"Misinterpretation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from a recent daily paper reads, "'Rest while you work,' says Annie Payson Call,"—and then the editor adds, "and get fired," and although the opportunity for the joke was probably thought too good to lose, it was a natural misinterpretation ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... this misinterpretation of his motives. One or two children, playing close at hand, and a loafer who was trying to keep the wall from falling down, seemed pleased. Theirs was a colourless existence and to the rare purple ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... forgiven; but Jesus said to disease: "Come out of him, and enter no more into him." He said also: "If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death;" and "Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven." The misinterpretation of such passages has retarded the progress of Christianity and the ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... opposed to the essential political need of the time—viz. the constitution of an efficient Federal government. The Federalists may have misinterpreted and perverted the proper purpose of American national organization, but they could have avoided such misinterpretation only by an extraordinary display of political insight and a heroic superiority to natural prejudice. Their error sinks into insignificance compared with the enormous service which they rendered to the American people and the American cause. Without their help there ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... claims that it was an entire misinterpretation of his instructions, which were to have Averell join Stoneman's column, so soon as he had masked the latter's movement towards the Aquia ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... the way of accepting the identification is that it is stated that the lost Atlantis lay beyond the Pillars of Hercules; but doubtless this statement is due to Solon's misinterpretation of what was said by his Egyptian informant, or to the Saite priest's endeavour to accommodate his ancient tradition to the wider geographical knowledge of his own time. The old Egyptian conception of the universe held that the heavens were supported on four pillars, ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... following chapters. If, for example, there is reason to believe that savages have always regarded the lower animals as powerful beings, there is no need, in accounting for the veneration given them, to resort to the roundabout way of assuming a misinterpretation of names of men derived ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... made in '75 or '76—the year he exhibited his first steam-engine and his celebrated troop of life-size turkeys gobbling the tall grass in a meadow, at the end of which stood, high up in the picture, a French chateau. Impressionism is a word that has lent itself to every kind of misinterpretation, for in its exact sense all true painting is penetrated with impressionism, but, to use the word in its most modern sense—that is to say, to signify the rapid noting of illusive appearance—Monet is the only painter to whom it may be reasonably ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... Kenny could wind his son around his finger. Yes, it was all quite clear. And Brian helpfully would be shocked and thrilled at the sacrificial tribute of penance. Kenny pursed his lips and nodded. He would even concede the sunsets. That, after John Whitaker's cold-blooded misinterpretation, was necessary to ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... a misinterpretation which would injure her vanity, though it was not likely to aim at her honour, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... on that account to be regarded as its determining principle; and the moral law alone must be regarded as the principle on which that and its realization or promotion are aimed at. This remark is important in so delicate a case as the determination of moral principles, where the slightest misinterpretation perverts men's minds. For it will have been seen from the Analytic that, if we assume any object under the name of a good as a determining principle of the will prior to the moral law and then deduce from it the supreme practical principle, this would always ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... grief. No wonder if he finds it hard indeed to forget or to forgive the infliction of an evil so incomparably profound and frightful. There is, to a high smiled man, no wrong more hurtful or more difficult to pardon than to have mean motives falsely ascribed to him, to be placed by misinterpretation on a lower plane than that where he belongs. Every such experience stabs the moral source of life, and draws blood from the soul itself. Husband and wife powerfully tend to a common level and likeness. The higher must redeem and lift the unequal mate, or live in strife and misery. If the lower ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... Fathers of the Greek Church, in opposition to the Latin Fathers, denied the consciousness of the soul during the interval from death to the resurrection, and maintained that the soul died with the body and would be restored with it at the last day. But this is an error arising from the misinterpretation of the figurative terms in which the Greek Fathers express themselves. Tatian, Justin, Theophilus, and Irenaus do not differ from the others in reality, but only in words. The opinion that the soul is literally mortal ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... though ingenious, a misinterpretation of Gaubil's. Mr. Wylie has sent me a paper of his own (in Chin. Recorder and Miss. Journal, July, 1871, p. 45), which makes things perfectly clear. The expression transcribed by Pauthier, Yao san wen, and rendered "Hosanna," appears in a Chinese work, without reference ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... greatest importance; it is too laborious for ordinary purposes, since the account includes at most only a part of the speech. The best way, doubtless, to get a speech is to take notes on it. And yet this must be done properly or there is a danger of misinterpretation of statements or of undue emphasis upon any single part of the speech. The report of a speech should be as well balanced and logical as the speech itself, differing from the original only in length and the omission of details. The ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... phenomena". A rarity in the mountains. Miners, on way home from celebration, give nine cheers for mother and children. Outcry at Indian Bar against Spaniards. Several severely wounded. Whisky and patriotism. Prejudices and arrogant assurance accounted for. Misinterpretation by the foreigner. Injustices by the lower classes against Spaniards pass unnoticed. Innumerable drunken fights. Broken heads and collarbones, stabbings. "Sabbaths almost always enlivened by such merry events". Body of Frenchman found in river. Murder ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... theory rests. But there are certain matters connecting it with the above narrative which must here be noticed. The mention of the shepherd Philition, who fed his flocks about the place where the Great Pyramid was built, is a singular feature of Herodotus's narrative. It reads like some strange misinterpretation of the story related to him by the Egyptian priests. It is obvious that if the word Philition did not represent a people, but a person, this person must have been very eminent and distinguished—a shepherd-king, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... oversteps the limits of possible experience, the proper distinction of the different theories of the reality of sensuous objects is of great importance, in order to avoid the illusion which must necessarily arise from the misinterpretation of our empirical conceptions. ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... whole affair took another colour under that plausible tongue. The tactician began by declaring that the plaintiff was perfectly sane, and his convalescence was a matter of such joy to the defendant, that not even the cruel misinterpretation of facts and motives, to which his amiable client had been exposed, could rob him of that sacred delight "Our case, gentlemen, is, that the plaintiff is sane, and that he owes his sanity to those prompt, wise, and benevolent measures, which we took eighteen months ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... misunderstanding ensued, and the General, supposing the Consul to be contemptuously setting our Government at defiance, threatened to send him out of the country; but afterwards learning that their difference had arisen purely from misinterpretation, and that Senor Callejon had proved himself a patriot and hero in his country's service, the General, with the honest admiration which one brave man always feels toward another, took especial pains to render their intercourse, both official and personal, as agreeable as might be. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... they ever arouse our interest anew by the boldness and depth of their brilliant ideas, which alternate with quaint fancies or are pervaded by them; by the youthful courage with which they attacked great questions; and not least by the hard fate which rewarded their efforts with misinterpretation, persecution, and death at the stake. We must quickly pass over the broad threshold between modern philosophy and Scholastic philosophy, which is bounded by the year 1450, in which Nicolas of Cusa wrote his chief work, the Idiota, and 1644, when Descartes began the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... Heaven forecast, By that same Heaven instructed prophet-wise To justify the present in the past. What in the sapphire volume of the skies Is writ by God's own finger misleads none, But him whose vain and misinstructed eyes, They mock with misinterpretation, Or who, mistaking what he rightly read, Ill commentary makes, or misapplies Thinking to shirk or thwart it. Which has done The wisdom of this venerable head; Who, well provided with the secret key To that gold alphabet, himself made me, Himself, I say, ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... considered as its most important outcome and as the keystone of the evolutionist edifice—to the well-known proposition, "Man is descended from the Ape." While we simply ignore all the misrepresentation, distortion, and misinterpretation which this ape, or pithecoid hypothesis, has met with on all sides, we will only remark that this fundamental proposition, in the sense of our modern doctrine of evolution, can rationally have only this plain meaning: that the human ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... mother or some other discreet female is present, to prevent misinterpretation or remark. I have also taken a good deal of interest in Benjamin Franklin, before referred to, sometimes called B.F. or more frequently Frank, in imitation of that felicitous abbreviation, combining dignity and convenience, adopted by some of his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... of the assertion itself, and separate it from the company of some others not perhaps so admissible. First, I say, we must observe Reynolds's exact meaning, for (though the assertion may at first appear singular) a man who uses accurate language is always more liable to misinterpretation than one who is careless in his expressions. We may assume that the latter means very nearly what we at first suppose him to mean, for words which have been uttered without thought may be received without examination. But when ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... stained Grandcourt's face; and Dysart's misinterpretation of his philosophy almost stung him into fierce retort; but as his heavy lips unclosed in anger, his eyes fell on Dysart's ravaged face, and he sat silent, his personal feelings merged in an ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... this marginal cost (in perfect symmetry with what we observed as regards marginal utility), may be conceived as applying either to the marginal producer or to the marginal output of any producer. In the former aspect it is open to a misinterpretation, against which it will be well to guard. Some advocates of socialism have argued, as one of the counts in their indictment of the present industrial system, that the price of a commodity is determined ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... hampered. Law, if you had asked him, and he had accurately expressed himself, was a mist formed out of the moods and the mistakes of men, which befogged the sea of life and prevented plain sailing for the little commercial and social barques of men; it was a miasma of misinterpretation where the ills of life festered, and also a place where the accidentally wounded were ground between the upper and the nether millstones of force or chance; it was a strange, weird, interesting, and yet futile battle of wits where the ignorant and the incompetent and the shrewd ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... nigh, poor Woman, you have nothing to fear. Lay your strange, electric touch upon the chilly flesh; it strikes no eager mischief along the fainting veins. Look your sweet looks upon the grimy face, and tenderly lay back the locks from the congested brows; no wicked misinterpretation lurks to bite your kindness. Be motherly, be sisterly, fear nought. Go, watch him by night; you may sleep at his feet and he will not stir. Yet he lives, and shall live—may live to forget you, who knows? But for all that, be gentle ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... say anything whatever about President Wilson at the outset of his Administration unless I can speak of him with praise. I have scrupulously refrained from saying or doing one thing since election that could put the slightest obstacle, even of misinterpretation, in his path. It is to the interest of the country that he should succeed in his office. I cordially wish him success, and I shall cordially support any policy of his that I believe to be in the interests of the people of the United States. But when Mr. Wilson, after being ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... or Coacher willfully failing to remain within the legal bounds of his position, except upon an appeal by the Captain from the Umpire's decision upon a misinterpretation of ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 • edited by Henry Chadwick
... one else, to put a stop to this, and by doing so, to restore this unfortunate part of the world to its former happiness. We ask no magnanimity, we only demand justice. I enclose a translation of my letter in order to avoid any misinterpretation of it by your Excellency, as this happened not long ago when a letter which I had written to the Government of the South African Republic, and which at Reitz fell into your hands, was published in such a way that it was nearly ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... instantly come to the conclusion that he would rather see his daughter lying dead than in the power of such a ruffian; he therefore cut short the officer's protestations by assuring him that his words admitted of no misinterpretation, and that therefore he ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... the Misinterpretation of the words Eternall Life, Everlasting Death, and the Second Death. For though we read plainly in Holy Scripture, that God created Adam in an estate of Living for Ever, which was conditionall, that is to say, if he disobeyed not his Commandement; which was not essentiall ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... the title of "the lover of truth." Hipparchus was born at Nicaea, in Bithynia, in the year 160 B.C. His life, all too short for the interests of science, ended in the year 125 B.C. The observations of the great astronomer were made chiefly, perhaps entirely, at Rhodes. A misinterpretation of Ptolemy's writings led to the idea that Hipparchus, performed his chief labors in Alexandria, but it is now admitted that there is no evidence for this. Delambre doubted, and most subsequent writers follow him here, whether Hipparchus ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... spirit of Rev. Dr. John M. Krebbs, of New York, states through this clairvoyant that the cause of his mental aberration while on earth was a misinterpretation by him of a spiritual vision which he was permitted to receive. Thus misunderstanding the aim of his spiritual visitants, he became haunted with a fallacy which ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... She had been an unobserved witness of the scene between Edward and Wanda in the wood, and, of course, had made her own misinterpretation. A man who could permit a low, untutored savage to fawn upon him in that way, kissing his hand repeatedly, and flushing with gratified vanity, presumably at his words of endearment, could scarcely expect to be treated otherwise than with disdain by the ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... expediency. For abstract principles—I have in view here rights, justice, egalitarian equity, equality, liberty, chivalry, logicality, and such like—are not all of them guides to utility; and each of these is, as we have seen, open to all manner of private misinterpretation. ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... deadly afraid, yet seeing no avenue of escape from what must appear a public exhibition of contempt for Quarrier if he refused to taste its contents. That meant a bad night for him; yet he shrank more from the certain misinterpretation of a refusal to drink from the huge loving-cup with its heavy wreath of scented orchids, now already on its way toward him, than he feared the waking ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... emotion perhaps caused Hubert to accentuate his words, so that they conveyed a meaning different from that which he intended. Certainly his hesitations were capable of misinterpretation, and Miss ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... notes such as he took in his second tour to Wales and never used. Notes made on the spot are very likely to be disproportionate, to lay undue stress on something that should be allowed to recede, and would do so if left to memory; and once made they are liable to misinterpretation if used after intervals of any length. But the flow and continuity of letters insist on some proportion and on truth at least to the impression of the day, and a balance is ensured between the scene or the experience on the one hand and the ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... fact, these are the arguments always used, even by those who deny the doctrine of a plenary inspiration. They seldom or never accuse the writer of a mistake, but always rely on a supposed mistranslation, or misinterpretation, in order to avoid the force of a passage. Hence, also, we find believers in this doctrine of plenary inspiration, differing in opinion on a thousand matters, and with no probability of ever ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... attempted in the following chapters. When the doctrine of immanence began, as it has been of late, to be reasserted in a somewhat pronounced manner, most of those who were best able to judge felt conscious of certain dangers likely to arise through misinterpretation and over-emphasis; that those anticipations have been abundantly realised, no careful student of recent developments will dispute, and the present book is intended both to call attention to these dangers and to bring out the distinction between the truth of immanence ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... downright duty, Romayne. If I gave way to you, I should be the means of exposing the priesthood to the vilest misinterpretation. I should be deservedly reprimanded, and your proposal of restitution—if you expressed it in writing—would, without a moment's hesitation, be torn up. If you have any regard for me, drop ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... these poor distressed souls, especially if their bodies be predisposed by melancholy, they religiously given, and have tender consciences, every small object affrights them, the very inconsiderate reading of Scripture itself, and misinterpretation of some places of it; as, "Many are called, few are chosen. Not every one that saith Lord. Fear not little flock. He that stands, let him take heed lest he fall. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, That night two shall be in a bed, one ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... a source of profit as well as a sphere of duty or of glory. To Bestia it was also to be a sphere for diplomacy; and diplomacy and profit present an awkward combination, which gives room for much misinterpretation. Although the war was in some sense a concession to outside influences, the consul did not represent the spirit to which the senate had yielded. Nine years earlier he had served the cause of the nobility by effecting the recall of Popillius from exile, and was now a member of that inner ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... additional severity. He was subsequently shipped by the governor from Quebec to England, and never returned to Virginia. It is this treatment of Van Braam, more than any thing else, which convinces us that the suspicion of his being in collusion with the French in regard to the misinterpretation of the articles of capitulation, was groundless. He was simply ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... researches therein, that whenever her thoughts had wandered into the bypaths of ancient philosophies or pagan literatures, her spiritual insight had been darkened thereby, till [5] she was God-driven back to the inspired pages. Early training, through the misinterpretation of the Word, had been the underlying cause of the long years of in- validism she endured before Truth dawned upon her understanding, through right interpretation. With the [10] understanding of Scripture-meanings, had come physical rejuvenation. The uplifting of spirit ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... by the said Warren Hastings, which resignation the said Warren Hastings did not admit; and the use of the term resigned on that occasion was therefore a manifest and wilful misconstruction and misapplication of the words of the act of his present Majesty. And such misinterpretation and false extension of the term of resignation was the more indecent in the said Warren Hastings, as he was at the same moment disavowing and refusing to give effect to his own clear and express resignation, ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... misunderstood, and led me to refer to the place again. I immediately withdrew the note which had been interpreted in a way very different from what I had intended, and at the same time perceiving that my argument was obscure and liable to the misinterpretation of which Dr. Lightfoot has made such eager use, I myself at once recast it as well as I could within the limits at my command, [8:1] and this was already published before Dr. Lightfoot's criticism appeared, and before I had any knowledge ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... A wave of heat ran over her body. It was like the heat which follows on a received slap. One of the illustrateds deleted its voice from the general chorus. Cuckoo was aware of this, and looked up again to find two eyes fixed upon her with an expression of thin distaste that was incapable of misinterpretation. A second illustrated ceased to sing, two heads were inclined towards one another, and the "t'p, t'p, t'p" of a low whisper set the remaining two ladies at their posts as sentinels on ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... phrases which seem antidotes are poisons in disguise. The naked facts arrayed in the book establish Shelley's guilt in that one episode which disfigures his otherwise superlatively lofty and beautiful life; but the historian's careful and methodical misinterpretation of them transfers the responsibility to the wife's shoulders as he persuades himself. The few meagre facts of Harriet Shelley's life, as furnished by the book, acquit her of offense; but by calling in the forbidden helps of rumor, gossip, conjecture, insinuation, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... me as a charlatan who contrives to amuse a few idle people," he said. "I don't complain of that; my present position leads necessarily to misinterpretation of myself and my motives. Still, I may at least say that I am the victim of a sincere avowal of my belief in a great science. Yes! I repeat it, a great science! New, I dare say, to the generation we live in, though it was known and practiced in the days when ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... The misinterpretation I would guard against is, your supposing that I regard such repetition as always wrong in any grown-up person. Let me assure you that I do not so regard it. I am always willing to believe that those who repeat such stories differ wholly from ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... Darwin describes hive-bees apparently searching for a secretion on the calyx. In the same passage in "Cross and Self Fertilisation" he quotes Muller as stating that hive-bees obtain nectar from red clover by breaking apart the petals. This seems to us a misinterpretation of the "Befruchtung der Blumen," page 224.) I do so hope that you have not wasted any time from my stupid blunder. I hate myself, I hate clover, and ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... do not call this notion a silly one: he took it from our Holy Scriptures, but perverted it somewhat. Woman was made from man's rib, and did not require to be cut asunder all the way down: this is no proof of bad reasoning, but merely of misinterpretation. ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... and embarrassment. Emotion in woman, at such moments, or in connexion with similar subjects, is generally traced to one cause alone; and yet half the time it should rather be attributed to some other source. Anxiety, modesty, mere nervousness, or even vexation at this very misinterpretation, often raise the colour, and make the voice falter. Elinor had fully made up her mind, and she felt that a frank explanation was due to Mr. Ellsworth, but her regard for him was too sincere not to make the moment a painful one to her. He was rejected; but rejected with so much consideration, so ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... over a mutual misinterpretation, and, with a sense of mingled discord and relief, found themselves kissing and smiling as if nothing had happened. Pride sustained them; the hope that, since the other seemed so unconscious, a hurt dealt so unconsciously need not, for pride's sake, be resented; the fear that ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... in consequence of that misinterpretation, excited similar suspicions in me; and thus, mutual ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... observations which the undersigned was led to make in the course of his note to Sir Charles Vaughan upon one of the points alleged to have been thus determined were prompted only by a respect for the arbiter and a consequent anxiety to remove a misinterpretation of his meaning, which alone, it was believed, could induce the supposition that the arbiter, in searching for the rivers referred to in the treaty as designating the boundary, could have come to the opinion ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... how we shall be dealt with, when this familiar world passes away. And this belief in a "final judgment, unlike any other that has ever been in the world," Mr. Maurice would have us regard as a misinterpretation of Bible and Creed—a "dream" which St. Paul would never "allow us" to entertain, but would "compel" us instead "to look upon everyone of what we rightly call 'God's judgments' as essentially resembling it in kind and principle." "Our eagerness to deny this," he continues, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... the flower, the plant once more goes through a process of withdrawal, this time into the tiny organs of fertilization. (We shall return later to this essential stage in the life cycle of the plant, and shall then clear up the misinterpretation put upon it ever since scientific biology began.) After fertilization, the fruit begins to swell; once more the plant produces an organ with a more or less conspicuous spatial extension. This is followed by a final and extreme contraction in the forming of the seed inside the fruit. In ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... purgative use of the element comes out very prominently, as we have seen, in the general expulsion of demons from towns and villages. But in the present class of cases this aspect of fire may be secondary, if indeed it is more than a later misinterpretation of the custom." ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... themselves the aggressors. At the present time this imputed aggression, resting, as it does, only in the vague declamatory charges of political agitators, resolves itself into misapprehension, or misinterpretation, of the principles and facts of the political organization of the new ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... false translations from that pretending to authority? I repeat what? None is conceivable, since what could you have beyond the assurance of the translator, even which could only guarantee his intentions)—here is a cause of misinterpretation amounting to ruin, viz., after being read for centuries as if practically meant for our guidance, such and such a chapter (e.g., Jael and Sisera), long proscribed by the noble as a record of abominable ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... the Lobster much more than it does its own adult condition, we cannot doubt that its earlier state is its lower one, and that the organization of the Lobster is not as high in the class of Crustacea as that of the Crab. While using illustrations of this kind, however, I must guard against misinterpretation. These embryological changes are never the passing of one kind of animal into another kind of animal: the Crab is none the less a Crab during that period of its development in which it resembles a Lobster; it simply ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... Alexey Alexandrovitch, addressing Lidia Ivanovna, with a certain reproachfulness in his tone. It was unmistakably a subject they had discussed more than once before. "What harm has been done by the false interpretation of that passage! Nothing holds men back from belief like that misinterpretation. 'I have not works, so I cannot believe,' though all the while that is not said. But the ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... shouldn't fidget and yawn. You lay yourself open to misinterpretation. To continue: a very great chance for me. The firm is a big firm, the case is a big case, and it will be a great thing for me to be heard of in connection ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... regard as paramount what he regarded as subsidiary. Our fear for the Union sprang from other sources than his. But we believe he acted from the highest convictions of duty, and he certainly exposed himself with unflinching courage to obloquy and misinterpretation when silence would have been ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... rack her brains for just what might be mistaken, what might be misconstrued. There was nothing, she told herself, nothing, it was all as open as the day, and still her mind groped about for some forgotten circumstance, something gone almost out of memory that would bear misinterpretation.... How should she begin? "Isaac," she would say, "I am being followed about London." Suppose he denied his complicity! How could he deny ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... swept wholly out of consideration; and it was also necessary to show that the lying and dissimulation so widely attributed to the hysterical were merely the result of an ignorant and unscientific misinterpretation of psychic elements of the disease. This was finally and triumphantly achieved ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... you encounter difficulties you might find the problem there. Also, the colour table at the end is not really much good for anything beyond general impressions; not only are the paper and ink old, but between my scanner and your screen or printer, there is room for too much misinterpretation of precise colour, for ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... movement is not at all the original movement idea. This is suggested first by the various illusions of movement. We may believe that we perceive a movement where no actual changes of visual impressions occur. This, to be sure, may result from a mere misinterpretation of the impression: for instance when in the railway train at the station we look out of the window and believe suddenly that our train is moving, while in reality the train on the neighboring track has started. It is the same when we see the moon floating quickly through the motionless ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... his interlocutor, of which the latter could choose for support either that [131] he preferred, the proposer taking the other contrary proposition: the contestants often left the decision in an envoi to one or more arbitrators by common consent. Misinterpretation of the language of these envois gave rise to the legend concerning the "courts of love," as we have stated in a previous chapter. One of the earliest representatives of this school was Conon de Bethune, born in 1155; he took part in the Crusades ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... nothing short of a careful monograph, by a highly competent investigator, accompanied by figures and measurements of all the most important parts of a centaur, put forth under circumstances which could leave no doubt that falsification or misinterpretation would meet with immediate exposure, could possibly enable a man of science to feel that he acted conscientiously, in expressing his belief in the existence of a centaur ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... be alone in a slight misinterpretation of Fabian doctrine it may be well to take this opportunity of refuting the error. He says that Fabianism advocates the socialisation of rent, and in confirmation quotes Shaw's words "rent and interest"! That makes all the difference. If the term rent is widened ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... When we are studying a man's life we want to know the facts; otherwise we shall not be able to judge correctly of his life and work. There are two principal sources of error in writing biography: the first is ignorance, which leads to the omission of important particulars or to a misinterpretation of those that are known; the other source of error is prejudice for or against the person whose life is portrayed. This prejudice leads, on the one hand, to such a presentation of the biographical facts as to magnify the merits of the man; and on the other, it leads to such ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... at the present moment who are waiting for the speedy coming of Christ. They expect, before another year closes, to see Him in the clouds, to hear His voice, to stand before His judgment- seat. These illusions spring from misinterpretation of Scripture language. Christ, in the New Testament, is said to come whenever His religion breaks out in new glory or gains new triumphs. He came in the Holy Spirit in the day of Pentecost. He came in the destruction of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... he took hold of me, as if to draw me back, kissing my hands as he did so, but his gross misinterpretation of my resistance and the immoral position he was putting me into were stifling me, and ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... feeling, and knowledge are more important than art. When you address the blockhead majority, you must not only give them your text, you must tell them also what to think of it, otherwise there will be fine misinterpretation. You may be sure of the heart of the multitude if you can touch it; but its head, in the present state of its development, is an imperfect machine, manoeuvred for the most part by foolishness. People can see life for themselves, but they cannot always see the meaning of it, the why and wherefore, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... customary misinterpretation of calm justice in the case of my father's moderation during the wild ardor of abolition. This sort of ardor is very likely necessary in great upheavals, but it is not necessary that every individual should join the partisans (while they slash somewhat promiscuously) ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... event, December 29, but with no comment save that Southern prospects were less rosy than had been supposed. Then ensued a long silence, for this time there was no possibility of that editorial wiggling about the circle from excuses for misinterpretation to a complacent resumption of ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... "You don't understand me, Huntingdon! My own aim in life is to make my service to my country compensate for the selfishness and foolishness of my youth. My methods may, as you say, have been open to misinterpretation. But God knows my impulses have been disinterested. And you must realize now, Huntingdon, that it has been the business of certain people to see that you and I misunderstand ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... declare, that I never saw in any of the Nunneries (of which I have seen many both in Spain and other Parts of the World) any thing like indecent Behaviour, that might give occasion for Satyr or Disesteem. It is true, there may be Accidents, that may lead to a Misinterpretation, of which I remember a ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... factors given at the end of the case study deals only with the factors of delinquency. To avoid misinterpretation of the coordinated facts, what they are focused upon should ever be remembered. The statement of these ascertained factors brings out many incidental points which should be of interest to lawyers and other ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... judge literature we do so by reference to the eternal truth, not by what the writer considers the present phase of truth; and if literature so tested is found guilty of suppression, evasion or misinterpretation, we call the work insincere, though the author may have written in perfect good faith. That is a necessary distinction to keep in mind. If you call a man's work insincere, the superficial critic will take it as calling the man himself insincere; but the two are distinct, ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... fallacy; misconception, misapprehension, misstanding^, misunderstanding; inexactness &c adj.; laxity; misconstruction &c (misinterpretation) 523; miscomputation &c (misjudgment) 481; non sequitur &c 477; mis-statement, mis-report; mumpsimus^. mistake; miss, fault, blunder, quiproquo, cross purposes, oversight, misprint, erratum, corrigendum, slip, blot, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... air and as straightforward as light. But no experienced woman of the world, as she declared herself to be, could forget that this was a ludicrously delicate topic with a widower. She must either avoid it altogether, or expose herself to misinterpretation in pursuing it. It took him a few minutes to perceive that Diane had chosen the latter course, and had done it with a fine disdain of anything he might choose to think. She was not of the order ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... The moment he shows his face, all other faces are glum. We defy month or man, under such a trial, to make himself even tolerably agreeable. He feels that he is no favourite, and that a most sinister misinterpretation will be put on all his motions, manners, thoughts, words, and deeds. A man or a month so circumstanced is much to be pitied. Think, look, speak, act as he will—yea, even more like an angel than a man or a month—every eyebrow arches—every nostril distends—every ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... intensely interested," he repeated, watching the lovely, sensitive face which pride and dread of misinterpretation had slightly flushed again. ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... and comrade undergoing changes which he himself thought hazardous, saw him criticised in a post where no one ever escaped the severest criticism, and beheld him return to private life amid unpopularity, founded, as he thought, upon misinterpretation of what was perhaps error, but not dishonesty. Meanwhile he felt that the old "Frank," his brother through Alma Mater, dwelt still within the person of the public man; and though to claim that brotherhood exposed Hawthorne, under the circumstances, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... on board the Swash, from the captain to Jack Tier, was on deck. Mulford met Spike at the cabin door, and pointed toward the fiery column, that was booming down upon the anchorage, with a velocity and direction that would now admit of no misinterpretation. For one instant that sturdy old seaman stood aghast; gazing at the enemy as one conscious of his impotency might have been supposed to quail before an assault that he foresaw must prove irresistible. Then his native spirit, and most of all the effects of training, began to show themselves in him, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... might prove to have an unpleasant effect upon his own fortunes Gerrard was aware, and his thoughts were not altogether agreeable as he sat in his tent during the heat of the day. It seemed prudent to put his papers in order—perhaps to destroy one or two which might be liable to misinterpretation in unfriendly hands, and this he was proceeding to do when an orderly came to say that a local Sirdar and his son, who had become separated from their attendants in a hunting expedition, asked if they might ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... the vituperation hurled by many Northern friends of the blacks at the "professed philanthropists" who went to Port Royal to "make their fortunes" out of the labor of the "poor negro." The integrity of Mr. Philbrick's motives stands out in his letters beyond the possibility of misinterpretation. This record is a witness of what sort of thing he and his kind were ready to do to redress ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... chimera! What a monstrous misinterpretation of pure minds by minds impure! To us the dissecting-room was a temple, and the dead an awe, revolting to all our senses, until the knife revealed to our minds the Creator's hand in structural beauties that the trained can ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... own shams are liable to misinterpretation. In centuries to come our own modern recipes for "Scotch Woodcock" or "Welsh rabbit" may be interpreted as attempts on our part to hoodwink guests by making game birds and rabbits out of cheese and bread, like Trimalchio's culinary artists are reputed to have made ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... sketches, and the conditions under which they were conceived, is peculiarly tempting to an author who has been obliged to retain a decent professional reticence under a cloud of ingenious surmise, theory, and misinterpretation. He very gladly seizes this opportunity to establish the chronology of the sketches, and incidentally to show that what are considered the "happy accidents" of literature are very apt to be the results of quite logical ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Anglicanism; in his public utterances he touched upon the Darwinian doctrine with a weary disdain. This contradiction involved no insincerity; Mr. Lashmar merely held in contempt the common understanding, and declined to expose an esoteric truth to vulgar misinterpretation. Yet he often worried about ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... believe that just that is the proof. The Lord could not in fact have exposed His law to the possibility of mutilation or misinterpretation, but must in fact have left a guardian of His truth to prevent that ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... John, in the one concerning the woman taken in adultery, which was the very last chapter which Mr. Cartaret that evening could have desired to read. He had always considered that to some minds it might be open to misinterpretation as a ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... and pleasure-seeking, the professed people of God were blinded to the Saviour's instructions concerning the signs of His appearing. The doctrine of the second advent had been neglected; the scriptures relating to it were obscured by misinterpretation, until it was, to a great extent, ignored and forgotten. Especially was this the case in the churches of America. The freedom and comfort enjoyed by all classes of society, the ambitious desire for wealth and luxury, begetting an absorbing devotion to money-making, the ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... The inference is only fair and reasonable that at the very outset he had recognised the misinterpretation of Lord Raglan's orders, and was seeking to change the direction of the charging horsemen, diverting them from the Russian battery towards the redoubts, their ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... of law is to do justice; and justice is not done if the ingenuity of an able advocate is entitled to gain a false verdict. For how is this to be gained? Either by a suppression of the truth in part, or by a colouring of the falsehood, or by an invention of facts, aided by a misinterpretation of law; all palpably against conscience. The true rule appears to be—the lawyer stands in the place of the client, to do what the client would and could have done, if he had equal skill in exhibiting the circumstances, and equal knowledge ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... brain, the whim of some romancer, the trick of some playwright. It would make a capital farce, this idea, carried out. A young man slighting the lovely heroine of the little comedy and making love to her grandmother! This would, of course, be overstating the truth of the story, but to such a misinterpretation the plain facts lend themselves too easily. We will relate the leading circumstances of the case, as they were told us with perfect simplicity and frankness by the subject of an affection which, if classified, would come under the general head of Antipathy, but to which, if we give ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... admits of no misinterpretation, we see stated the doctrine of telepathy, which is only now beginning to find acceptance among scientific men, but which, as I view it, has been amply demonstrated by the experiments of recent years and by ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... '"Of misinterpretation from Mr. Trevor I am in no fear. Had he one sinister design, he never could have imagined the conduct he has so nobly pursued. But to suppose the possibility of such a thing in him would be a most unpardonable ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... woman. It had come with the entry of death. They conversed hurriedly and guardedly, as if they mistrusted each other. In each of them two entities were now apparent—a surface consciousness, which talked and acted mechanically, and a secondary inner consciousness, watchful, and fearful of misinterpretation of the spoken word. The faculties which make up the human mind are different and complex, and mysteriously blended. It may be that when tragedy upsets the frail structure of human life the brute instincts of watchfulness ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... with a little careful scrutiny the point may be easily settled. The error, which is too often committed, of pronouncing the leg upon which the animal travels soundly as the seat of the lameness, is the result of a misinterpretation of the physiology of locomotion in the crippled animal. Much depends upon the gait with which the animal moves while under examination. The act of walking is unfavorable for accurate observation, though, if the animal walks on three legs, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... striking light than is already done by that excellent prelate. "The cause of his loyalty being called in question, he tells us, was a few lines in a preface to one of his books; the objection, says he, I must not pass in silence, because it was the only part of his life that was liable to misinterpretation, even by the confession of those that envied ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... and definite meaning of the writers who used them, and the chances of misinterpreting or misunderstanding them are reduced to a minimum. It is I think well-known that avoidance of technical terms has often rendered philosophical works unduly verbose, and liable to misinterpretation. The art of clear writing is indeed a rare virtue and every philosopher cannot expect to have it. But when technical expressions are properly formed, even a bad writer can make himself understood. In the early days of Buddhist philosophy in the Pali ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... Behem had discovered the western world previous to Columbus, in the course of the voyage with Cam, was founded on a misinterpretation of a passage interpolated in the chronicle of Hartmann Schedel, a contemporary writer. This passage mentions, that when the voyagers were in the Southern Ocean not far from the coast, and had passed the line, they came into another hemisphere, where, when they looked ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... looks, and her tones would, as I venture to think, have got to the end of another man's self-control before this. Anyway, she had at last irritated me into speaking as strongly as I felt. What I said had been so plainly (perhaps so rudely) expressed, that misinterpretation of it seemed to be impossible. She mistook me, nevertheless. The most merciless disclosure of the dreary side of human destiny is surely to be found in the failure of words, spoken or written, so to answer their ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... infallible utterances of the Roman see. It is difficult to fix on any one of them the infallible authority of which is not open to dispute within the church itself; while the liability of them to misinterpretation (as in the case of the Quanta Cura and Syllabus) brings in still another element of vagueness ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... these changes are responsible, she would escape the uneasiness of mind that causes many sorts of discomfort. It is unfortunately true, however, that her lack of familiarity with the facts about pregnancy and her belief in unfounded traditions frequently lead to the misinterpretation of natural conditions. An anxious frame of mind also causes real ailments to assume an importance out of all proportion to their ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... things be,/And overcome us, like a summer's cloud,/Without our special wonder?] [W: Can't] The alteration is introduced by a misinterpretation. The meaning is not that these things are like a summer-cloud, but can such wonders as these pass over us without wonder, as a casual summer ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... sense; and that it is to such persons that St. Paul refers in the justly admired fifteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians; and that the inadvertence to this has led a numerous class of divines to a misconception of the Apostle's reasoning, and a misinterpretation of his words, in behoof of the Socinian notion, that the resurrection of Christ is the only argument of proof for the belief of a future state, and that this was the great end and purpose of this event. Now this assumption is so destitute of support ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... Prichard had been in Australia once on a time. The imperfection of this knowledge had affected the name of the place, and when he officiously struck in to supply it, he did so inaccurately. "Horstrian she is!" He added:—"Rode in a circus, she did." But this was only the reaction of misinterpretation ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... their forms and colours. Those who take up this position prove, not that the artist has no meaning to convey, but that for them the artist's nature is unintelligible, and his meaning is conveyed in an unknown tongue. It seems superfluous to guard against misinterpretation by saying that to expect clear definition from music—the definition which belongs to poetry—would be absurd. The sphere of music is in sensuous perception; the sphere of poetry is in intelligence. Music, dealing with pure sound, must always be vaguer in ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... ideas to conceive an instance of beneficence that soars so high above the level of their own sentiments; and the rest suspect it of something sinister or selfish, from the suggestions of their own sordid and vicious inclinations. The young Count subjected himself to such misinterpretation, among those who observed the increased warmth of civility and complaisance in his behaviour to Ferdinand. They ascribed it to his desire of still profiting by our adventurer's superior talents, by which alone they ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... exists to-day, is in the main a misrepresentation and a misinterpretation of Christ; not consciously indeed—if it were so the remedy would be easy; but unconsciously, which makes the remedy difficult. One need not stop to define Christianity, for there is only one sincere meaning to the word; it implies ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... principles, which on account of their thoroughness are interesting. From the documents it can be ascertained how near some of the critics came to that worship of the Faultless Hero with which Dryden in his heroic plays occasionally conformed, while he guarded himself against misinterpretation in his prefaces. ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... stated, with an exquisitely ludicrous result. He interprets the last line of Parting at Morning as meaning that the woman "desires more society than the seaside home affords"! But it is the man who speaks, not the woman. The confusion plainly arises from a misinterpretation of "him" in "straight was a path of gold for him." Berdoe reads this as "lucrative work for the man"! Of course "him" refers to the sun who has "looked over the mountain's rim" . . . Here is an instance of making ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... is in some degree open to Mr. Bain's criticism: when B is said to co-exist with A (it must be by a lapsus calami that Mr. Bain uses the word coincide), it is possible, in the absence of warning, to suppose the meaning to be that the two things are only found together. But this misinterpretation is excluded by the other, or practical, form of the maxim; Nota notoe est nota rei ipsius. No one would be in any danger of inferring that because a is a mark of b, b can never exist without a; that because being in a confirmed consumption is a ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... the ghastly shortcoming of his letter as regards distinctness, and the prosaic misinterpretation it was open to, Wilfrid called his inventive wits to aid, and ran swiftly to the end of the street. He had become—as like unto a lunatic as resemblance can approach identity. Commanding the length of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... any deciding force in turning the scales already so overloaded by fate. Philosophy failed to prevent war. Nietzsche's philosophy did not cause it. His philosophy affords a convenient phraseology in which to express a philosophy of war, granting sufficient misinterpretation of his philosophy. Probably what influence he has had has been due rather to his literary impressiveness than to his thought ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... and coarsely laminated (This term is open to some misinterpretation, as it may be applied both to rocks divided into laminae of exactly the same composition, and to layers firmly attached to each other, with no fissile tendency, but composed of different minerals, or of different shades of colour. ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... surprise, and attributed it merely to admiration or astonishment such as she had felt herself a quarter of an hour earlier. She smiled a little as she went by, and Reanda knew that the smile was for him because he had shown surprise. He understood the misinterpretation, and resented it ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... for this misinterpretation of her attitude, and her involuntary, smiling glance was a ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells |
