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More "Underrate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... must be careful not to underrate the real value of the Peruvian system; nor to suppose that the quipus were as awkward an instrument, in the hand of a practised native, as they would be in ours. We know the effect of habit in all mechanical operations, and the Spaniards bear constant testimony to the adroitness and accuracy ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... both the Civil and Ecclesiastical officers to be Christians; there is no fear that the civil officer should underrate the dignity or shorten the serviceableness of the minister; but there is considerable danger that the religious enthusiasm of the minister might diminish the serviceableness of the civilian. (The History of Religious Enthusiasm should ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... their reckless and discreditable allies called the "Anti-corn-law League," see as plainly as we do; but their anxious aim is to conceal these advantages as much as possible from public view; and for this purpose they never willingly make any allusion to the tariff, or if forced to do so, underrate its value, or grossly misrepresent its operation. But we are convinced that this will not do. Proofs of their humbug and falsehood are, as it were, daily forcing themselves into the very stomachs of those whom once, when an incompetent Ministry was in power, these heartless impostors were able ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... mother knew if his head was empty, his pocket was not. He might not be clever, or have much stability of character, but oh, how many things which made life pleasant he possessed! She who had had them, and had lost them, was not one to underrate the value of ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... of taking prompt measures for placing the city in a thorough state of defence. He had no fear, he said, of the ultimate triumph of Syracuse in the approaching struggle: only let them be on their guard, and not underrate the power of the enemy whom they would have to face. The words of Hermocrates, who enjoyed a high reputation for valour, patriotism, and sagacity, were not without their effect, and it was resolved that the generals should at once set about organizing the ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... temperament of Grey and Olivia, the impression they had made on him grew stronger. He was too good a judge of men not to perceive that the budding dramatist had the intelligent imagination which makes for real shrewdness, and he was not disposed to underrate the value of the imagination in forming judgments of men and women. Probably Colonel Grey was a man of less intensity of emotion than Mr. Manley had declared, and Lady Loudwater less subtile and intelligent. But, ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... profane, and don't for a moment imagine I underrate the function of the preacher. There's nothing better than a good sermon,—one that puts new life into you. But what of a sermon that takes life out of you? instead of a spiritual fountain, a spiritual sponge that absorbs ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... made up his mind that no great work would ever be done, if those who co-operated were too minute in seeking for perfect accordance of opinions; and that boundless charity which was his great characteristic made him perhaps underrate the importance of the fissure which his sister even then perceived between the ways of thinking of himself and his Bishop. His next sister, Anne, whose health was too delicate for a northern climate, ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... de Alcega not only remained unpunished but, aided by the said persons with several letters, informations and documents, which they had secretly made and composed, they are attempting to underrate my good service and seek for him the reward. I have not wished to set down in a boastful way anything more than the naked truth, which your Majesty now has before your eyes. I most humbly beseech your Majesty to be pleased ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... all very pretty and touching. Her action has, in truth, its springs in a most commendable sentiment that I should be the last to underrate. Shady Dell Farm is interesting, too, for once, if one can swallow one's wrath and dudgeon at being taken there against one's will; and one feels that Jane's parents and Jane's early surroundings must be worth a single visit, if they could produce a donkey ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... admiration for Turgot, thought him too simple-hearted for a practical statesman, too prone, as noble natures often are, to underrate the selfishness, stupidity, and prejudice that prevail in the world and resist the course of just and rational reform. He described Turgot to Samuel Rogers as an excellent person, very honest and well-meaning, but so unacquainted with the world and human ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... other contribution from each individual, besides the particular duties of his profession. And, if no such liberal intercourse be established, it is the common failing of human nature, to be engrossed with petty views and interests, to underrate the importance of all in which we are not concerned, and to carry our partial notions into cases where they are inapplicable, to act, in short, as so many unconnected units, displacing ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... is possible that historians somewhat underrate the degree of Theodoric's acquaintance with Latin as a spoken language. There was a great deal of Latin used in the Pannonian and Mesian regions, in which his childhood and youth were passed; and some, though certainly not so much, at ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... subject of the New England poets a word about the present misunderstanding and tendency to underrate them may not be out of place. Because it is growing to be the consensus of opinion that the two greatest poets America has produced are Whitman and Poe, it does not follow that the New-Englanders must be relegated to the scrap-heap. ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... The Queen is afraid that the diplomatic intrigues and counter intrigues at Madrid have made us lose daily more of that advantageous position without any compensation on the other side. The Queen entreats Lord John Russell not to underrate the importance of keeping our foreign policy beyond reproach. Public opinion is recognised as a ruling power in our domestic affairs; it is not of less importance in the society of Europe with reference to the conduct of an individual state. To possess the confidence of Europe is of the utmost ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... remember, so far as the matter of ability is concerned, that other men are likely to be much better judges of his capacity than he is himself. If men are likely often to overrate their own capacity, they are also very often likely to underrate it. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... few ascetic ceremonies in the Jewish Calendar as known to most Jews. There is a strain of asceticism in some forms of Judaism, and on this a few words will be said later. But, on the whole, there is in modern Judaism a tendency to underrate somewhat the value of asceticism in religion. Hence the fast has a distinct importance in and for itself, and it is regrettable that the laudable desire to spiritualise the day is leading to a depreciation of the ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... is my child. Is it likely that I would give myself the worst of everything without seeing to it that she gets the best of everything? No, my friend; you must not underrate my intelligence. I will speak plainly to you,—but in confidence. This is between you and me. There is no love lost between Kenneth Gwynne and me. He hates me and always will, no matter how hard he may try to overcome it. In a different way I hate him. We ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... to go back, or to swerve by one hair's breadth from the path which I have laid down for myself. It is well that I have seen all this"—and she pointed to the newspaper—"for it has given me a new view of the man. I shall not be so likely to underrate him now; and being forewarned I ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... legislative conceptions." Once he has rattled his revolutionary pedantry off, he no longer knows what to say.—As to financial matters and military art, he knows nothing and risks nothing, except to underrate or calumniate Carnot and Cambon who did know and who took risks.[3184]—In relation to a foreign policy his speech on the state of Europe is the amplification of a schoolboy; on exposing the plans ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... reddenest on my hearth, Thou in those island mines didst slumber long; But now thou art come forth to move the earth, And put to shame the men that mean thee wrong: Thou shalt be coals of fire to those that hate thee, And warm the shins of all that underrate thee. ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... "Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth." The defects in Sprengel's work were, after all, not actual defects. The error lay simply in his interpretation of his carefully noted facts. As Hermann Mueller has said, "Sprengel's investigations afford an ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... Himself which made Him tremble and wish that God's will could in any other wise be accomplished—it was this which caused Him so sharply and suddenly to rebuke Peter. Peter's words penetrated to what was lurking near at hand as His normal temptation. We may very readily underrate the trial and temptation of Christ, and thus have only a formal, not a real, esteem for His manhood. We always underrate it when we do not fully apprehend His human nature, and believe that He was tempted in all points as we are. But, on the other hand, we underrate it if we forget that ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods
... Lion-King o'er all the tribes victorious, To living thing may not concede thy meed and actions glorious; How oft thy noble head has woke thy valiant men to battle, As panic o'er their spirit broke, and rued the foe their mettle! Is there, thy praise to underrate, in very thought presuming, O'er crested chieftainry[120] thy state, O thou, of right assuming! I see thee, on thy silken flag, in rampant[121] glory streaming, As life inspired their firmness thy planted ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... more of our presence, than of that of the ducks and geese which he met on the green. He little thought that the little black urchins around him, could see, through those vocal crevices, the very secrets of his heart. Slaveholders ever underrate the intelligence with which{63 SUPPOSED OBTUSENESS OF SLAVE-CHILDREN} they have to grapple. I really understood the old man's mutterings, attitudes and gestures, about as well as he did himself. But slaveholders ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... disease. Probably there are hardly any of the most needy who, if they had been only moderately frugal and provident, could not have placed themselves in a position to tide over the occasional months of want of work, or of sickness, which there always must be.... I do not underrate the difficulty of laying by out of weekly earnings, but I say it can be done. A dock-labourer, while a young, strong, unmarried man, could lay by half his weekly wages, and such men are almost sure of ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... of cool valour and ring-craft, could give ten or fifteen years and a beating to most striplings. He could not rely too much upon his advantage in age. But then there was the lameness; that must surely count for a great deal. And, lastly, there was the chance that the Master might underrate his opponent, that he might be remiss in his training, and refuse to abandon his usual way of life, if he thought that he had an easy task before him. In a man of his age and habits this seemed very possible. Montgomery ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... therefore, to believe that Talbot was a man not likely to be easily duped. The principals in this crime were evidently well aware of the trust reposed in the Assistant Under-Secretary, and they, again, would not underrate his intelligence. Hence there was a good cause for Talbot to accept the explanations, whatever they were, given him during the conclave in the dining-room; the effect of which, in Inspector Sharpe's words, had been to "puzzle" the young Englishman. Further, there must have ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... to say at times with Hazael, "Thy servant is but a dog; how can he do these great things?" You are disposed to underrate your gifts, your opportunities, your happy chances in life—in a word, your possibilities. You despair of finding any opening; you are sure that you will never hear a call to come up higher; you think ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... "You underrate my attractions," I replied. "Haven't I told you about Miss Gertie 'Uggins?" Then I proceeded to sketch in Gertrude as well as I could, finishing up with the story of her spirited determination to spend the five shillings I had given her ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... several reasons, which seem to us sufficient, for preferring Dr. Worcester's Dictionary; but we are not, on that account, disposed to underrate the remarkable merits of its rival. Dr. Webster was a man of vigorous mind, and endowed with a genuine faculty of independent thinking. He has hardly received justice at the hands of his countrymen, a large portion of whom have too hastily ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... certainly be the last to underrate the part which the self-assertion of the individual has played in the evolution of mankind. However, this subject requires, I believe, a much deeper treatment than the one it has hitherto received. In the history of mankind, individual self-assertion has often been, and continually ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... intellectual powers and social habits of man are of paramount importance to him, we must not underrate the importance of his bodily structure, to which subject the remainder of this chapter will be devoted; the development of the intellectual and social or moral faculties being ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... come now to a subject which, perhaps, ought to have been my first. How glad I was to get your letter from Britain! I was afraid of the ocean, afraid of the coast of the island. The other parts of the enterprise I do not underrate; but yet they inspire more hope than fear, and it is the suspense rather than any positive alarm that renders me uneasy. You, however, I can see, have a splendid subject for description, topography, natural features of things and places, manners, races, battles, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... of the magnetic needle to the west, in the mysteries whereof the Captain was not also versed. When Columbus wanted to keep his sailors quiet on that wondrous voyage over an unknown ocean to the Western world, the diplomatic admiral made so bold as to underrate the length of each day's sail in an unveracious log, which he kept for the inspection of his crew; but no doctoring of the social log-book could mislead the ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... there are any real and peculiar sources of trial and difficulty in this pursuit, that they should be distinctly known and acknowledged at the outset. Count the cost before going to war. It is even better policy to overrate, than to underrate it. Let us see then what the ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... of all our romantic notions in regard to the "king of beasts"! We suspect that the Doctor, disgusted with the "twaddle" that has undoubtedly been talked in all ages about the "magnanimity" of the "noble" lion and his "terrific aspect," has been led unintentionally to underrate him. In this land we have opportunities of seeing and hearing the lion in his captive state; and we think that most readers will sympathise with us when we say that even in a cage he has at least a very grand and noble aspect; and that, when about to be fed, ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... to whom she intrusted all the management of affairs, is not the least important personage in this drama, nor did he underrate his own consequence. "Heaven," said he, "is a hundred years in forming a great mind for the restoration of an empire, and it then rests another hundred years; on this account I tremble for the fate which awaits this monarchy after me." Throughout a long and arduous ministry ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... raises the other to a standard of perfection which human nature can never attain, and each becomes equally annoyed on finding, by degrees, that they were in error. The reaction takes place, and they then underrate, as much as before they had overrated, each other. Now, if two young people marry without this violence of passion, they do not expect to find each other perfect, and perhaps have ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... protracted by endless psalm singing. What I want to do—with Miss Cook's permission—is to calculate the chances of her being sufficiently athletic to perform the tricks herself, without the aid of spirits. Does she not underrate her unaided powers in assigning a supernatural cause for ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... his chair of state, whence go abroad the statutes he has framed, shall read again his earlier works, now rescued from the past to teach the young. Reporters on his words shall hang, from every window shall his sapient visage smile, and even the London Times shall think it worth the while to underrate him. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... unfortunate projector of the Republic will, however, be a small price to pay for a great gain. We do not, as our readers know, set up to be champions of the press, and have certainly never shown any disposition to underrate its defects or shortcomings. But there is one thing which no candid and careful observer can avoid seeing, and that is that the press of the country, as an instrument of discussion and popular education, has undergone within twenty years an improvement nothing analogous to which ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... but to find it garrisoned by shabby regiments armed with quills and steel pens. The cells they inhabit are gloomy as dungeons, but furnished like parlors. Their business is to keep everybody's accounts but their own. They are of all ages, but of a uniformly dejected aspect. Do not underrate their value. Mr. Bulwer has said, that, in the hands of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword. Suffer yourself to be astonished at their numbers, but permit yourself to withdraw from their vicinity without ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... Canada would be determined the attitude of the savages dwelling in the wild spaces of the interior; he saw, too, that Quebec as a military base in British hands would be a source of grave danger. The easy capture of Fort Ticonderoga led him to underrate difficulties. If Ticonderoga why not Quebec? Nova Scotia might be occupied later, the Acadians helping. Thus it happened that, soon after taking over the command, Washington was busy with a plan for the conquest of Canada. Two forces were to advance into that country; ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... different matter. "I'm too old for you. I'm the son of a Jew, and a Houndsditch Jew at that. But I'm rich—what's called rich in my set—and when I marry I shan't keep my wife dependent on me. Ah! don't misunderstand me—yours is a rich manysided nature, and you're too intelligent to underrate the value of money. It means a wide life and lots of interests, books, pictures, music, travel, mixing with the men and women best worth knowing. You're ambitious, my dear, and as my wife you can build yourself ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... interested in what we shall come to, and never broach the subject to him. I finished the geological evidence chapters yesterday; they are very fine and very striking, but I cannot see they are such forcible objections as you still hold them to be. I would say that you still in your secret soul underrate the imperfection of the Geological Record, though no language can be stronger or arguments fairer and sounder against it. Of course I am influenced by Botany, and the conviction that we have not in a fossilised condition a fraction of the plants that have existed, and that not a fraction of those ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... turns against herself. But Mr. Vane," the note of bitterness had vanished; her voice was now earnest, almost grave, "you weren't despondent when you were facing an angry mob after doing me a service I shall never forget. You underrate yourself." ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... spend so much of her time in conversation—if those could be called conversations in which one of the talkers insisted upon a monopoly of attention. It would be more accurate to describe them as monologues, with occasional interpolations of assent on the part of the listener. We have no wish to underrate their charm, though, from the reports transmitted to posterity, they would hardly seem to have deserved the very warm eulogy pronounced by the physician, who says,[25] "Her conversations lasted eight and ten hours at a time, without moving ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... which prevails very generally concerning the great inferiority of the ancients in naval skill, requires also to be confined strictly to nautical knowledge, and should not lead us to underrate their mechanical powers, or their means of transporting objects of as great bulk as ourselves by sea. The parade which was made at Paris about transporting the obelisk from Egypt, and erecting it in the Place de Concorde, caused our neighbours to overlook the fact, that there are several ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... Want of delicacy is not in him, but in those who deny him the opportunity of making an elegant choice. Wit certainly is the property of those who have it, nor should we be displeased if it is the only property a man sometimes has. We must not underrate him who uses it for subsistence, and flees from the ingratitude of the age even to ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... have been selected for publication in these volumes possess a value, as examples of the art of public speaking, which no person will be likely to underrate. Those who may differ from Mr. Bright's theory of the public good will have no difficulty in acknowledging the clearness of his diction, the skill with which he arranges his arguments, the vigour of his ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... be supposed, however, because I speak of these differences as not fundamental, that I wish to underrate their value. They are important enough in their way, the structure of the foot being in strict correlation with that of the rest of the organism in each case. Nor can it be doubted that the greater ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... have gone on without discovering it, had Swartboy not been of the party. For the advantage he had given them, by introducing them to the plant, the Bushman claimed nearly as much credit as though he had created it. As no one was disposed to underrate the service he had done, he obtained what appeared full compensation for all the annoyance he had felt at being so ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... for this Chair. I gather—and my own perusal of the poem and of much writing about it confirms the belief—that it has been largely over-praised by some critics, who have thus naturally provoked others to underrate it. Such things happen. I note, but without subscribing to it, the opinion of Vigfusson and York Powell, the learned editors of the "Corpus Poeticum Boreale," that in the "Beowulf" we have 'an epic completely ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... will be found mentioned in the Irish Annals. The inscriptions, however, fully identify the MS. and the box, and show that antiquaries, from the execution of the workmanship and figures on these interesting reliques, often underrate their antiquity—a fault which the world are little inclined to give them credit for, and which they fall into from an anxiety to err on what they consider the side which is least likely to produce the smile of contempt or the sneer of incredulity, forgetting that it ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... though she still works (half by touch, indeed) at her pillow-lace, was glad to hear me read the letter aloud more than once. It recounts—how modestly, and almost as a matter of course!—his late successes. And yet!—does he, in writing to these old people, purposely underrate his great good fortune and seeming happiness, not to shock them too much by the contrast between the delicate enjoyments of the life he now leads among the wealthy and refined, and that bald existence ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... Emperor of Germany, in any direction he might turn he would find a trail of blood and fire over the fair face of his dominions in the Mediterranean. Although it might gall his pride to admit that his enemy was formidable, Charles was too wise a man, too experienced a warrior to underrate his foe. He repaired the fortifications of Naples and Sicily at great cost: he wrote letters to the Pope, to Andrea Doria, to the Viceroys of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia, to the Marquis de Vasto, and Antonio de Leyva to collect all the arms and munitions necessary for the attack on Barbarossa. He ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... the Prince of this policy of devastation," he was saying, "but his Highness has been disposed to treat these rumours lightly, unable to see, as indeed are we all, what useful purpose such a policy could finally serve. He does not underrate the talents of milord Wellington as a commander. He does not imagine that he would pursue such operations out of pure wantonness; yet if such operations are indeed being pursued, what can they be but ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... interdependent, and were such a policy pursued by one nation it would be followed, if not by immediate disarmament in other nations, at any rate, by very considerable reductions. It is very easy to underrate the feeling which for some time past has been growing throughout Europe against the colossal waste of armaments. Even in Germany, whose geographical position from a military point of view is weak, the Socialist vote, which is cast strenuously against armaments, has grown at each election until ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... probable that these as much underrate the vigor and effect of the attack, as Sickles may overstate it. It is not impossible that some portion of the Eleventh Corps position was actually reached by these columns. The road down which the movement was made strikes the plank road but a short distance east of the position ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... event: their efforts were experiments, and their achievements were prophetic. The political philosopher may trace in their errors, trials, and successes, the lessons afforded by experience for the instruction of nations. The rapid advance of modern colonisation tends to underrate the first efforts of our predecessors. The first colonial boat-builder founded a great commercial navy; the first shepherd held in his slender flock a treasure of ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... This feeling did not grow out of any hostility to any man, but simply out of a desire for Republican success. In other words, I endeavored to take an unprejudiced view of the situation. Under no circumstances would I underrate the ability and influence of Mr. Blaine, nor would I endeavor to deprecate the services he has rendered to the Republican party and to the country. But by this time it ought to be understood that I belong to no man, that I am the ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... afraid," returned Denis, "that you underrate the difficulty, madam. What you may be too generous to refuse, I may be too proud to accept. In a moment of noble feeling toward me, you forget what you perhaps ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... the disaster of Bull Run. He was an admirable organizer and a good theoretical strategist; his care for his men won their affection; and sometimes in the field he struck heavy and effective blows. But he was always prone to overrate the enemy's resources and underrate his own; he was slow to follow up a success; and he lacked the bulldog grip by which Grant won. Right on the heels of his failure in the seven-days' fight in the Peninsula, he wrote a letter to the President, from Harrison's Landing, July 7, 1862, lecturing ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... him reflectively. He had little toleration for the man of inferior brain, and, although he did not underrate his power for mischief, he relied upon his own wit to circumvent him. He had disposed of this one by warning Santa Ana, and he concluded to be annoyed by him no further. Besides, as a brother-in-law, he would be insupportable except at the ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... and eager to learn. His interest embraces everything, and most of all what is foreign. He is disposed to admire everything foreign and to underrate what is his own. With foreigners it is just the other way. We Germans know about them, but they know absolutely nothing about us.—PROF. A. LASSON, D.R.S.Z., ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... her husband, about a year previous to her escape, she had suffered greatly, so much so, that on two or three occasions, she had fallen into alarming fits,—a fact by no means agreeable to her owner, as he feared that the traders on learning her failing health would underrate her on this account. But Susan was rather thankful for these signs of weakness, as she was thereby enabled to mature her plans and ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... persuasive voice, "mind that such imprudence would save our enemies, but would not save your father. Pray consider and answer me. Do you really think that your arguments would be stronger than Sarah Brandon's? You cannot so far underrate the diabolical cunning of your enemy. Why, she has no doubt taken all possible measures to keep your father's faith in her unshaken, and to let him die as he has lived, completely deceived by her, and murmuring ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... gives us a lesson, a useless lesson, but I state it all the same, because among the many unprofitable ones that have been written down, it is perhaps of greater worth than most. I do not mean to underrate the gravity of the circumstances in which France is just now involved, for I believe there is pressing need to bring together all the energy, prudence, and courage she possesses in order that the country may come out with honour [Footnote: This essay appeared April ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... dinner to so great a length, that we have hardly time to add one word by way of grace. We can only entreat our readers not to imagine, because we have attempted to extract some amusement from a charity dinner, that we are at all disposed to underrate, either the excellence of the benevolent institutions with which London abounds, or the estimable motives of ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... ashamed of my connection with Bill 709. I had got over that. And when I entered the court room (the tribunal having graciously granted a rehearing on the ground that it had committed an error in the law!) my feelings were of lively curiosity and zest. I had no disposition to underrate his abilities, but I was fortified by the consciousness of a series of triumphs behind me, by a sense of association with prevailing forces against which he was helpless. I could afford to take a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in a tone which seemed to her brother as much to underrate the difficulty, when it was explained, as her fears had exaggerated it before ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... which armies of martyrs have placed their unshakable faith, and whence obscure men and women, like Catherine of Sienna and John Knox, have derived the courage to rebuke popes and kings—is not likely to underrate the importance of the Christian faith as a factor in human history, or to doubt that if that faith should prove to be incompatible with our knowledge, or necessary want of knowledge, some other hypostasis of men's hopes, genuine enough and worthy enough to ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... to repair, remove and replace, you may escape our misfortunes; but I see no proofs that you are sufficiently bold, or indeed that you are sufficiently alarmed. Then as to what is passing here. A year ago we probably overrated your military power. I believe that now we most mischievously underrate it. A year ago nothing alarmed us more than a whisper of the chance of a war with England. We talk of one now with great composure. We believe that it would not be difficult to throw 100,000 men upon your shores, and we believe that half that number would walk over England ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... hardly kept from laughing—"if I see it, thanks must be Wholly to your Lordship's candor. Not that—in a common case— When a bully caught at cheating thrusts a pistol in one's face, I should underrate, believe me, such a trial to the nerve! 'Tis no joke, at one-and-twenty, for a youth to stand nor swerve. Fear I naturally look for—unless, of all men alive, I am forced to make exception when I come to Robert Clive. ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... underrate us all," said Aneta. Then she came close to Maggie and took one of her hands. "I want to ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... unquestionable, had been bestowed, not as a special attribute, but as an auxiliary of other faculties granted in a larger measure. He has himself not only recognized its limits, but shown an inclination to underrate its value. "I have often thought," he remarks in one of his later papers, "that a critic who would attain to largeness of view would be better without any artistic faculty of his own. Goethe alone, by the universality of his poetical genius, was able to apply it in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... nature was pre-eminently a religious one. Dissatisfied with his own excellence, filled with a deep sense of the unapproachable ideal, he reverenced the ancient faith and the opinions of those who had expounded it. This habit of mind led him to underrate his own poetical genius and to attach too great weight to the precedents and judgment of others. He seems to have thought no writer so common-place as not to yield some thought that he might make his own; and, like Milton, he loves to pay the tribute of a passing ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... did us good for a year or two. Now the pendulum has just reached the other extreme. We've swung back once more into our silly dream. Oh, Maraton, it's true enough that we have great problems to face sociologically! Don't think that I underrate them. You know I don't. But every time I sit and talk to you, I have always at the back of my mind that other fear. . . . ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... forcibly then as they strike us now. 'Father and Daughter' was Mrs. Opie's first acknowledged book. It was published in 1801, and the author writes modestly of all her apprehensions. 'Mr. Opie has no patience with me; he consoles me by averring that fear makes me overrate others and underrate myself.' The book was reviewed in the 'Edinburgh.' We hear of one gentleman who lies awake all night after reading it; and Mrs. Inchbald promises a candid opinion, which, however, we do not get. Besides ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... to talk," returned Humphreys approvingly. "Modesty is all right, a very desirable and admirable quality in every young man's character, and one which is seen far too seldom nowadays. Modesty, however, is one thing, and self-depreciation quite another. It is a mistake for anyone to underrate his own value, and, as you very truly say, you are capable of doing much better work than that needed in either of the occupations that you have named; therefore you are justified in insisting upon having it. A man has a perfect right to the very best and most profitable work he is capable of doing; ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... that made him underrate the feat he had performed, for he would have been so glad to have her feel under the slightest obligation to him; but as far as her perceptions were concerned, the beauty of his sentiment was lost, for when he said that the thing that he had done ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... inferior thing for the sake of an inferior class of readers, though they may sometimes decline a good thing because for one reason or another they believe it would not be liked. Still, even this does not often happen; they would rather chance the good thing they doubted of than underrate their readers' judgment. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... take pleasure in sneering at the quality of entertainment given by our aristocracy, merely because it is composed of men who have got rich by the very republican business of sailing ships and selling eatables. Now I by no means underrate the man of letters who truly represents genius, or learning; but that every dabbler in small satire should dub himself a man of letters, and therefore set up for an idol before whom better men must bow, or have their social affairs battered to pieces, is something I cannot ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... patches—bits of gold and bits of tinsel—things written in a hurry to be read in a hurry, and never thought of afterward—suggestive rather than reflective, at the best; and we must plead guilty to a too great proneness to underrate ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... knowing that a man's heart is to the left and not in the middle. This is knowing not only that the earth is round, but knowing exactly where it is flat. Christian doctrine detected the oddities of life. It not only discovered the law, but it foresaw the exceptions. Those underrate Christianity who say that it discovered mercy; any one might discover mercy. In fact every one did. But to discover a plan for being merciful and also severe— THAT was to anticipate a strange need of human nature. For no one wants to be forgiven for a ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... up my literary ideas, and do the best I can, very gladly," said Van Berg. "But you greatly underrate yourself and overrate my ability. I am still but on the edge of this wilderness of knowledge myself, and in crossing a ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... message indicated that the Baptist had no full understanding of what the spiritual kingdom of God comprized. After the envoys had departed, Jesus addressed Himself to the people who had witnessed the interview. He would not have them underrate the importance of the Baptist's service.[572] He reminded them of the time of John's popularity, when some of those then present, and multitudes of others, had gone into the wilderness to hear the prophet's ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... lapsing into fierceness, and if we forget this lurking bellicosity and admiration for hard blows in our own nature then we shall set about the task of making an end to it under hopelessly disabling misconceptions. We shall underrate and misunderstand altogether the very powerful forces that are against ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... armed brig to intercept it, but again I was unfortunate. Like all great organizers I was, however, prepared for failure, and had a series of alternatives prepared, one or the other of which must succeed. You must not underrate the difficulties of my undertaking, or imagine that a mere commonplace assassination would meet the case. We must destroy not only Monsieur Caratal, but Monsieur Caratal's documents, and Monsieur Caratal's companions also, if we had reason to believe that he ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... would cook his books to please the publisher. You can have no conception of the villany done under all these sharing agreements. But forewarned forearmed. Think of some way of baffling this invariable fraud. Ask a knowing printer some way. Do anything but underrate the danger. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... war, and before the distinction was thus partially effaced, the comparison involved very different elements. In our general military inexperience, the majority were not disposed to underrate the value of specific professional training. Education holds in this country much of the prestige held by hereditary rank in Europe, modified only by the condition that the possessor shall take no undue airs upon himself. Even then the penalty consists only ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... Ireland are a sufficient illustration of our disregard of the old Latin proverb which tells us that no man ever became suddenly altogether bad. Even now public opinion is too prone to attach excessive value to projects of vague and visionary development, and to underrate the importance of serious thought and quiet work, which can be the only solid foundation of our national progress. In these new associations—humble indeed in their origin, but destined to play a large ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... seven deadly virtues, Gladys. You, as a good Tory, must not underrate them. Beer, the Bible, and the seven deadly virtues have made our England ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... diverse sources, different minds come to different statistical conclusions. Dean Milman ("Hist. of Christianity," vol. ii. p. 341) when deliberately weighing opposite opinions, says cautiously, that "Gibbon is perhaps inclined to underrate" the number of the Christians. He adds: "M. Beugnot agrees much with Gibbon, and I should conceive, with regard to the ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... without the knowledge of any of those who were so eager to keep her out of the country, seemed impossible; but then in diplomacy it was often the impossible things which happened. He was too astute a man to underrate the undoubted ability of De Froilette. There were few men who probed more accurately the likely trend of future events, or who were quicker to recognize opportunities and seize them than the Frenchman, and Lord Cloverton argued ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves, or when they are disclosed, surprise nobody ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... caution you—do not temporize with him. He stands in the North for oppression; gain at any cost; for debauchery—everything that you do not. Between you and Brute MacNair there can be no truce. He is powerful. Do not for a moment underrate either his strength or his sagacity. He is a man of wealth, and his hold upon the Indians is absolute. I cannot remain with you, but through my Indians I shall keep in touch with you, work with you; and together we will accomplish the downfall of ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... work of a man who became Prime Minister of England and made his sovereign Empress of India, but as much or as little as if they had been composed by a recluse in a hermitage. This impression has now become so general with enlightened critics that the danger seems to be that we should underrate certain excesses of rhetoric and the Corinthian mode the errors of which used to be over-emphasised, but should not, in a comparative survey of Victorian literature, be neglected as serious drawbacks to our ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... which was of great service to him during his political career as the successor of Isaac Butt. This was the faculty of weighing up the special qualities of the various members of the Irish Party and using them accordingly. Without attempting for a moment to underrate Parnell as a great leader of men, I must say that there were members of the Party far abler in many respects than he was, and, no doubt, in looking around for someone to supply the qualities in which he, himself, was wanting, he could see that ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... he had even yet encouraged himself to underrate the true importance of the feeling which Emily had awakened in him. There was an end to all self-deception now. After what Francine had said to him, this shallow and frivolous man no longer resisted the all-absorbing influence ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... business man like yourself. As for poor me I feel that I am a child in business matters. I can invent and perfect the invention, and demonstrate its uses and practicability, but 'further the deponent saith not.' Perhaps I underrate myself in this case, but that is not a usual fault ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... did not sufficiently discourage them. Ah, Florence, never underrate the pangs of hope crushed, of ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... advantage of an admission contained in a speech of Sir James Graham, that during the last twelve months pauperism had diminished, and trade and commerce had improved in the country because the price of wheat was low, Mr. Ward said that he was not going to underrate the benefit produced by an abundant harvest, but he believed that still greater benefit had been effected by the the liberal policy of government. The idea that there were any peculiar burdens on the land, was a fallacy peculiar to English gentlemen ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... must rouse to a sense of its noble duties and exalted powers. We underrate the Church. We are looking elsewhere for our highest ideals, instead of claiming from the Church that spiritual guidance and inspiration which should be its right to give. One of the things that is a monumental astonishment to ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... third, and a good third, to these two fine and subtle studies of modern English life. It is one of those poems which, because they seem simple and superficial, and can be galloped off the tongue in a racing jingle, we are apt to underrate or overlook. Yet it would be difficult to find a more vivid bit of genre painting than the three-panelled picture in this ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... be the last to underrate the part which the self-assertion of the individual has played in the evolution of mankind. However, this subject requires, I believe, a much deeper treatment than the one it has hitherto received. In the history of mankind, individual self-assertion ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... their small way, just to make a beginning; but they do not lay much stress upon any thing they can accomplish with the use of their own method in this field. It serves, however, a very convenient purpose with them; neither do they at all underrate its intrinsic importance. ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... than to send them back what they are supposed to send to us? Make the venture. Begin the fight in India, in foreign countries, in the departments. Macassar Oil has been thoroughly advertised; we must not underrate its power, it has been pushed everywhere, the ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... indifferently; "I care nothing about him." She rose and stood in front of him and leaned her elbows on his shoulders. "You may underrate yourself, if you like," she went on, "but I know that you are capable of accomplishing anything you wish, and of distinguishing yourself. I recall the conversations I have had with you in your serious ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... to a minority. The public was, indeed, inclined rather to overrate than to underrate the benefits which might be derived by England from the Indian trade. What was the most effectual mode of extending that trade was a question which excited general interest, and which was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... more valuable than ever before in the history of the race. I do not agree with the pessimists who think that a democratic civilization is necessarily an enemy to fine writing for the public. Such critics underrate the challenge which these millions of minds to be reached and souls to be touched must possess for the courageous author; they forget that writers, like actors, are inspired by a crowded house. But the thought and the labor and the pain that lie behind good writing are doubly difficult ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... the sister, and it was quite reasonable, therefore, to believe that Talbot was a man not likely to be easily duped. The principals in this crime were evidently well aware of the trust reposed in the Assistant Under-Secretary, and they, again, would not underrate his intelligence. Hence there was a good cause for Talbot to accept the explanations, whatever they were, given him during the conclave in the dining-room; the effect of which, in Inspector Sharpe's words, had been ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... life and character as he knew them. He had no intention to deceive any one by a eulogy. He indulged in no illusions about Pierce, nor about any of his other friends. He was, in fact, an unsparing critic of men's characters, and he had a trait, not rare in New England,—a willingness to underrate men and minimize them. His fellow-citizens are not natural hero-worshipers; to them "a man is a man, for a' that," with an accent that levels down as well as up. Hawthorne had to the full this democratic, familiar, derogatory temper. Pierce was to him a politician, just as Cilley ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... some other contribution from each individual, besides the particular duties of his profession. And, if no such liberal intercourse be established, it is the common failing of human nature, to be engrossed with petty views and interests, to underrate the importance of all in which we are not concerned, and to carry our partial notions into cases where they are inapplicable, to act, in short, as so many unconnected units, displacing and ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... calfdom and whelpage that you smile at I would have you throb with. You underrate the firstlings of the heart, the rose and white blossoming, the call upon the senses and the readiness to respond and to fulfil, to give and to take, to be and make happy—the great pride and utter abandon which is young love. ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... position from which we might magnetise Europe. But suppose the Turks, through Lesser Asia, conquer Lebanon, while we are overrunning the Babylonian and Assyrian monarchies? That will never do. I see your strength here with your own people and the Druses, and I do not underrate their qualities: but who is to garrison the north of Syria? Who is to keep the passes of the North? What population have you to depend on between Tripoli and Antioch, or between Aleppo and Adanah? Of all this I ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... I underrate my strength of mind and the influence of habit, which makes easy to us every path; but I will not ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... Olivia, the impression they had made on him grew stronger. He was too good a judge of men not to perceive that the budding dramatist had the intelligent imagination which makes for real shrewdness, and he was not disposed to underrate the value of the imagination in forming judgments of men and women. Probably Colonel Grey was a man of less intensity of emotion than Mr. Manley had declared, and Lady Loudwater less subtile and intelligent. But, ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... matter of modest scruples! You underrate yourself, Everett. You are the very man for a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... don't for a moment imagine I underrate the function of the preacher. There's nothing better than a good sermon,—one that puts new life into you. But what of a sermon that takes life out of you? instead of a spiritual fountain, a spiritual ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... people who live snugly at home, surrounded by springs, and wells, and streams, with cisterns, and reservoirs, and pipes, and hydrants, and jets, and fountains, playing at all times around them, are prone to underrate these sufferings; in fact, too prone, might I not say, to discredit everything that does not come under the sphere of their own observation? They will readily believe that their cat can open a door-latch, and their ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... in so bad a way as this, we may be sure. Raleigh, who did nothing by halves, was not accustomed to underrate his own misfortunes. His health was uncertain, indeed, and it was still worse in 1606; but his condition otherwise was not so deplorable as this letter would tend to prove. Poor Lady Raleigh soon recovered her equanimity, and the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir George Harvey, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... be so affected by any calamity as to neglect his duty. It is, indeed, friendly in you, Fannius, to tell me that better things are said of me than I feel worthy of or desire to have said; but it seems to me that you underrate Cato. For either there never was a wise man (and so I am inclined to think), or if there has been such a man, Cato deserves the name. To omit other things, how nobly did he bear his son's death! I remembered Paulus, [Footnote: Paulus Aemilius, who ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... concealed under Latin names, but still aliens, not citizens of his own State, aliens with whom he had little or nothing in common, who had no home in his patriotic feeling, no place in his religious experience.[593] As I said at the beginning of the last lecture, we must not underrate the religiousness of the Roman character, which was never entirely lost; but the secret of its comparative uselessness lies in this—that the natural desire to be right with the Power manifesting itself in the universe, and to know more of that Power, became weakened and ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... it, no doubt, justified itself in others. Who can say what that weekly gathering meant to women who otherwise would not move outside their little treadmill of household labour, what uplifting, if seemingly futile grasps at the great outside of life? Let no one underrate the Women's Club until the years ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... cunning, or Shylock of race-hatred; and he contrives to preserve all the characteristics of an ideal type amid surroundings of intensely prosaic realism, with which he himself, moreover, considered as an individual character in a specific story, is in complete, accord. If any one be disposed to underrate the creative and dramatic power to which this testifies, let him consider how it has commonly fared with those writers of prose fiction who have attempted to personify a virtue in a man. Take the work of another famous English humourist ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... laughing—"if I see it, thanks must be Wholly to your Lordship's candor. Not that—in a common case— When a bully caught at cheating thrusts a pistol in one's face, I should underrate, believe me, such a trial to the nerve! 'Tis no joke, at one-and-twenty, for a youth to stand nor swerve. Fear I naturally look for—unless, of all men alive, I am forced to make exception when I come to Robert Clive. Since at Arcot, Plassy, elsewhere, he and death—the whole world knows— ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... "We mustn't underrate Chambers, however," he declared. "The man made one mistake. He underrated us. We can't repeat his mistake. He is dangerous all the time. He will stop at nothing. ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... prophetic. The political philosopher may trace in their errors, trials, and successes, the lessons afforded by experience for the instruction of nations. The rapid advance of modern colonisation tends to underrate the first efforts of our predecessors. The first colonial boat-builder founded a great commercial navy; the first shepherd held in his slender flock ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... a fashion she did not wholly comprehend. "My dear Lady Carfax! You underrate friendship when you say a thing like that. Sit down, won't you? And let me tell you what ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... old man with a persuasive voice, "mind that such imprudence would save our enemies, but would not save your father. Pray consider and answer me. Do you really think that your arguments would be stronger than Sarah Brandon's? You cannot so far underrate the diabolical cunning of your enemy. Why, she has no doubt taken all possible measures to keep your father's faith in her unshaken, and to let him die as he has lived, completely deceived by her, ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... his proper station in society, to make him wise and happy, an honest man, a virtuous citizen, and a good patriot, by furnishing him with a comfortable school-house, suitable class-books, competent teachers, and, if he is poor, paying his quarter bills, while they greatly underrate, if they do not entirely overlook, that high moral training, without which knowledge is the power of doing evil rather than good. It may possibly nurture up a race of intellectual giants, but, like the sons of Anak, they ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... not for one who has rowed fifty races with pleasure to underrate, far less to disparage, mere rowing; but still we maintain that for the encouragement of pure manliness, and the varied capacities useful in a sailor's life, one punt chase is far better than ten of ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... then, let's see, let's see,' I reached it out to him. He stretched down over the banisters, and took it; holding out his palm hollowed, as if 'twas some little paltry stone that might otherwise fall and be lost. It nettled me to have him thus underrate our treasure, even though he had never seen it, and so I plumped it down into his hand as if it were as big as a pumpkin. Now the hall was a dim place, being lit only by a half-circle of glass over the door, and so I could not see very well; yet in reaching down he brought his ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... was to Lady Susan Condit that they owed this inestimable benefit; an advantage ranking in Miss Pinsent's opinion above even the lawn tennis courts and the resident chaplain. It was the fact of Lady Susan's annual visit that made the hotel what it was. Miss Pinsent was certainly the last to underrate such a privilege:—"It's so important, my dear, forming as we do a little family, that there should be some one to give the tone; and no one could do it better than Lady Susan—an earl's daughter and a person of such determination. Dear Mrs. Ainger ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... hour of emergency finds a hero calm and strong, and strong because calm and clear-sighted; he sees what can be done, and does it. This is often a thing of great simplicity, so that we marvel others did not see it. Now it has been done, and proved successful, many underrate its value, thinking that they also would have done precisely the same thing. The world is more just. It refuses to men unassailed by the difficulties of a situation the glory they have not earned. The world knows how easy most things appear when they ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... Pasha had also received reports that led him to underrate the strength of the Christian armada, and so induced him to put out to sea in search of it. Twice he had reconnoitred the allied fleet. Before Don Juan arrived at Messina, Ulugh Ali had sent one of his corsairs, Kara Khodja, to cruise ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... genius; although he possessed, in an eminent degree, the power of appropriating and embellishing the works of others, that his style was graceful, his allusions happy, and his wit keen and spontaneous. If any one assert that this is to underrate Le Sage, and that he is entitled to the credit of an inventor, let him cite any single work written by Le Sage, except Gil Blas, in proof of his assertion. Of course Gil Blas is out of the question. Nothing could be more circular than an argument that Le Sage, because he possessed an inventive ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... moments when we feel that but little artistic pleasure is to be gained from the study of the modern realistic school. Its works are powerful but they are painful, and after a time we tire of their harshness, their violence and their crudity. They exaggerate the importance of facts and underrate the importance of fiction. Such, at any rate, is the mood—and what is criticism itself but a mood?—produced in us by a perusal of Mr. Coleridge's Demetrius. It is the story of a young lad of unknown parentage who is brought up in the household of ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... hardly be supposed that I underrate the horrors of war. I have imagination enough and sympathy enough to follow almost as if I beheld it with my eyes, the great tragedy which has been unfolded in South Africa. The spirit of Jingoism is an epidemic of which I await the passing away more earnestly than we do that of any other plague. ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... the popular heart—he was very close to the common people. He had slept on the ground with his soldiers, fared at table with the swineherd's family, tilled the soil with the farmer folk. His heart went out to humanity. He did not overrate the average mind, nor did he underrate it. He had faith in mankind, and knew that at the last power was with the people. He did not say, "Vox populi, vox Dei," but he thought it. Therefore he set himself to educating the plain people. He prophesied a day when all grown men would be able to read and write, ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... her courage. There are the lesser courages and the greater. There are many who dare face danger and undertake hard tasks, and face ridicule and failure. It is a fine and a true courage and I do not underrate it. Helen Trounstine had it and had it to the full. She tackled hard tasks; she faced some men whose interests she opposed. She fought out her fights against all comers, and never flinched. She would go into the court or into the saloon ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... great fault of our age to underrate parental dignity. In the easy-going world, preference is given to profligate celibacy over honorable wedlock; marriage itself is degraded to the level of a purely natural contract, its bond has lost its character of indissolubility and its obligations are ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... been selected for publication in these volumes possess a value, as examples of the art of public speaking, which no person will be likely to underrate. Those who may differ from Mr. Bright's theory of the public good will have no difficulty in acknowledging the clearness of his diction, the skill with which he arranges his arguments, the vigour of his style, the persuasiveness of ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... Do you underrate the good sense of yours, if, in far more than half the things appertaining to daily life, the wisest men say, 'Better leave them to the women'? But you're forgetting the figure, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... are mistaken," he added after a moment's reflection. "You don't realize how little I've talked to the child about books—or anything else, for that matter. It does chance that her taste is mine in very many cases; but you underrate our protege when you speak of her as ignorant and uncultured. She knows a good deal more about some things than either of us. It is her fund of nature lore that makes Thoreau and White of Selborne appeal to her. Now I ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... been ennobled for nearly three centuries; they bore a knightly name before their elevation. They have mainly and materially assisted in making England what it is. They have shed their blood in many battles; I have had two ancestors killed in the command of our fleets. You will not underrate such services, even if you do not appreciate their conduct as statesmen, though that has often been laborious, and sometimes distinguished. The finest trees in England were planted by my family; they raised several of your most beautiful churches; they have built bridges, made roads, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... custodian, with Bentley, of Hal Willett's unconscious confidences—compelled to see a young girl's rapturous love lavished upon a man so saturated with the incense of feminine idolatry as to be more than apt to underrate the priceless boon of a pure ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... no wish to deny or underrate the additions made to the evil by the intervention of causes, whose operation admits of being traced in some measure distinctly from the effect of this grand one. They may be traced in an operation which is distinguishable; ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... outrival his barbarian brother. He succeeds, not simply because of the superior address and sagacity which education gives him, though that, no doubt, has much to do with it; not altogether because his habits of life are better, though we would not underrate their value; but equally because the culture of the brain gives a finer life to every red drop in his arteries, and greater hardihood to every fibre which is woven into his flesh. If it is not so, how do you explain the fact that our colored soldier, fighting in his native climate, with the same ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... condition unsettled her resolution. Tales enough of his bloodthirstiness, his merciless efficiency, his ever-ready craft and consummate duplicity were familiar to her—most of them made so within the last three days—for no one in her circle any longer professed to underrate the ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... at the ford, has corrupted all who came to her; she has been the paralysis of Islam. But the Islam of the Turk is a different thing from the Islam of the Arab. That was one of the great progressive impulses in the world of men. It is our custom to underrate the Arab's contribution to civilisation quite absurdly in comparison with our debt to the Hebrew and Greek. It is to the initiatives of Islamic culture, for example, that we owe our numerals, the bulk of modern mathematics, and the science of chemistry. ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... be supposed that I would underrate the possibility of a deeper unity, but if we would find it we must carry our analysis further back. The progress of science is in truth not a cause but a result, not an ultimate fact but the symptom of a state of mind. It springs from that which was brought into Europe consciously at the ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... sake of an inferior class of readers, though they may sometimes decline a good thing because for one reason or another they believe it would not be liked. Still, even this does not often happen; they would rather chance the good thing they doubted of than underrate their ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... your Western friends, I think, underrate this speech. It has produced a greater effect here than any other single speech. It is the real platform in the Eastern States, and must carry the conservative element in New York, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... agent could reach it. I fitted out a small armed brig to intercept it, but again I was unfortunate. Like all great organizers I was, however, prepared for failure, and had a series of alternatives prepared, one or the other of which must succeed. You must not underrate the difficulties of my undertaking, or imagine that a mere commonplace assassination would meet the case. We must destroy not only Monsieur Caratal, but Monsieur Caratal's documents, and Monsieur ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... struggle, fired at in front, sniped at from behind—and no one who saw what he had to do after he came home from Europe in meeting the great new problems which grew out of the war—will for a moment belittle the immensity of his task, or underrate his extraordinary ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... the main paragraph above, that it is a common error of our prosodists, to underrate, by one foot, the measure of all trochaic lines, when they terminate with single rhyme; an error into which they are led by an other as gross, that of taking for hypermeter, or mere surplus, the whole rhyme itself, the sound or syllable ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... proceedeth out of the mouth of God.' We who live in a great commercial community and know how solid comfort and hope and gladness are all contingent, in millions of humble homes, upon the manufacturing industry of these districts, shall never be likely to underrate the enormous expansion in national industry, and the consequent enormous increase in national wealth, which belongs to this last half century. I ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... is a command, and Elizabeth would have felt bound to obey this summons, but she was sick when it came. At least she was not well, and she was not much disposed to underrate her sickness for the sake of being able to travel on this occasion. The officers of her household made out a formal certificate to the effect that Elizabeth was not able ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... unexplained veering of the magnetic needle to the west, in the mysteries whereof the Captain was not also versed. When Columbus wanted to keep his sailors quiet on that wondrous voyage over an unknown ocean to the Western world, the diplomatic admiral made so bold as to underrate the length of each day's sail in an unveracious log, which he kept for the inspection of his crew; but no doctoring of the social log-book ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... lost your little ones," Mrs. Hare resumed. "That is grief—great grief; I would not underrate it; but, believe me, it is as nothing compared to the awful fate, should it ever fall upon you, of finding your children grow up and become that which makes you wish they had died in their infancy. There are times when I am tempted to regret that all my treasures are not in that other world; ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of maturity. The mind in its reaches toward strength and completeness creates a heart-sympathy—which in its turn craves fulness. There is a vanity too about the first steps of manly education, which is disposed to underrate the innocence and unripened judgment of the other sex. Men see the mistake as they grow older; for the judgment of a woman, in all matters of the affections, ripens by ten years faster ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... sailed from Peiraeus, he urged the necessity of taking prompt measures for placing the city in a thorough state of defence. He had no fear, he said, of the ultimate triumph of Syracuse in the approaching struggle: only let them be on their guard, and not underrate the power of the enemy whom they would have to face. The words of Hermocrates, who enjoyed a high reputation for valour, patriotism, and sagacity, were not without their effect, and it was resolved that the generals should at once set about organizing the military resources of Syracuse, and providing ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... fall into the error of writers who underrate their readers' curiosity and intelligence, and so deluge them with comments and explanations, we will now simply relate what Wylie did, leaving you to glean his motives as ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... "I think you underrate us all," said Aneta. Then she came close to Maggie and took one of her hands. "I want to tell you ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... but I say, Maurice, you must not underrate Lilias. She has gone through a good deal with Dolores, and I believe she has been the making of her. You've had to leave the poor child a good deal to herself and Fraulein, and, as you see by this affair, she had some ways ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... experiments, a discontented underrating of past traditions, than a meek acquiescence in their supremacy. What is our present condition? We have few poets of the first rank, few essayists or reflective writers, few dramatists, few biographers. I do not at all wish to underrate the immense vitality of our imaginative faculties, which shows itself in our vast output of fiction; but even here we have few masters, and our critics know and care little for style; they are entirely preoccupied with plot and incident and situation. What we lack is true originality, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves, or when they are disclosed, surprise nobody so ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "how gladly would I sacrifice myself to attack this wrong or that iniquity." We need offer no opinion about the moral quality of such a position; enough to say that it is idle to ignore, or even to underrate, the ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... school-masters, and all the teaching, and all the books, the ignorance of the unscientific world is enormous; they are ignorant both ways—they underrate the scientific people and they overrate them. There is, on the one hand, the Irish woman who is disappointed because you cannot tell fortunes, and, on the other hand, the cultivated woman who supposes that ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... literary ideas, and do the best I can, very gladly," said Van Berg. "But you greatly underrate yourself and overrate my ability. I am still but on the edge of this wilderness of knowledge myself, and in crossing ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... on thus for rather more than a year, when Richard Calmady married. Julius was perhaps inclined, beforehand, to underrate the importance of that event. He was singularly innocent, so far, of the whole question of woman. He had no sisters. At Oxford he had lived exclusively among men, while the Tractarian Movement had offered a sufficient outlet to all his emotion. The severe and exquisite verses of the "Lyra ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... fortunate enough to possess, makes us forget the limitations of these documents. We tend thus to exaggerate that which must be only incidental, as, for example, the Jewish element, in the teaching of Jesus. We thus underrate phases of Jesus' teaching which, no doubt, a man like Paul would have apprehended better than did the evangelists themselves. In truth, in Harnack's own delineation of the teaching of Jesus, those elements of it which found their way to expression in Paul, or again in the fourth Gospel, ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... knowing not only that the earth is round, but knowing exactly where it is flat. Christian doctrine detected the oddities of life. It not only discovered the law, but it foresaw the exceptions. Those underrate Christianity who say that it discovered mercy; any one might discover mercy. In fact every one did. But to discover a plan for being merciful and also severe— THAT was to anticipate a strange need of human nature. For ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... earth I should be the last to underrate the advantages of wealth,—I who have been reared in the gutter, which is Poverty's cradle. Yet I would fain Charlotte's fortune had come to her in any other fashion than as the result of my work in the character of ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... the temporary wretchedness of a whole community,—I do not deny to be in some sort natural; because, when people see a political object which they ardently desire but in one point of view, they are apt extremely to palliate or underrate the evils which may arise in obtaining it. This is no reflection on the humanity of those persons. Their good-nature I am the last man in the world to dispute. It only shows that they are not sufficiently informed or sufficiently ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... uttering the monstrous proposition, which was enough to shake the Latin Quarter to the dust, with entire simplicity. "It's all experience, besides," he continued; "and it seems to me there's a tendency to underrate experience, both as net profit and investment. Never mind. That's done with. But it took courage for you to say what you did, and I'll never forget it. Here's my hand, Mr. Dodd. I'm not your equal in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by no means intended to underrate technical proficiency. No one can be a satisfactory exponent of music whose technique is deficient, however profound may be his musicianly understanding and feeling. At the same time, with every tone, every measure, mechanically correct, a performance may fail to move the listener, ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... are drunkards. Doubtless there are. Then I stand here as a woman to entreat, to beseech, to pray against this sin. For the sake of these drunken woman, I ask the ballot to drag them back from the rum-shops and shut their doors [applause]. God forbid that I should underrate the power of love; that I should discard tenderness. Let us have entreaty, let us have prayers, and let us have the ballot, to eradicate this evil. Mr. Collier says he is full of sympathy, and intimates that women should stand here and elevate love above law. So ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... not underrate the magnitude of the problem presented to the people of America by the immense volume of immigration from alien races, and chiefly from the most undesirable strata in those races, of the last few years. On the other hand, I have no shadow of doubt of the ability of the people to cope with the problem ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... archaeology is only really delightful when transfused into some form of art. I have no desire to underrate the services of laborious scholars, but I feel that the use Keats made of Lempriere's Dictionary is of far more value to us than Professor Max Muller's treatment of the same mythology as a disease of ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... Strait-jacket. One must not underrate the magnificence of this long-headed idea, one must not underestimate its giant possibilities in the matter of trooping the Church solidly together and keeping it so. It squelches independent inquiry, and makes such a thing impossible, profane, criminal, it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sleep. For every man there must be certain stated intervals of repose—of recreation in the original sense of the word. My views on the worthlessness of classical education are perhaps pretty well known to you, but I don't underrate the great service that my friend Professor Ezra K. Higgins has rendered by his discovery[5] that the word recreation originally signified a re-creating—i.e.,[6] a time for the nerve-tissues to renew themselves in. The problem before us is how to secure for the human units in the Dawn—these ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... slipping past Rowley's blockade, much to that enterprising officer's annoyance. The situation was temporarily relieved, but the assistance thus afforded was no better than a plaster on a large wound. Here again we find Flinders accurately and fully informed: Decaen did not underrate his "dangerous" potentialities. "The ordinary sources of revenue and emolument were nearly dried up, and to have recourse to the merchants for a loan was impossible, the former bills upon the French treasury, drawn it was said for three millions ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... of the war, and before the distinction was thus partially effaced, the comparison involved very different elements. In our general military inexperience, the majority were not disposed to underrate the value of specific professional training. Education holds in this country much of the prestige held by hereditary rank in Europe, modified only by the condition that the possessor shall take no undue airs upon himself. Even then the penalty consists ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... not be thought to underrate the services which, by sound precept and invaluable example, Mr. Lang has rendered to all of us who use the English tongue. Conservatism and liberalism are as inevitable, nay, indispensable, in the world of words ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... his services can avowedly be best utilized. This statement is true of Chamberlain. He was, as the Times put it, "the Carnot of the moment, the organizer of Liberal victory." [Footnote: Neither Sir Charles Dilke nor Mr. Chamberlain would, however, have desired to underrate the great share in organizing the victory of Mr. Adam, the principal Liberal Whip in the House of Commons, whose services were generally considered to have been very insufficiently recognized by Mr. Gladstone.] Moreover, the confidence and friendship which led to constant ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... man for their gallantry and fidelity. Now for the first time (and that he could have remained ignorant of it so long speaks for the passionate unanimity with which the Gauls had risen) he learnt from prisoners the fate of Sabinus. He did not underrate the greatness of the catastrophe. The soldiers in the army he treated always as friends and comrades in arms, and the loss of so many of them was as personally grievous to him as the effects of it might be politically mischievous. He made it the subject of a second ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... their nearly useless batteries to be dismembered and blown to pieces by the incessant fire of the enemy's long guns. Nor, by thus continuing to fight, did this American frigate, one iota, promote the true interests of her country. I seek not to underrate any reputation which the American Captain may have gained by this battle. He was a brave man; that no sailor will deny. But the whole world is made up of brave men. Yet I would not be at all understood as impugning his special good name. Nevertheless, it is not to be doubted, that if there ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... others, of which accounts have already been published, will be found mentioned in the Irish Annals. The inscriptions, however, fully identify the MS. and the box, and show that antiquaries, from the execution of the workmanship and figures on these interesting reliques, often underrate their antiquity—a fault which the world are little inclined to give them credit for, and which they fall into from an anxiety to err on what they consider the side which is least likely to produce the smile of contempt or the sneer of incredulity, forgetting that it is the sole business ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... of integrity, morality, and honour. The Queen is afraid that the diplomatic intrigues and counter intrigues at Madrid have made us lose daily more of that advantageous position without any compensation on the other side. The Queen entreats Lord John Russell not to underrate the importance of keeping our foreign policy beyond reproach. Public opinion is recognised as a ruling power in our domestic affairs; it is not of less importance in the society of Europe with reference to the conduct of an individual ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... Tyrconnell, broken down with physical suffering and mental anxiety, feebly concurred in his opinion. They accordingly departed for Galway, leaving the city to its fate, and, happily for the national reputation, to bolder counsels than their own. De Boisseleau did not underrate the character of the Irish levies, who had retreated before twice their numbers at the Boyne; he declared himself willing to remain, and, sustained by Sarsfield, he was chosen as commandant. More than ten thousand foot had gathered ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... as is believed, presented with entire fairness a summary of the more important aspects in which the constitutional objections mentioned have been urged. I would not underrate by a hair's breadth the authority of these great names, the weight of these continuous reassertions of principle, the sanction even of the precedent and general practice through a century. And yet I venture to think that no candid and competent ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... John's message indicated that the Baptist had no full understanding of what the spiritual kingdom of God comprized. After the envoys had departed, Jesus addressed Himself to the people who had witnessed the interview. He would not have them underrate the importance of the Baptist's service.[572] He reminded them of the time of John's popularity, when some of those then present, and multitudes of others, had gone into the wilderness to hear the prophet's stern admonition; and they had found him to be ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... Red Jacket's mind, was self esteem, which led him to be quite tenacious of his own opinion. He probably did not underrate his own ability. He felt conscious of possessing talents, which would enable him to act with dignity and propriety, in any emergency calling for their exercise. He never appeared to be intimidated or embarrassed at the thought of meeting with great men, but seemed always to be at home ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... whom Caesar came earliest in collision, each as the representative of his party on vital points of difference. Our historian's estimate of the life, labors, purposes, and character of Pompeius is singularly correct, when we consider the temptation that he has to underrate the man with whom Caesar has stood in direct opposition for nineteen centuries. There are few more emphatic passages in the historical literature of our language than the account which is given in Vol. II. ch. 18, of the last days ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... Flammock, "and underrate his value. Sound judgment is like to the graduated measuring-wand, which, though usually applied only to coarser cloths, will give with equal truth the dimensions of Indian silk, or of cloth ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... classes of literature than fiction, is that in the Scotch Universities there are what we have not in England—well-attended chairs of literature, systematically and methodically studied. Do not let it be supposed that I at all underrate the value of fiction. On the contrary, when a man has done a hard day's work, what can he do better than fall to and read the novels of Walter Scott, or the Brontes, or Mrs. Gaskell, or some of our living writers. I am rather ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... this hypothesis of identity in race has given rise to a tendency to underrate the development of the ancient people of Mexico and Central America, and to lower the estimate of their attainments sufficiently to bring them within reach of close relationship to the wild Indians. The difficulty being reduced in this way, there follows an attempt ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... visibly stumbled over the right of impressment. Even while claiming that its abandonment would have been "vitally dangerous if not fatal" to England's security, he added that he "would be the last man in the world to underrate the inconvenience which the Americans sustained in consequence of our assertion of the right of search." The embarrassment became still plainer when he narrowed the question to one of statistics, and showed that the whole contest ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... be trifled with, like a Mingo's conscience. No, no; off hands, or we shall see which can make the stoutest battle; you and your men of the 55th, or the Sarpent here, and Killdeer, with Jasper and his crew. You overrate your force, Lieutenant Muir, as much as you underrate Eau-douce's truth." ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... the worthiest design. But no worthy design can need a false apology; and it is worse than idle to prevaricate. That is but a spurious modesty, which prompts a man to disclaim in one way what he assumes in an other—or to underrate the duties of his office, that he may boast of having "done all that could reasonably be expected." Whoever professes to have improved the science of English grammar, must claim to know more of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... they can deal with our present system in this piecemeal way very much underrate the strength of the tremendous organization under which we live, and which appoints to each of us his place, and if we do not chance to fit it, grinds us down till we do. Nothing but a tremendous force can deal with this force; it will not suffer itself ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... in many minds an impression that he is more a thinker than a poet: that his poems not only are each inspired by some leading idea, but have grown up in subservience to it; and those who hold this view both do him injustice as a poet, and underrate, however unconsciously, the intellectual value of what his work conveys. For in a poet's imagination, the thought and the thing—the idea and its image—grow up at the same time; each being a different aspect of the other.[86] ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... is danger that the Southern whites will, as a rule, misinterpret the meaning of the exodus. Many are inclined to underrate its importance, and those who appreciate its significance are apt to look for temporary and superficial remedies. The vague promises made at the Vicksburg convention, which was controlled by the whites, and called to consider the emigration movement, have had no influence with the ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... girl, in the kindest, gentlest way, that I could not consent to deliver judgment upon any one's manuscript, because an individual's verdict was worthless. It might underrate a work of high merit and lose it to the world, or it might overrate a trashy production and so open the way for its infliction upon the world: I said that the great public was the only tribunal competent to sit in judgment upon a literary effort, and therefore it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... supposed, however, because I speak of these differences as not fundamental, that I wish to underrate their value. They are important enough in their way, the structure of the foot being in strict correlation with that of the rest of the organism in each case. Nor can it be doubted that the greater ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... connection with Bill 709. I had got over that. And when I entered the court room (the tribunal having graciously granted a rehearing on the ground that it had committed an error in the law!) my feelings were of lively curiosity and zest. I had no disposition to underrate his abilities, but I was fortified by the consciousness of a series of triumphs behind me, by a sense of association with prevailing forces against which he was helpless. I could afford to take a superior attitude in regard to one who was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... social habits of man are of paramount importance to him, we must not underrate the importance of his bodily structure, to which subject the remainder of this chapter will be devoted; the development of the intellectual and social or moral faculties being discussed ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... was (Jemima was not the person to underrate her abilities), somehow it put new heart into Kate, made her realize that she had at hand a staff to lean upon, a counselor who, despite her youth, possessed a certain wisdom that her mother ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... underestimation; depreciation &c (detraction) 934; pessimism, pessimist; undervaluing &c v.; modesty &c 881. V. underrate, underestimate, undervalue, underreckon^; depreciate; disparage &c (detract) 934; not do justice to; misprize, disprize; ridicule &c 856; slight &c (despise) 930; neglect &c 460; slur over. make light of, make little of, make nothing of, make no account of; belittle; minimize, think nothing of; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... need not exaggerate its importance, unless the British Empire were involved in serious complications elsewhere which might encourage the seditious elements in India to break out into open rebellion. We are too often, in fact, inclined to underrate the strength of the foundations upon which our rule rests. For it alone lends—and can within any measurable time lend—substantial reality to the mere geographical expression which India is. A few Indians may dream of a united India under Indian rule, ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... echoed, turning to Endymion, with a twinkle of malice in his eye. "But when Mr. Westcote releases us, it will be en masse; and then, believe me, I shall come with an army, since I underrate neither the strength of the fortress nor ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of state, whence go abroad the statutes he has framed, shall read again his earlier works, now rescued from the past to teach the young. Reporters on his words shall hang, from every window shall his sapient visage smile, and even the London Times shall think it worth the while to underrate him. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... fellow," interposed George quickly, "you underrate Professor Keredec's shrewdness. His plans are not so simple as you think. He knows that my cousin Louise never obtained a ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... this was an important election. Yes, the effect upon his Majesty's Government and upon the Liberal Party for good or ill from this election cannot fail to be far-reaching. There are strong forces against us. Do not underrate the growing strength of the Tory reaction now in progress in many of the constituencies in England. I say it earnestly to those who are members of the Labour Party here to-day—do not underrate the storm which is gathering over your heads as well as ours. I am not afraid of the forces which ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... me. Do not think I am decrying a classical education; and, as the daughter of a great mathematician, it is not likely that I should underrate mathematics as a mental discipline. I am only urging that they should be subordinated to higher ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... old partisan and religious sectarian parasites he will find men who will obey him with the fanatical alacrity of those who followed Peter the Hermit in the first Crusade. We repeat again, let us not underrate Brownlow." ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... the government of Rome. The veteran leader professed a great contempt for his young adversary, "I should whip the boy," he said, "if I were not afraid of the old woman" (meaning Pompey's colleague). But he took good care not to underrate him in practice, and put forth all his skill in dealing with him. Pompey's first campaign against him was disastrous; the successes of the second were checkered by some serious defeats. For five years the struggle continued, and seemed little likely to come to an end, when Sertorius was assassinated ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... yet determined what to do. Should she go on at once to San Francisco, or telegraph to her father and await him at San Jose? In either case a new fear of the precipitancy of her action and the inadequacy of her reasons had sprung up in her mind. Would her father understand her? Would he underrate the cause and be mortified at the insult she had given the family of his old friend, or, more dreadful still, would he exaggerate her wrongs and seek a personal quarrel with the major. He was a man of quick temper, and had the Western ideas of redress. Perhaps even now she ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... accorded with his intellectual impotence and with the nullity of his legislative conceptions." Once he has rattled his revolutionary pedantry off, he no longer knows what to say.—As to financial matters and military art, he knows nothing and risks nothing, except to underrate or calumniate Carnot and Cambon who did know and who took risks.[3184]—In relation to a foreign policy his speech on the state of Europe is the amplification of a schoolboy; on exposing the plans of the English minister he reaches the pinnacle of chimerical nonsense;[3185] eliminate the rhetorical ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... wise be accomplished—it was this which caused Him so sharply and suddenly to rebuke Peter. Peter's words penetrated to what was lurking near at hand as His normal temptation. We may very readily underrate the trial and temptation of Christ, and thus have only a formal, not a real, esteem for His manhood. We always underrate it when we do not fully apprehend His human nature, and believe that He was tempted in all points as we are. But, on the other hand, we underrate ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods
... well-proportioned, and even almost voluptuous figure, inspired the idea of strength of mind, rather than of body. There was a simplicity sometimes indeed in her manner, which bordered on infantine ingenuousness, that led people of common discernment to underrate her talents, and smile at the flights of her imagination. But those who could not comprehend the delicacy of her sentiments, were attached by her unfailing sympathy, so that she was very generally beloved by ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... wish to underrate the great service you have rendered me," she said coldly, "and I shall always be your debtor for it; but I can not help asking how you came to be standing under the cedars at ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... circumstances of the case. It does not explain why some of the very passages in Corneille and Racine, which to us appear dull and prosaic, are to the Frenchman's apprehension instinct with poetic fervour. It does not explain the undoubted fact that we, who speak English, are prone to underrate French poetry, while we are equally disposed to render to German poetry even more than its due share of merit. The reason is to be sought in the verbal associations established in our minds by the peculiar composition of the English language. Our vocabulary is chiefly made ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... by any chance they have found out that we are crossing with important papers, agreements, and chemicals, they will be on the lookout for us and we will have a good chase if we manage to escape. I don't say this to scare you boys; but you are here, and I don't want you to underrate the present danger. I will be good and glad to get across myself. Not a word of this ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... his chin. "Never underrate them—we don't dare do that. But the man you met is McNeil, and we'd better get him ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... style; and to have impressed the spirit of his own personality deeply upon the minds of multitudes of men, than to have composed most of those works which the world is said not willingly to let die. Nor, again, is to say that this higher renown belongs to Mr. Carlyle, to underrate the less resounding, but most substantial, services of a definite kind which he has rendered both to literature and history. This work may be in time superseded with the advance of knowledge, but the value of the first service will remain ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... to the Socialist: "You Underrate my Cause! While women remain a Subject Class, You never can move the General ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... of a school. His poetical talent, though unquestionable, had been bestowed, not as a special attribute, but as an auxiliary of other faculties granted in a larger measure. He has himself not only recognized its limits, but shown an inclination to underrate its value. "I have often thought," he remarks in one of his later papers, "that a critic who would attain to largeness of view would be better without any artistic faculty of his own. Goethe alone, by the universality of his poetical genius, was able to apply it in the estimation of what ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... however, because I speak of these differences as not fundamental, that I wish to underrate their value. They are important enough in their way, the structure of the foot being in strict correlation with that of the rest of the organism in each case. Nor can it be doubted that the greater division of physiological ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... of the seven deadly virtues, Gladys. You, as a good Tory, must not underrate them. Beer, the Bible, and the seven deadly virtues have made ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... that the diplomatic intrigues and counter intrigues at Madrid have made us lose daily more of that advantageous position without any compensation on the other side. The Queen entreats Lord John Russell not to underrate the importance of keeping our foreign policy beyond reproach. Public opinion is recognised as a ruling power in our domestic affairs; it is not of less importance in the society of Europe with reference to the conduct of an individual state. To possess the confidence of Europe is of the utmost ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... Weir, indifferently; "I care nothing about him." She rose and stood in front of him and leaned her elbows on his shoulders. "You may underrate yourself, if you like," she went on, "but I know that you are capable of accomplishing anything you wish, and of distinguishing yourself. I recall the conversations I have had with you in your serious moments, if you do not, and I expect you to ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... other from escaping, and both require the same treatment; not, perhaps, to the extent of stuffing with sawdust,—confined air is just as good,—but the walls and the floors, the roofs and the windows, should be made to prevent the escape of heat. He may think I underrate his scientific attainments, but it will do no harm to remind him that an air-tight house may be a very cold one. A man would freeze to death in a glass bottle, when a coarse, porous blanket would keep him comfortable. Double windows are not to keep cold ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... for the express, Shorely bought a copy of the Sponge, and once more he read Gibberts' story on the way down. The third reading appalled him. He was amazed he had not noticed before the deadly earnestness of its tone. We are apt to underrate or overrate the work of a man with whom we ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... makes the smallness of all the other things. And so Hermione said, "the little that I have," and there was truth in it. And there was as vital a truth in the fact of her whole nature recognizing that little's enormous value to her. Not for a moment did she underrate her possession. Indeed, she had to fight against the tendency to exaggeration. Her intellect said to her that, in being so deeply moved by such a thing as the concealment from her by Vere of something innocent of which Emile knew, she was making a water drop into an ocean. Her intellect ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... results of such a contingency would have been exceedingly terrible. Indeed, you would not now be here to tell the tale. I need not alarm you on that score, but mention it as a warning you will not misunderstand or underrate after ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... framed, shall read again his earlier works, now rescued from the past to teach the young. Reporters on his words shall hang, from every window shall his sapient visage smile, and even the London Times shall think it worth the while to underrate him. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... Western friends, I think, underrate this speech. It has produced a greater effect here than any other single speech. It is the real platform in the Eastern States, and must carry the conservative element in New ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... first in importance. Its character, though capable of much enrichment, reminds us of how much devotional beauty the Prayer Book has from ancient sources. In our jealous zeal for more beauty we are, perhaps, apt to underrate much that we already possess. God won't give us more than we have until we have learnt to value ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... moreover one or two coincidences in his extant work point to an acquaintance with the Apostle's writings. His leanings, like those of Marcion and Valentinus, were generally in the opposite direction to Judaism. His tendency would be not to underrate but to overrate St Paul. At the same time such passages as 1 Tim. iv. 3, where the prohibition of marriage is denounced as a heresy, were a stumbling-block. They must therefore be excised as interpolations, or the Epistles containing them must ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... young friend, do not deceive yourself. You perhaps underrate your own industry. It is very difficult matter to decide how much we can do and how much we ought to do, in the way of study. No mere thinking can determine this matter for us. It can only be decided by being able to see ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... people. He had slept on the ground with his soldiers, fared at table with the swineherd's family, tilled the soil with the farmer folk. His heart went out to humanity. He did not overrate the average mind, nor did he underrate it. He had faith in mankind, and knew that at the last power was with the people. He did not say, "Vox populi, vox Dei," but he thought it. Therefore he set himself to educating the plain people. He prophesied a day when ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... first acknowledged book. It was published in 1801, and the author writes modestly of all her apprehensions. 'Mr. Opie has no patience with me; he consoles me by averring that fear makes me overrate others and underrate myself.' The book was reviewed in the 'Edinburgh.' We hear of one gentleman who lies awake all night after reading it; and Mrs. Inchbald promises a candid opinion, which, however, we do not get. Besides stories and novels, ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... the blindness of love, each raises the other to a standard of perfection which human nature can never attain, and each becomes equally annoyed on finding, by degrees, that they were in error. The reaction takes place, and they then underrate, as much as before they had overrated, each other. Now, if two young people marry without this violence of passion, they do not expect to find each other perfect, and perhaps have a ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... themselves to her sovereignty. Had such terms been proposed, they would have rejected them with disdain, and trusted for better to the moderation of their enemies, or to a vigorous exertion of their own force. We do not, however, mean to underrate those aids, which, to us, were doubtless valuable, on whatever principles granted: but we would show that they cannot give a title to that authority which the British Parliament would arrogate over ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... sight is failing, though she still works (half by touch, indeed) at her pillow-lace, was glad to hear me read the letter aloud more than once. It recounts—how modestly, and almost as a matter of course!—his late successes. And yet!—does he, in writing to these old people, purposely underrate his great good fortune and seeming happiness, not to shock them too much by the contrast between the delicate enjoyments of the life he now leads among the wealthy and refined, and that bald existence of theirs ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... details of the seance, which was considerably irksome, being protracted by endless psalm singing. What I want to do—with Miss Cook's permission—is to calculate the chances of her being sufficiently athletic to perform the tricks herself, without the aid of spirits. Does she not underrate her unaided powers in assigning a supernatural cause for the ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... to me? You prefer even the problem of Wagner to that of Bizet? But neither do I underrate it; it has its charm. The problem of salvation is even a venerable problem. Wagner pondered over nothing so deeply as over salvation: his opera is the opera of salvation. Someone always wants to be saved in his operas,—now it is a youth; anon it is a maid,—this is his problem—And ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... education of women must be that which rightly provides the whole environment. The simpler our conception of woman, the more we underrate her complexity and the manifoldness of her needs, the more certainly shall we repeat in one form or another the errors ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... men upon this earth I should be the last to underrate the advantages of wealth,—I who have been reared in the gutter, which is Poverty's cradle. Yet I would fain Charlotte's fortune had come to her in any other fashion than as the result of my work in the character of a salaried ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... would have gone on without discovering it, had Swartboy not been of the party. For the advantage he had given them, by introducing them to the plant, the Bushman claimed nearly as much credit as though he had created it. As no one was disposed to underrate the service he had done, he obtained what appeared full compensation for all the annoyance he had felt at ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... been given schools to develop brain power, and I do not underrate their value. He has nearly entered into his domain as far as the material forces are concerned, but there is a moral and spiritual element in humanity which eludes his grasp in practically everything he undertakes. This lack of the moral element is ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... library is a goodly sight. We do not underrate the external value of books, when we say it is the invisible which forms their chief charm. Sometimes rather too much is said about "tall copies," and "large-paper copies," and "first editions," the binding, paper, type, and all the rest of the outside ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... but one side of the truth. There is a tendency in some minds to underrate what is plain because all is not plain. For some minds the obscure has a fascination, apart altogether from its nature, just because it is obscure. It is a noble emulation to press forward and 'still to be closing up what we know not with what we know.' But neither in science nor in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... and provisioned;" and he stated, as the result of personal observation, that England could not be too energetic in, its measures of resistance. He had done something with his little fleet, but he was no braggart, and had no disposition to underrate the enemy's power. "God make us all thankful again and again," he observed, "that we have, although it be little, made a beginning upon the coast of Spain." And modestly as he spoke of what he had accomplished, so with quiet self-reliance ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... relatives as to a man's powers are very commonly of little value; not merely because they sometimes overrate their own flesh and blood, as some may suppose; on the contrary, they are quite as likely to underrate those whom they have grown into the habit of considering like themselves. The advent of genius is like what florists style the BREAKING of a seedling tulip into what we may call high-caste colors,—ten thousand dingy flowers, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... consequences of the good fight of faith. "Had I only myself to consider," says one, "how gladly would I sacrifice myself to attack this wrong or that iniquity." We need offer no opinion about the moral quality of such a position; enough to say that it is idle to ignore, or even to underrate, the ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... with quills and steel pens. The cells they inhabit are gloomy as dungeons, but furnished like parlors. Their business is to keep everybody's accounts but their own. They are of all ages, but of a uniformly dejected aspect. Do not underrate their value. Mr. Bulwer has said, that, in the hands of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword. Suffer yourself to be astonished at their numbers, but permit yourself to withdraw from their vicinity without questioning ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... woman in the land who are drunkards. Doubtless there are. Then I stand here as a woman to entreat, to beseech, to pray against this sin. For the sake of these drunken woman, I ask the ballot to drag them back from the rum-shops and shut their doors [applause]. God forbid that I should underrate the power of love; that I should discard tenderness. Let us have entreaty, let us have prayers, and let us have the ballot, to eradicate this evil. Mr. Collier says he is full of sympathy, and intimates that women should stand here and elevate love above law. So long ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... suppose I would underrate Cooper's abilities If I thought you'd do that, I should feel very ill at ease; The men who have given to one character life And objective existence, are not very rife, You may number them all, both prose-writers and singers, Without overrunning the bounds ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... aspects to us, is. For we are not to limit, as a great many so-called earnest evangelical teachers and believers do—we are not to limit His work to that which is effected when a man first becomes a Christian—viz. pardon and acceptance with God. God forbid that I should ever seem to underrate that great initial gift on which everything else must be built. But I am not underrating it when I say, 'Let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith,' and the 'proportion of faith' has been violated, and the perspective and completeness of Christian ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... kinds of enormity, on the ground that they were inspired by God, and could be guilty of no sin, as only exercising their rights of liberty. Madame de Bourignon was an excellent woman, but Leslie and Lavington[632] showed that some of her writings seem dangerously to underrate good works. Moravian principles, lightly understood, made Herrnhut a model Christian community; misunderstood, they became pretexts for the most dangerous Antinomianism.[633] An example may even be quoted from the last century where the nobler elements ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... they had made on him grew stronger. He was too good a judge of men not to perceive that the budding dramatist had the intelligent imagination which makes for real shrewdness, and he was not disposed to underrate the value of the imagination in forming judgments of men and women. Probably Colonel Grey was a man of less intensity of emotion than Mr. Manley had declared, and Lady Loudwater less subtile and intelligent. ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... important papers, agreements, and chemicals, they will be on the lookout for us and we will have a good chase if we manage to escape. I don't say this to scare you boys; but you are here, and I don't want you to underrate the present danger. I will be good and glad to get across myself. Not a word of this to ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... were punished also among princes and nobles, he fancied there would be very few of them left. He feared that the Turk would bring some such punishment upon them, and he prayed God to avert it. Finally, he bade them remember not to buckle on their armour too loosely, and underrate their enemies, as Germans were too prone to do. He warned them not to tempt God by inadequate preparation, and sacrifice the poor Germans at the shambles, nor as soon as the victory was won to 'sit down again and carouse until the ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... on the mind of this man, and of such others, it was a very contemptible science indeed. Hence, in estimating the real rank of any art or science, it is necessary for us to conceive it as it would be grasped by minds of every order. There are some arts and sciences which we underrate, because no one has risen to show us with what majesty they may be invested; and others which we overrate, because we are blinded to their general meanness by the magnificence which some one man has thrown ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the modulated, moving voice which always expressed his genuine feeling, 'I seem anything but lovable. I don't underrate my powers—rather the opposite, no doubt; but what I always seem to lack is the gift of pleasing—moral grace. My strongest emotions seem to be absorbed in revolt; for once that I feel tenderly, I have a hundred fierce, resentful, tempestuous moods. To be suave and smiling in common intercourse ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... experience; but I think she would have revoked part of it if she had known M. Milsand in later years. He would never have agreed with her as to the authority of 'impulse and passion', but I am sure he did not underrate their importance as ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... essentially the same, I have altered my view. Therefore I say that, if greater judgment and difficulty, impediment and labour, in the handling of material do not constitute higher nobility, then painting and sculpture form one art. This being granted, it follows that no painter should underrate sculpture, and no sculptor should make light of painting. By sculpture I understand an art which operates by taking away superfluous material; by painting, one that attains its result by laying on. It is enough that both emanate from the same human intelligence, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... here let me caution you—do not temporize with him. He stands in the North for oppression; gain at any cost; for debauchery—everything that you do not. Between you and Brute MacNair there can be no truce. He is powerful. Do not for a moment underrate either his strength or his sagacity. He is a man of wealth, and his hold upon the Indians is absolute. I cannot remain with you, but through my Indians I shall keep in touch with you, work with you; and together we will accomplish the ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... accustomed to refer the Reformation to the time of Luther in Germany, as the grand religious turning-point in modern history, that we are apt to underrate, if not to forget, the religious movement in this most important era of English history. Chaucer and Wiclif wrote nearly half a century before John Huss was burned by Sigismond: it was a century after that that Luther burned the Pope's decretals at Wittenberg, and still later that ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... little ones," Mrs. Hare resumed. "That is grief—great grief; I would not underrate it; but, believe me, it is as nothing compared to the awful fate, should it ever fall upon you, of finding your children grow up and become that which makes you wish they had died in their infancy. There are times when I am tempted ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... establish this hypothesis of identity in race has given rise to a tendency to underrate the development of the ancient people of Mexico and Central America, and to lower the estimate of their attainments sufficiently to bring them within reach of close relationship to the wild Indians. ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... men in your Service never realize it," Charles Verity returned. "They run in blinkers from first to last.—Not that I underrate their usefulness. They are honest, painstaking, thoroughly reliable, according to their lights. They do excellent journeyman work. But there lies the heart of the whole matter.—Are you content to do journeyman work only; or ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... for one who has rowed fifty races with pleasure to underrate, far less to disparage, mere rowing; but still we maintain that for the encouragement of pure manliness, and the varied capacities useful in a sailor's life, one punt chase is far better than ten ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... her the plight in which she found herself—joint custodian, with Bentley, of Hal Willett's unconscious confidences—compelled to see a young girl's rapturous love lavished upon a man so saturated with the incense of feminine idolatry as to be more than apt to underrate the priceless boon of ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... Denis, "that you underrate the difficulty, madam. What you may be too generous to refuse, I may be too proud to accept. In a moment of noble feeling towards me, you forget what you perhaps ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... importance. I do not underrate the value of kindness and love in any system of government, whether in the household, the school, the stable, the menagerie, or in civil society. But love is not the basis of government. Obedience is yielded to authority, and authority is based on ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... some of them concealed under Latin names, but still aliens, not citizens of his own State, aliens with whom he had little or nothing in common, who had no home in his patriotic feeling, no place in his religious experience.[593] As I said at the beginning of the last lecture, we must not underrate the religiousness of the Roman character, which was never entirely lost; but the secret of its comparative uselessness lies in this—that the natural desire to be right with the Power manifesting itself in the universe, and to know more of that Power, became weakened and destroyed ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... a painter capable of performing this feat must possess a rare, at this moment possibly unique, gift. Friesz is one who can bring the whole weight of his intellect to bear on his sensibility. That sensibility let no one underrate. Before his vision of the external world, especially before what we are pleased to call Nature, Friesz has a reaction as delicate and enthusiastic as that of an English poet. Only, unlike most English painters, he would never dream of jotting it down and leaving ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... likely to interrupt the harmony happily prevailing between the several branches of the legislature, and to divert the attention of influential members of the community from the material interests of the colony to the consideration of more exciting subjects. 'I do not underrate,' he said, 'the importance of constitutional questions, nor am I insensible to the honour which may be acquired by their satisfactory adjustment. In the present crisis of our fortunes, however, I am impressed with ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... faction. Whilst the distempers of a relaxed fibre prognosticate and prepare all the morbid force of convulsion in the body of the state, the steadiness of the physician is overpowered by the very aspect of the disease. The doctor of the constitution, pretending to underrate what he is not able to contend with, shrinks from his own operation. He doubts and questions the salutary but critical terrors of the cautery and the knife. He takes a poor credit even from his defeat, and covers impotence under the mask of lenity. He praises ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... tempted to say at times with Hazael, "Thy servant is but a dog; how can he do these great things?" You are disposed to underrate your gifts, your opportunities, your happy chances in life—in a word, your possibilities. You despair of finding any opening; you are sure that you will never hear a call to come up higher; you think your lives must always be ill-paid drudgery, with no promotion. It is ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... modern rifles, in the hands of the stubbornest of foes, rushed the enemy's position and swept him from the heights. But victory demanded heavy toll. The gallant commander nobly expiated the mistaken judgment which had led him so seriously to underrate the strength of the invaders, and nearly forty officers killed, wounded, and taken prisoners, figured on a list of about 430 casualties. So heavy a price was paid for a brief success and the knowledge that ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... contribution from each individual, besides the particular duties of his profession. And, if no such liberal intercourse be established, it is the common failing of human nature, to be engrossed with petty views and interests, to underrate the importance of all in which we are not concerned, and to carry our partial notions into cases where they are inapplicable, to act, in short, as so many unconnected units, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... a priest. He took the name of William P. Matthews, but among his white associates he is known as Bill Nix. He has tried several occupations and is now an Indian doctor. The author was inclined at first to underrate Mr. Matthews's accomplishments and stock of information, but subsequently changed his opinion of him, as he obtained much that agreed with what had been furnished by members of other tribes in former years. Besides, the author obtained partial accounts of similar traditions ...
— Osage Traditions • J. Owen Dorsey
... forces making for peace in all countries. The armaments of European nations are interdependent, and were such a policy pursued by one nation it would be followed, if not by immediate disarmament in other nations, at any rate, by very considerable reductions. It is very easy to underrate the feeling which for some time past has been growing throughout Europe against the colossal waste of armaments. Even in Germany, whose geographical position from a military point of view is weak, ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... at the sergeant's solemn tone, and formal words, but he saw that he was very much in earnest. Nor was he one to underrate weather effects upon ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Britain was an important event: their efforts were experiments, and their achievements were prophetic. The political philosopher may trace in their errors, trials, and successes, the lessons afforded by experience for the instruction of nations. The rapid advance of modern colonisation tends to underrate the first efforts of our predecessors. The first colonial boat-builder founded a great commercial navy; the first shepherd held in his slender flock ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... when I owe perhaps to his unremitting attentions the very existence I now enjoy. Kory-Kory, I mean thee no harm in what I say in regard to thy outward adornings; but they were a little curious to my unaccustomed sight, and therefore I dilate upon them. But to underrate or forget thy faithful services is something I could never be guilty of, even in the ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... middle. This is knowing not only that the earth is round, but knowing exactly where it is flat. Christian doctrine detected the oddities of life. It not only discovered the law, but it foresaw the exceptions. Those underrate Christianity who say that it discovered mercy; any one might discover mercy. In fact every one did. But to discover a plan for being merciful and also severe— THAT was to anticipate a strange need of human ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... which the elections and the temperate instructions gave them; and in the hope that the elect would be at least as reasonable as the electors, they threw away their greatest opportunity. There was a disposition to underrate dangers that were not on the surface. Even Mirabeau, who, if not a deep thinker, was a keen observer, imagined that the entire mission of the States-General might have been accomplished in a week. Few men saw the ambiguity hidden in the term Privilege, and the immense difference that divided ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Squarcione to art have been thoroughly discussed by Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Painting in North Italy, vol. i. chap. 2. I cannot but think that they underrate the ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... Maurice, you must not underrate Lilias. She has gone through a good deal with Dolores, and I believe she has been the making of her. You've had to leave the poor child a good deal to herself and Fraulein, and, as you see by this affair, she had ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are by no means the least beautiful. It is too much the fashion to underrate the artistic value of the less pretentious forms of needlework, and especially of flat ornament, which has, nevertheless, its own very important place in decoration. As for geometric pattern, that is quite beneath consideration—it is so mechanical! Mechanical is a word as easily spoken ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... ford, has corrupted all who came to her; she has been the paralysis of Islam. But the Islam of the Turk is a different thing from the Islam of the Arab. That was one of the great progressive impulses in the world of men. It is our custom to underrate the Arab's contribution to civilisation quite absurdly in comparison with our debt to the Hebrew and Greek. It is to the initiatives of Islamic culture, for example, that we owe our numerals, the bulk of modern mathematics, and the science of chemistry. The British have already ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.' We who live in a great commercial community and know how solid comfort and hope and gladness are all contingent, in millions of humble homes, upon the manufacturing industry of these districts, shall never be likely to underrate the enormous expansion in national industry, and the consequent enormous increase in national wealth, which belongs to this last half century. I need ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... to please the publisher. You can have no conception of the villany done under all these sharing agreements. But forewarned forearmed. Think of some way of baffling this invariable fraud. Ask a knowing printer some way. Do anything but underrate the danger. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... I do not underrate the magnitude of the problem presented to the people of America by the immense volume of immigration from alien races, and chiefly from the most undesirable strata in those races, of the last few years. On the other hand, I have no shadow of doubt of the ability of the people to ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... the Southern whites will, as a rule, misinterpret the meaning of the exodus. Many are inclined to underrate its importance, and those who appreciate its significance are apt to look for temporary and superficial remedies. The vague promises made at the Vicksburg convention, which was controlled by the whites, and called to consider the emigration movement, have had no influence with ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... without sleep. For every man there must be certain stated intervals of repose—of recreation in the original sense of the word. My views on the worthlessness of classical education are perhaps pretty well known to you, but I don't underrate the great service that my friend Professor Ezra K. Higgins has rendered by his discovery[5] that the word recreation originally signified a re-creating—i.e.,[6] a time for the nerve-tissues to renew themselves ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... the magnetic needle to the west, in the mysteries whereof the Captain was not also versed. When Columbus wanted to keep his sailors quiet on that wondrous voyage over an unknown ocean to the Western world, the diplomatic admiral made so bold as to underrate the length of each day's sail in an unveracious log, which he kept for the inspection of his crew; but no doctoring of the social log-book could mislead ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... Hamet made him underrate his own exertions, the merchant could not remain contented without showing his gratitude by all the means within his power. He therefore once more purchased the freedom of Hamet, and freighted a ship on purpose to send him back to his own country; ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... amenity from its nurslings (heaven knows it is not exorbitant in its requirements!); for although I well know how hard it is for a man of genius with a seriously underrated subject to maintain serene and kindly relations with the men who underrate it, and who keep all the best places for less important subjects which they profess without originality and sometimes without much capacity for them, still, if he overwhelms them with wrath and disdain, he cannot expect them to ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... our disregard of the old Latin proverb which tells us that no man ever became suddenly altogether bad. Even now public opinion is too prone to attach excessive value to projects of vague and visionary development, and to underrate the importance of serious thought and quiet work, which can be the only solid foundation of our national progress. In these new associations—humble indeed in their origin, but destined to play a large part in the people's ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... with the nullity of his legislative conceptions." Once he has rattled his revolutionary pedantry off, he no longer knows what to say.—As to financial matters and military art, he knows nothing and risks nothing, except to underrate or calumniate Carnot and Cambon who did know and who took risks.[3184]—In relation to a foreign policy his speech on the state of Europe is the amplification of a schoolboy; on exposing the plans ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... effective for providing an adequate military organization that does not include thorough instruction for officers. The prevailing feeling in our country, as remarked above, has rather been to underrate the army, and to look with some jealousy on the West Point Military Academy and its graduates. The present war has effected a change in this respect. The country owes too much to the educated regular officers for the organization ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Tennessee, and our section will soon feel the effect of his hard blows. From among his own old partisan and religious sectarian parasites he will find men who will obey him with the fanatical alacrity of those who followed Peter the Hermit in the first Crusade. We repeat again, let us not underrate Brownlow." ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... the injustice done their services by this sentence, I beg to assure them that the sentiment is Cigarette's—not mine. I should be very sorry for an instant to seem to depreciate that "genius of command" without whose guidance an army is but a rabble, or to underrate that noblest courage which accepts the burden of arduous responsibilities and of duties as bitter in anxiety as ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... me profane, and don't for a moment imagine I underrate the function of the preacher. There's nothing better than a good sermon,—one that puts new life into you. But what of a sermon that takes life out of you? instead of a spiritual fountain, a spiritual sponge that absorbs your powers ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... sinners are endowed with this joy and insight, this quick sensitiveness to beauty. Some of them cannot find the eternal and transcendent God in a loveliness which, by temperament, they either underrate or do not really see. There are a great many good people who cannot take beauty seriously. They become wooden and suspicious and uncomfortable whenever they are asked to perceive or enjoy a lovely object. Incredible though ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... state from youth to manliness run toward the types of maturity. The mind in its reaches toward strength and completeness creates a heart-sympathy—which in its turn craves fulness. There is a vanity too about the first steps of manly education, which is disposed to underrate the innocence and unripened judgment of the other sex. Men see the mistake as they grow older; for the judgment of a woman, in all matters of the affections, ripens by ten ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... We must not underrate the enemy. He is powerful and cunning—and cruel and ruthless. He will stop at nothing that gives him a chance to kill and to destroy. He has trained his people to believe that their highest perfection is achieved by waging war. For many years he has prepared for this very ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... said as to the effect which a solitary life will produce upon a man's estimate of himself? Shall it lead him to fancy himself a man of very great importance? Or shall it tend to make him underrate himself, and allow inferior men of superior impudence to take the wall of him? Possibly we have all seen each effect follow from a too lonely mode of life. Each may follow naturally enough. Perhaps it is natural to imagine your mental stature to be higher than it is, when you ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... of consternation. Remonstrances, petitions, and complaints poured into the Fukuhara mansion. Meanwhile the Minamoto rose. In August of 1180, their white flag was hoisted, and though it looked very insignificant on the wide horizon of Taira power, Kiyomori did not underrate its meaning. At the close of the year, he decided to abandon the Fukuhara scheme and carry the Court back to Kyoto. On the eve of his return he found an opportunity of dealing a heavy blow to the monasteries ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... prisoner the full benefit of their doubts. The prisoner had in fact admitted the main fact himself: and had said nothing tending to change the natural construction of it. He had simply endeavoured to underrate the importance of Harlech Castle, but that was of no consequence: a place, weak in itself, may be reputed strong; and, by encouraging people to rise in a period of general political ferment, may do all the ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... disposed to underrate the importance of this tendency in spermatorrhoea. The statistics of any of our large insane asylums will illustrate the influence of masturbation in the production of insanity. Mr. Holmes Coote, in a discussion which followed Dr. Drysdale's paper on the "Medical Aspects of Prostitution," ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... maintain, and that in the face of all who may be disposed to underrate the value of our labours, which is this:—there is not a word in these volumes which we now lay before the reader, as grave matter of fact, that is not entitled to the most implicit credit. We scorn deception. Lest, however, ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... deep heart-knowledge of pure womanhood could have come otherwise than by the impression on the child's soul of a mother's purity. I seem to have a vision of one of those women whom the world knows not of, silent, deep-hearted, loving, whom the coarser and more practically efficient jostle aside and underrate for their want of interest in the noisy chitchat and commonplace of the day; but who yet have a sacred power, like that of the spirit of peace, to brood with dovelike wings over the childish heart, and quicken into life the struggling, slumbering ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... essential reasonableness of Christ's teaching about God and its essential harmony with the highest philosophic teaching about duty, about the divine nature, about the soul and its eternal destiny. The Ritschlian is too much disposed to underrate the value of all previous religious and ethical teaching, even of Judaism at its highest: he is not content with making Christ the supreme Revealer: he wants to make him the only Revealer. And when we turn to post-Christian religious history, he is apt to treat all the great developments ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... are not so aisy schooled, By slanders bought wid Saxon goold; They'll find, who think us so aisy fooled, How much they underrate us. Then up, mavrone! and take your stand, The layder of the Faynian band, And King you'll soon be of the land ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... enough," said Francisco to his father that evening. "But we mustn't underrate him as you said. The fellow has force. He knows the way to stir up human passion and he'll use his knowledge to the full. Also he knows equity and law. Some of ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... of our fleet would be reduced to such a point that they would be able to steel their hearts and come out and fight. [Cheers.] We have been at war for five or six weeks, and so far—though I would certainly not underrate the risks and hazards attending upon warlike operations and the vanity of all overconfidence—but so far the attrition has been on their side and not on ours, [cheers,] while the losses which they have suffered greatly exceed any that we have at ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... shall come to, and never broach the subject to him. I finished the geological evidence chapters yesterday; they are very fine and very striking, but I cannot see they are such forcible objections as you still hold them to be. I would say that you still in your secret soul underrate the imperfection of the Geological Record, though no language can be stronger or arguments fairer and sounder against it. Of course I am influenced by Botany, and the conviction that we have not in a fossilised condition ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... having done greater and more efficient services for the country in the time of her greatest peril than any other person in the Republic, and a knowledge of this can not long be suppressed, though I do not underrate the mighty powers that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... she go on at once to San Francisco, or telegraph to her father and await him at San Jose? In either case a new fear of the precipitancy of her action and the inadequacy of her reasons had sprung up in her mind. Would her father understand her? Would he underrate the cause and be mortified at the insult she had given the family of his old friend, or, more dreadful still, would he exaggerate her wrongs and seek a personal quarrel with the major. He was a man of quick temper, and had the Western ideas of redress. ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... really delightful when transfused into some form of art. I have no desire to underrate the services of laborious scholars, but I feel that the use Keats made of Lempriere's Dictionary is of far more value to us than Professor Max Muller's treatment of the same mythology as a disease of language. Better Endymion than any theory, ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... There must always be two to a kiss, and there may be a score in a jest; but wherever there is an element of sacrifice, the favour is conferred with pain, and, among generous people, received with confusion. There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves, or, when they are disclosed, surprise nobody so much as the benefactor. The other day, a ragged, barefoot boy ran down the street after a marble, with so jolly an air that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... George quickly, "you underrate Professor Keredec's shrewdness. His plans are not so simple as you think. He knows that my cousin Louise never obtained a divorce from ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... and the whole legion. He thanked the officers man by man for their gallantry and fidelity. Now for the first time (and that he could have remained ignorant of it so long speaks for the passionate unanimity with which the Gauls had risen) he learnt from prisoners the fate of Sabinus. He did not underrate the greatness of the catastrophe. The soldiers in the army he treated always as friends and comrades in arms, and the loss of so many of them was as personally grievous to him as the effects of it might be politically mischievous. He made it the subject of a second ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... of sin and idolatry in Africa? Surely we cannot concede that the light of the Crescent is greater than the glory of the Cross, that there is less constraining power in the Christ of Calvary than in the Prophet of Arabia? I do not think that I underrate the difficulties in your way when I say that you young men are holding in your hands golden opportunities which it would be madness and folly to throw away. It is your grand opportunity to help build up a ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... struggles of the present for a better future; and that she is resolved to join. It is the part of the men to aid her in ridding herself of all superstitions, and to step forward in their ranks. Let none underrate his own powers, and imagine that the issue does not depend upon him. None, be he the weakest, can be spared in the struggle for the progress of the human race. The unremitting dropping of little drops hollows in the end the hardest stone. Many drops ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... they feel called upon to teach the freedmen, or to keep their position as leaders of fashion. A husband would trammel them. If they did marry, they would take the very foolish advice of a contemporary, and go through life with an indignant protest at its littleness. Let such women know that they underrate the married state, its powers and its opportunities. There are no loftier missions than can there be carried out, no nobler games than can there be played. When we think of these objections, coming, as they have to us, from high-spirited, earnest girls, the queens of their sex, our memory ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... Tales enough of his bloodthirstiness, his merciless efficiency, his ever-ready craft and consummate duplicity were familiar to her—most of them made so within the last three days—for no one in her circle any longer professed to underrate the demonstrated ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... intrepid soldier, an efficient administrator, a strategist of inspired audacity, a tactician of endless resources, an engineer of infinite inventiveness, an unerring judge of men. But he never boasts, except in speeches to hearten discouraged troops. He does not vilify or underrate ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... trifled with, like a Mingo's conscience. No, no; off hands, or we shall see which can make the stoutest battle; you and your men of the 55th, or the Sarpent here, and Killdeer, with Jasper and his crew. You overrate your force, Lieutenant Muir, as much as you underrate Eau-douce's truth." ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... Do not think I am decrying a classical education; and, as the daughter of a great mathematician, it is not likely that I should underrate mathematics as a mental discipline. I am only urging that they should be subordinated to ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... It did us good for a year or two. Now the pendulum has just reached the other extreme. We've swung back once more into our silly dream. Oh, Maraton, it's true enough that we have great problems to face sociologically! Don't think that I underrate them. You know I don't. But every time I sit and talk to you, I have always at the back of my mind that other fear. . . . ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... only born to feel; and the activity of her well-proportioned, and even almost voluptuous figure, inspired the idea of strength of mind, rather than of body. There was a simplicity sometimes indeed in her manner, which bordered on infantine ingenuousness, that led people of common discernment to underrate her talents, and smile at the flights of her imagination. But those who could not comprehend the delicacy of her sentiments, were attached by her unfailing sympathy, so that she was very generally beloved by characters of very ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... then, that neither absolute princes nor the rulers of free States should underrate the importance of matter, but take heed to the disorders which it may breed and provide against them while remedies can still be used without discredit to themselves or to their governments And this should have been done by ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... my next paper I shall begin again, and teach you, 4. To talk to the person you are talking with, and not simper to her or him, while really you are looking all round the room, and thinking of ten other persons; 5. Never in any other way to underrate the person you talk with, but to talk your best, whatever that may be; and, 6. To be brief,—a point which I shall have ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... admirable organizer and a good theoretical strategist; his care for his men won their affection; and sometimes in the field he struck heavy and effective blows. But he was always prone to overrate the enemy's resources and underrate his own; he was slow to follow up a success; and he lacked the bulldog grip by which Grant won. Right on the heels of his failure in the seven-days' fight in the Peninsula, he wrote a letter to the President, from Harrison's Landing, July 7, 1862, lecturing him severely ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... to make him wise and happy, an honest man, a virtuous citizen, and a good patriot, by furnishing him with a comfortable school-house, suitable class-books, competent teachers, and, if he is poor, paying his quarter bills, while they greatly underrate, if they do not entirely overlook, that high moral training, without which knowledge is the power of doing evil rather than good. It may possibly nurture up a race of intellectual giants, but, like the sons of Anak, they will be far readier to trample down the ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... underestimate, carp at, derogate from, dishonor, underrate, decry, detract from, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Susan Condit that they owed this inestimable benefit; an advantage ranking in Miss Pinsent's opinion above even the lawn tennis courts and the resident chaplain. It was the fact of Lady Susan's annual visit that made the hotel what it was. Miss Pinsent was certainly the last to underrate such a privilege:—"It's so important, my dear, forming as we do a little family, that there should be some one to give the tone; and no one could do it better than Lady Susan—an earl's daughter and a person of such determination. Dear Mrs. Ainger now—who really ought, you ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... It's the cant of the day to underrate the House of Commons, and the work which it performs; don't you suffer yourself to join in the chorus of the simpletons. Your time cannot be better employed than in endeavouring to improve the ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... then, not by reason of her dress, as most of your sex are, but in spite of it. You women always underrate physical ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... to ask me for the incarnation of those qualities we love to call American, I should turn to a familiar gallery of my memory and point to the living portrait that hangs there of Walter Page. A sort of foursquareness, bluntness, it seemed to some; an uneasy, often explosive energy; a disposition to underrate fine drawn nicenesses of all sorts; ingrained Yankee common sense, checking his vaulting enthusiasm; enormous self-confidence, impatience of failure—all of these were in him; and he was besides affectionate to a fault, devoted ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... escutcheon, and above all, that he had been spared the humiliation of acknowledging his inability to resist the strange fascination that dragged him from his allegiance, as Auroras swing the needle from the pole. He did not attempt to underrate the vastness of his loss, nor to condone the folly which he designated as "infernal idiocy"; yet conscience acquitted him of intentionally betraying the trust a noble woman had reposed; and his vanity was appeased by the conviction that though Leo had cast him out of her life, she went ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... That reaction might, indeed, have been predicted by a less sagacious observer of human affairs. For it is to be chiefly ascribed to a law as certain as the laws which regulate the succession of the seasons and the course of the trade winds. It is the nature of man to overrate present evil, and to underrate present good; to long for what he has not, and to be dissatisfied with what he has. This propensity, as it appears in individuals, has often been noticed both by laughing and by weeping philosophers. It was a favourite theme of Horace and of Pascal, of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... not merely present in the spirit: Germany was present in the flesh. Without any desire to underrate the exploits of the English or the Orangemen, I can safely say that the finest touches were added by soldiers trained in a tradition inherited from the horrors of the Thirty Years' War, and of what the old ballad called "the cruel ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... their way, inch by inch, through the tournament to this final tie; and it had been a glorious fight so far. The Hussars, whose self-assurance had led them to underrate the strength of the enemy, were playing now like men possessed. The score stood at two goals all, and electric shocks of excitement ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... He had little toleration for the man of inferior brain, and, although he did not underrate his power for mischief, he relied upon his own wit to circumvent him. He had disposed of this one by warning Santa Ana, and he concluded to be annoyed by him no further. Besides, as a brother-in-law, he would be insupportable except at the long ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... men do not rightly understand either their store or their strength, but overrate the one and underrate the other. Hence it follows, that either from an extravagant estimate of the value of the arts which they possess, they seek no further; or else from too mean an estimate of their own powers, they spend their strength ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... false basis. In balancing counter statements and reasons from diverse sources, different minds come to different statistical conclusions. Dean Milman ("Hist. of Christianity," vol. ii. p. 341) when deliberately weighing opposite opinions, says cautiously, that "Gibbon is perhaps inclined to underrate" the number of the Christians. He adds: "M. Beugnot agrees much with Gibbon, and I should conceive, with regard to the West, ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... nominating some man who would poll the entire Republican vote. This feeling did not grow out of any hostility to any man, but simply out of a desire for Republican success. In other words, I endeavored to take an unprejudiced view of the situation. Under no circumstances would I underrate the ability and influence of Mr. Blaine, nor would I endeavor to deprecate the services he has rendered to the Republican party and to the country. But by this time it ought to be understood that I belong to no man, that I am ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... entered it; and had she cared to confound Madame utterly, she might have reminded her of that unwritten history of the past ten years in which the secret episode of Mrs. Pletheridge occurred. For Gabriella was not inclined to underrate her own efficiency, and her confidence was supported by the knowledge that if she left Dinard's the most fashionable of Madame's clientele ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... us now compare the two famous translations. As we have already mentioned, Burton in his Translator's Foreword did not do Mr. Payne complete justice, but he pays so many compliments to Mr. Payne's translation elsewhere that no one can suppose that he desired to underrate the work of his friend. In the Foreword he says that Mr. Payne "succeeds admirably in the most difficult passages and often hits upon choice and special terms and the exact vernacular equivalent of the foreign word so happily and so picturesquely ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... by no means absorbed by them, and she mixed cordially and freely in society without the least disposition to despise persons of less intellectual elevation. She had a true relish of all the little pleasures that promiscuous society affords, and did not underrate those talents which are better fitted for the drawing-room than the study." Her warmth of heart and kindness of disposition, which co-operated with her good sense in thus removing all disagreeable points from her external character, made her the sincerest of friends, and ever ready ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... eminent degree, the power of appropriating and embellishing the works of others, that his style was graceful, his allusions happy, and his wit keen and spontaneous. If any one assert that this is to underrate Le Sage, and that he is entitled to the credit of an inventor, let him cite any single work written by Le Sage, except Gil Blas, in proof of his assertion. Of course Gil Blas is out of the question. Nothing could be more circular than an argument that Le Sage, because he possessed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... prevails very generally concerning the great inferiority of the ancients in naval skill, requires also to be confined strictly to nautical knowledge, and should not lead us to underrate their mechanical powers, or their means of transporting objects of as great bulk as ourselves by sea. The parade which was made at Paris about transporting the obelisk from Egypt, and erecting it in the Place de Concorde, caused our neighbours to overlook the fact, that there ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... it. Leopold is always so disposed to underrate himself," said the duchess, whose hand was resting fondly on her husband's shoulder. "Epitaphs are so difficult to write-especially epitaphs on women of whom in life the least said the better. Janet was the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... been published, will be found mentioned in the Irish Annals. The inscriptions, however, fully identify the MS. and the box, and show that antiquaries, from the execution of the workmanship and figures on these interesting reliques, often underrate their antiquity—a fault which the world are little inclined to give them credit for, and which they fall into from an anxiety to err on what they consider the side which is least likely to produce the smile of contempt or the sneer of incredulity, forgetting ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... lettering he desires on the backs." The only safe-guard is for the librarian or owner to prescribe on a written slip in each volume, a title for every book, before it goes to the binder, who will be only too glad to have his own time saved—since time is money to him. I would not underrate the book-binders, who are a most worthy and intelligent class, numbering in their ranks men who are scholars as well as artists; but they are concerned chiefly with the mechanics and not with the metaphysics of their ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... must not underrate the magnificence of this long-headed idea, one must not underestimate its giant possibilities in the matter of trooping the Church solidly together and keeping it so. It squelches independent inquiry, and makes such a thing impossible, profane, criminal, it authoritatively ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... than acted on. Dispensing with the usual yell on this occasion, they drew their knives and tomahawks, and made a tremendous rush. But they had reckoned too confidently, and suffered the inevitable disgrace of bafflement that awaits those who underrate the powers of women. So sudden was the onset that Rushing River had not time to draw and properly use his weapons, but old Umqua, with the speed of light, flung herself on hands and knees in front of the leading Buller, who plunged over her, and drove his head against a tree with such force that ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
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