty minutes. Too much detail will only confuse and fatigue the pupils. Five or six words that present any difficulty either in spelling or pronunciation may be selected from the reading lesson for dictation. Such words should not be given singly, but rather ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof

... life is to be placed: Clearly in the third or mixed class, in which the finite gives law to the infinite. And in which is pleasure to find a place? As clearly in the infinite or indefinite, which alone, as Protarchus thinks (who seems to confuse the infinite with the superlative), gives to pleasure the character of the absolute good. Yes, retorts Socrates, and also to pain the character of absolute evil. And therefore the infinite cannot be that which ...
— Philebus • Plato

... moment, to be assumed that enfranchising women will not cost something. It will for many years confuse our politics. It may even change the present status of family life. It will admit to the ballot thousands of inexperienced persons, unable to vote intelligently. Above all, it will interfere with some of the present ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... down-stairs or in the parlor. So many children confuse grandpa. Lu, you look too utterly harum-scarum. Do go and brush ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas

... people is that of all Europe, or rather of the whole world; but the governments of all those countries are by no means favorable to it. It is important that we should never lose sight of this distinction. We must not confuse the peoples with their governments; especially not the English people with ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... useful to yourself and to society? If you employ a seamstress to make four or five or six beautiful flounces for your ball dress, flounces which will only clothe yourself, and which you will wear at only one ball, you are employing your money selfishly. Do not confuse covetousness with benevolence, nor cheat yourself into thinking that all the finery you can wear is so much put into the hungry mouths of those beneath you. It is what those who stand shivering on the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... distrustful and disdainful from the beginning. Against his brother's loyalty and the straightforward intentions of the estates, he felt that the whole force of the Macchiavelli system of policy would be brought to bear with great effect. He felt that the object of the King's party was to temporize, to confuse, and to deceive. He did not believe them capable of conceding the real object in dispute, but he feared lest they might obscure the judgment of the plain and well meaning people with whom they had to deal. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... got on the roof of one of the tall government buildings near here, and examining each roof as I crossed it looking for wireless antennae, I finally reached this house. I suspected I was being watched by Baron von Fincke, but managed to confuse him as to the direction I was taking, and finally clambered down into this attic through the scuttle. I was certain he was not aware of my identity, and for the sake of my ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... think, are sufficient details of the fundamental distinction to be drawn in the insect's mentality; the distinction, that is, between instinct and discernment. If people confuse these two provinces, as they nearly always do, any understanding becomes impossible; the last glimmer of light disappears behind the clouds of interminable discussions. From an industrial point of view, let us look upon the insect as a worker thoroughly versed from birth ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... ships anchored at Whampoa;—these and a thousand other objects, all equally strange and new, attract the attention of the stranger as he sails up the "Quang Tung" river. On nearing the city itself, he is still more astonished and pleased with the sights that literally confuse his ideas, making the whole scene to seem the creation of magic, rather than sober reality. Here, the river is absolutely crowded with junks and boats of all sorts and sizes, from the ferry-boat of six feet long, to the ferry-boat of a thousand tons ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson

... growths. Maple and spruce held place and made her course more awkward, and further hindered her. The blue gums crowded so closely that frequently she was driven to considerable detour. Gradually the maze began to confuse her. She started to reckon the whereabouts of the river, a process which confused her more. But she kept on, her whole attention concentrated,—so much so that even her object ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... eye; while it was indispensable to his comfort in reading, not only that the light should come from the right side, but that the left should be shielded from any luminous object, like the fire, which even at the distance of half the length of a room would strike on his field of vision and confuse the near sight. ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... its significance? But Fate had decreed that it should arise in the stormiest moment of our history. Millions of men and women who cared nothing for constitutional theories, who were governed by that passion to see immediate results which the thoughtless ever confuse with achievement, these were becoming hysterical over delay. Why did not the government do something? Everywhere voices were raised accusing the President of cowardice. The mania of suspicion was not confined to the Committee. ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... rooms specially built for these parties, and rooms only just large enough to hold his guests comfortably. One scroll is hung in the kakemono, and in front of it one ornament, and afterwards a solitary flower. It would be considered by them extremely bad taste to confuse or dissipate the attention ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... moment! when you extend your hand for the billet of a mistress, and receive your tailor's bill! How provokingly slow are most domestic chieftains in this anxious operation! They turn the letters over and over, and upside and down; arrange, confuse, mistake, assort; pretend, like Champollion, to decipher illegible franks, and deliver with a slight remark, which is intended as a friendly admonition, the documents of the unlucky wight who ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli

... If a figure walks, describe to me its carriage and its lightness; I will undertake the rest. If it is stooping, speak to me only of arms and shoulders; I will take all else on myself. If you do more, you confuse the kinds of work; you cease to be a poet, and become a painter or sculptor. One single trait, a great trait; leave the rest to my imagination. That is true taste, great taste."[64] And then he quotes with admiration Ovid's line of the ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... of history went into the welter of religious wars which gradually merge into dynastic wars and confuse the record of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century. At the end of the last of these divisions of time ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... the season of rains, of "Nivose" the season of snows, of "Ventose" season of winds, and "Floreal, Prairial, and Fructidor." He said the ideas of men in those times were more closely allied to God's, while July, September, and October meant nothing, and were only invented to confuse and obscure everything. Once on this subject it was plain that he could not exhaust it. Unfortunately I have not the learning that that good man had, otherwise it would give me real pleasure to recount his sayings to you. We were just here when Mother Gredel, well washed and combed ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann

... of tactics, these competitive leaders, have endeavored to confuse the question, and to mystify the people, by raising the cry of over-production! The inexorable law of supply and demand! The impossibility of our manufacturers longer competing in the markets of the world, against the cheap products ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... powers with the nature of man and of the feminine animals, and would perhaps do more wisely if they stopped dumb before what lies beyond and above these levels. For beyond, man reads but to misread—studies but to vex and confuse himself, and—shall I say it?—learns to sneer at rather than to reverence what baffles his inquiries. Does this statement seem harsh? Is it doubted? See its truth. The only science (so called) which undertakes a study of woman does not inspire its student with an increased respect for her. As ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... something else on to the back of it. I'm not Cranze at all. I'm Hamilton. I've been in the papers a good deal just recently, because I'd been flinging my money around, and I didn't want to get stared at on board here. So Cranze and I swapped names, just to confuse people. It seems to have ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... over the country as indisputable proof that he was an habitual drunkard, though the most remarkable characteristic of his speeches is their temperance,—their "total abstinence" from all the intoxicating moral and mental "drinks" which confuse the understanding and mislead the conscience. He could not borrow money on his note of hand, like any other citizen, without the circumstance being trumpeted abroad as incontrovertible evidence that Nick Biddle had paid him that sum to defend his diabolical Bank in the Senate ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... myself obliged to refuse what you require of me:—I cannot think, cried she, of rendering unhappy a person who so much deserves to be blessed:—and what but misery would attend a match so unequal as yours would be with me!—How would your kindred brook it!—How would the world confuse and ridicule the fondness of an affection so ill placed!—What would they say when they should hear the nobly born, the rich, and the accomplished monsieur du Plessis, had taken for his wife a maid obscurely defended, and with no other dowry than ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... burnished copper fixture, from which a cluster of electric bulbs threw their brilliance upward, so that the room was evenly lighted with the diffused rays as reflected from the ceiling. Thus, there were no shadows to confuse the problem. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... substituted a system of contention and difference warring against the laws of nature herself, and attempting by these new fangled, petty, puny, and most contemptible contrivances, organized in defiance of the best lessons of human experience, to confuse, impede, and disarrange the palpable will of the Creator of the world. I can see in this proposition for female suffrage the end of all that home life and education which are the best nursery for a nation's virtue. I can see in all these attempts to invade the relations ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage









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