"Undervalue" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it in that way. (He goes chivalrously on his knees.) Ah, Tweeny, I don't undervalue the bucket, but what I want to say now is that the sweet refinement of a dear girl has done more for me ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... the letter itself. But we have yielded to the necessity of punctuating it. In the original there were neither commas nor stops of any kind, not even notes of exclamation,—a fact which tends to undervalue the system of notes and dashes by which modern authors have endeavored to depict the great ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... who, too diffident of their own abilities, or too indolent to exert them, would wish to have their reflections assisted, by pointing out what those useful purposes are. For the service of such, the following enumeration of particulars is entered upon. And if there should be any, who affect to undervalue the plan or the execution of our voyages, what shall now be offered, if it do not convince them, may, at least, check the influence of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... of the effects, in a matter of no great moment to ourselves; but, as time and years afford the means of observation and comparison, you will perceive the effects in matters of the last moment, in a national point of view. It is in human nature to undervalue the things with which we are familiar, and to form false estimates of those which are remote, either by time, or by distance. But, go into the drawing-room, and, in young Wenham, you will find one who fancies himself a votary of a new school, although ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... determination to overcome all obstacles, Madame even condescended to apply to my wife, whose influence over Mademoiselle she was clever enough not to undervalue. ...
— Esmeralda • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... better than me (though not by yourself, for Jan tells me you're a grand artist), that a man may have the ambition and the love, and some talent for an art, and yet be just without that divine spark which the gods withhold. Sir, GOD forbid that I should undervalue the pure pleasure of even that little gift; but it's ill for a lad when he has just that much of an art to keep him from a ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... big grafter, the man who'd take the six-figure cheque, is likely not the Emperor. I don't know. You'd have to find that out. But the principle's sound. That's why I call myself a pacifist. There's tosh talked about pacifism, of course. There always must be tosh talked—and texts. I don't undervalue texts as a means of influencing public opinion. But the principle is the thing. It's business. Pay a big price to the man who can deliver the goods. If you pay a big enough price ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... do not undervalue here Honours the nobles of our land enjoy; We hold in high esteem the British Peer, Warm to the ancient ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... animated by a noble and invincible resolution. Their skill in military affairs increases their courage; and the wise sentiments which, according to the laws of their country are instilled into them in their education, give additional vigour to their minds: for as they do not undervalue life so as prodigally to throw it away, they are not so indecently fond of it as to preserve it by base and unbecoming methods. In the greatest heat of action, the bravest of their youth, who have devoted themselves to that service, single out the general of their enemies, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... him in his church, have turned back again to their own right-hand extremes of error, which once they professedly gave up, but now persist in, an obstinate impugning the validity of their ministerial authority and protestative mission, undervalue the pure ordinances of the gospel dispensed by them, and live as if there were no church of Christ in the land, where they might receive the seals of the covenant, either to themselves or their children; and therefore, in the righteous judgment of God, have been left to ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... "You undervalue them," said I; "they have their College and Academies, their grammar schools and primary institutions, and I believe there are few among them who cannot read ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the horsemanship and swordsmanship of the cavalry, who galloped their horses at speed over any ground, and leaped them over formidable obstacles, and of the bayonet practice, and especially of the marksmanship, of the infantry. He remarked that hunters were apt to undervalue the soldiers as marksmen, but that Wayne's riflemen were as good shots as any hunters he had ever seen at any of the many matches he had attended in the backwoods. [Footnote: Knoxville Gazette, August ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... tied," as the papers expressed it, "under a huge bell of yellow roses." The paper also named the figure which the flowers and the collation and other things cost Mr. Cooke. A natural reticence forbids me to repeat it. But, lest my client should think that I undervalue his kindness, I will say that we had the grandest wedding ever seen in that part of the world. McCann was there, and Mr. Cooke saw to it that he had a punchbowl all to himself in which to drink our healths: Judge Short was there, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... he speaks of Leudastes,—"She took him (says he) into Favour, rais'd him, and made him Keeper of the best Horses; which so filled him with Pride and Vanity, that he put in for the Constableship; [Comitatum Stabuloram] and having got it, began to despise and undervalue every Body." From these Quotations it appears, that tho' the Custody of the Horses was a very honourable Employment, yet 'twas much inferior to that of Constable. Aimoinus, lib. 3. cap. 43. gives the same Account of this Leudastes.—"Being grown very intimate with the Queen, ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... found more brilliantly illuminating its substance than in our own hearts and lives. The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God. To undervalue God's Providence it is the most dreadful insult that a fool could dare conceive in his mind against God's existence. But the ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... full head of steam the ship began to forge ahead towards the open sea and safety. 'For me,' Scott adds, 'the lesson had been a sharp and, I have no doubt, a salutary one; we were here to fight the elements with their icy weapons, and once and for all this taught me not to undervalue the enemy.' During the forenoon the ship was within seven or eight miles of the high bold coast-line to the south of Cape Adare, but later she had to be turned outwards [Page 46] so that the heavy stream of pack-ice drifting along the land could be avoided. By the morning ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... I have known very fine girls who caused the usual thrills, whose conservatory kisses I should never undervalue. But when it comes to the fatuous delirium—the celestial idiocy that queers the brain and impairs the vision—why, I ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... obliged, by press of other work, to set down these notes in cruel shortness: and many a reader may be disposed to question utterly the standard by which the measurement is made. It will not be found, on reference to my other books, that they encourage young ladies to go into convents; or undervalue the dignity of wives and mothers. But, as surely as the sun does sever day from night, it will be found always that the noblest and loveliest women are dutiful and religious by continual nature; and their passions are trained ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... of anxiety for the fate of others, is apt to go to much greater lengths in his preference of the objects of his immediate solicitude than Mr. Burke has ever done. A man so circumstanced often seems to undervalue, to vilify, almost to reprobate and disown, those that are out of danger. This is the voice of nature and truth, and not of inconsistency and false pretence. The danger of anything very dear to us ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... a phraseology at variance with that which so high an authority, and one which I am less likely than any other person to undervalue, has deliberately sanctioned, I have been influenced by the urgent necessity for a term exclusively appropriated to express the manner in which a concrete general name serves to mark the attributes which ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... thought simply and naturally, and not in terms of scientific theory and over-elaborated system. She believed that the world was burdened and paralysed by conventional methods. But she did not undervalue the aesthetic side of existence. "So many think that we missionaries live a sort of glorified glamour of a life, and have no right to think of any of the little refinements and elegancies which rest and sooth tired and overstrained nerves—certainly coarseness and ugliness ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... to God, Sancho," returned Don Quixote, "for he will give her what suits her best; but do not undervalue thyself so much as to come to be content with anything less than being ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of costly failure. Many a promising mechanic has been spoiled by the ill-considered attempts to make a passable engineer; and the annals of every profession abound in parallel instances of misdirected zeal. In saying this, however, one would not wish to undervalue enthusiasm, nor to deny that it sometimes reveals or develops latent ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... open hostility. In the Prince the Cardinal met his match. He found himself confronted by an intellect as subtle, an experience as fertile in expedients, a temper as even, and a disposition sometimes as haughty as his own. He never affected to undervalue the mind of Orange. "'Tis a man of profound genius, vast ambition—dangerous, acute, politic," he wrote to the King at a very early period. The original relations between himself and the Prince bad been very amicable. It hardly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... enthusiasm. Weak people show their enthusiasm too much on the surface. Powerful folk keep it too deep in their hearts to be seen at all. What then, are we to scout it in the impulsive because too obvious; to undervalue it in the reticent because almost invisible? Nay, let us be thankful for it in any form, for the thing is good, though the individual's manner of displaying it may be faulty. Let us hope that the too gushing may learn to clap on the breaks ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... creative faculty. For the literature of England, an energetic development of which has ever preceded or accompanied a great and free development of the national will, has arisen as it were from a new birth. In spite of the low-thoughted envy which would undervalue contemporary merit, our own will be a memorable age in intellectual achievements, and we live among such philosophers and poets as surpass beyond comparison any who have appeared since the last national ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... this comes heroism in all its shapes; here the enterprises that overshadow half the planet, when full grown, lie, tender, in their cotyledons. Here there is neither praise nor blame, nothing but a passionless self-estimate, quite as willing to undervalue as to rate too highly. The less clay and straw the task-master has given his servant, the smaller the tale of bricks he will be required to furnish. Many a man not remarkable for conceit has shuddered as some effort or accident has revealed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... issues remain to testify, Dante's own countrymen were eager "to pay honours almost divine" to his memory. "The last age," writes Hobhouse, in 1817 (note 18 to Canto IV. of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 496), "seemed inclined to undervalue him.... The present generation ... has returned to the ancient worship, and the Danteggiare of the northern Italians is thought even indiscreet by the more moderate Tuscans." Dante was in the air. As Byron wrote in his Diary (January ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... consists in having morbid and bitter views and theories about human nature; not in indulging in shadowy fancies and conceits. There is nothing whatever to show that Hawthorne had any such doctrines or convictions; certainly, the note of depression, of despair, of the disposition to undervalue the human race, is never sounded in his Diaries. These volumes contain the record of very few convictions or theories of any kind; they move with curious evenness, with a charming, graceful flow, on a level which lies above that of a man's philosophy. They adhere with such persistence to this upper ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... not complain of such treatment, nor even inwardly resent it. The friendliness shown him was as real as the kindness he had received throughout his early youth from the Prince of Gerano, and he was not the man to undervalue it because he had not a drop of gentle blood in his veins. But his refined nature craved refined intercourse, and preferred solitude to what he could get in any lower sphere. The desire for the atmosphere of the uppermost ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... will not undervalue the compliment she is inclined to make you, Sir Harry. The moment you ask for her compliance, she will not refuse to your affection, what she makes a difficulty to grant to the ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... the victory was to elate the tone of the army far above any previous act of the war. Already prepared not to undervalue their own prowess, its ease and completeness left a universal sense of their invincibility, till the feeling became common in the ranks—and spread thence to the people—that one southern man was worth a dozen Yankees; and that if they did not come in numbers greater than five to one, the result ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... hastened to declare, laughing a little wryly. "Such a journey is a liberal education in itself, knocking the insularity out of a man—if he has any receptive faculty that is—and ridding him of all manner of stodgy prejudices. I don't the least undervalue my good fortune.—But you talk of remembering. That's stretching a point surely. You must have been a mere baby, my dear Damaris, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... himself with authorities on every point which he thought it in the least probable might be started against him by either the bench or the bar. I told him, on one of these occasions, that I thought "he need not give his enemy credit for such far-sighted astuteness."—"Oh," said he quickly, "never undervalue an opponent: besides, I like turning up law—I don't forget it, and, as Lord Coke says, it is sure to be useful at some time or another." In court, he was absorbed in his case, appearing to be sensible of the existence of nothing else but his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... guides! Let Independence, Self-Conceit, and Go-ahead undervalue them, if they will; but I, Sola Foemina, (for that is the name I go by,) of Ignorance, (the place I hail from,) casting up my unbalanced accounts, (with a view to settling,) find a large credit due to this class of individuals, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... the missionary may go forth to the heathen, satisfied that in the confidence of the directors he has a testimonial infinitely superior to letters-apostolic from the Archbishop of Canterbury, or from the Vatican at Borne. A missionary, surely, cannot undervalue his commission, as soon as it is put ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... invaders had brought want to their boards, infamy to their beds, fire to their roofs, and the knife to their throats. It was natural that a man who lived in times like these should overrate the importance of those measures by which a nation is rendered formidable to its neighbours, and undervalue those which make it prosperous ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... present, of many other advantages, I shall barely mention that in regard to letters and the sciences; far the greatest number of the best and most celebrated books extant, were written during that period of life, and those ten years, which some make it their business to undervalue, in order to give a loose to their appetites. Be that as it will, I would not act like them. I rather coveted to live these ten years, and, had I not done so, I should never have finished those tracts, ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro
... about the figure he would make in Virginia; but I found he would do anything I desired, though he did not seem glad to have me undervalue his plantations, so I turned my tale. I told him I had good reason not to go there to live, because if his plantations were worth so much there, I had not a fortune suitable to a gentleman of 1200 a year, as he said his estate ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... not undervalue modesty or recommend self-sufficiency. We should always be learners, gladly welcoming every help, and respecting every personality. But we should also respect our own, and bear in mind, that "though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... NELL,—I am very much obliged to you for your gift, which you must not undervalue, for I like the articles; they look extremely pretty and light. They are for wrist frills, are they not? Will you condescend to accept a yard of lace made up into nothing? I thought I would not offer to spoil it by stitching it into any shape. Your creative ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... will also be over-praised. The reason will be that the race will so need these discoveries. Unlike the great cats, simians tend to undervalue the body. Having less self-respect, less proper regard for their egos, they care less than the cats do for the casing of the ego,—the body. The more civilized they grow the more they will let their bodies deteriorate. They will let their shoulders ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... la Poliniere, who was present, said not a word. Rameau, although invited, refused to come. The next day, Madam de la Popliniere received me at her toilette very ungraciously, affected to undervalue my piece, and told me, that although a little false glitter had at first dazzled M. de Richelieu, he had recovered from his error, and she advised me not to place the least dependence upon my opera. The duke arrived soon after, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... loss of their independence and their trade in a tolerable physical well-being, in the suppression of all disorders, and in an enforced calm such as Louis, by reason of his false position, had not been able to secure for them—a boon which, it must be confessed, their placid dispositions did not undervalue. When, however, opportunity was ripe, they bravely rose to assert once more ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Scriptures, some half-dozen volumes of sermons and polemical works, all the latter of which were vigorously as well as narrowly one-sided, and a few books that had been expressly written to praise New England, and to undervalue all the rest of the earth. As the family knew nothing of the world beyond the limits of its own township, and an occasional visit to Hartford, on what is called "election-day," Jason's early life was necessarily of the most ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... extort it it will, and in its own way too at last), mark, and see what attempts will be made to turn knowledge against itself, and to catechise the nation back into the schoolboy acquiescence of the good people of Germany. Much good is there in that people—I would not be thought to undervalue it—much bonhommie—and in the most despotic districts, as much sensual comfort as can make any people happy who know no other happiness. But England and France, the leaders of Europe, the peregrinators of the world, cannot ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... would not be driven to any such wretched expedients; nor in fact does she condescend to them. They only thus undervalue her strength, who mistake her character, and are ignorant of her powers. It is her peculiar glory, and her main office, to bring all the faculties of our nature into their just subordination and dependence; that so the whole man, complete in all his functions, may ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... athletic exercises. Like the renowned Pinner of Wakefield, he was the village champion; carried off the prize at all the fairs, and threw his gauntlet at the country round. Even to this day, the old people talk of his prowess, and undervalue, in comparison, all heroes of the green that have succeeded him; nay, they say, that if Ready-Money Jack were to take the field even now, there is no ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... this work is so great as to include even pictures of the more conventional life, but mainly the writers keep to the life which is not conventional, the life of the fields, the woods, the cabin, the village, the little country town. It would be easier to undervalue than to overvalue them, as we believe the reader of the admirable pieces here ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... waste time and money in experimenting. With beginners it is important to be successful at first; which is impossible without availing themselves of the experience of others. While we thus aim to give our volume this exclusively practical form, and utilitarian character, we do not undervalue the labors of amateur cultivators. A meed of praise is due to those who are willing to spend time and money in experiments, by which great truths are evolved for the ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... you not believe me when I tell you the thing you ask is impossible?" replied his mother more calmly. "I am sorry for you if you are disappointed, Archie; but you undervalue Mattie,—you do indeed. She will make you a nice little housekeeper, and, though she is not clever, she is so amiable that nothing ever puts her out; and visiting the poor and sick-nursing are more in her line than in Grace's. Mrs. Blair finds her invaluable. She wanted ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... be said that I undervalue this class. I will come boldly to the other, composed of those who are neither servile not absolutists,—I repel this name, in my turn, with all the pride to which every sincere conviction has a right,—but who believe ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... to do anything commendable, I attribute it more to my fortune than industry, forasmuch as I design everything by chance and in fear. I have this, also, in general, that of all the opinions antiquity has held of men in gross, I most willingly embrace and adhere to those that most contemn and undervalue us, and most push us to naught; methinks, philosophy has never so fair a game to play as when it falls upon our vanity and presumption; when it most lays open our irresolution, weakness, and ignorance. I look upon the too good opinion that man has ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... "You should not undervalue knowledge before Pansy, who has not finished her education," Madame Merle interposed with a smile. "Pansy will never know any harm," said the child's ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... doubt the descendants of the woman of Samaria, living there in Shechem, still refer with pardonable vanity to this conversation of their ancestor, held some little time gone by, with the Messiah of the Christians. It is not likely that they undervalue a distinction such as this. Samaritan nature is human nature, and human nature remembers ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... almost insane to assume that in a Christian country Atheism should be professed as a cloak or as an excuse for misconduct. They who talk in this strain greatly undervalue the accommodating power of religion. Is there a single form of rascality known to man for which religion has not been able to provide a sanction? If there is I have failed to come across it. The use of ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... hand, if Edith had praised Aylmer, Bruce would have been the first to debiner his actions, undervalue his gifts, and crab ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... speaks to you; and be sure not to speak till you are spoken to. If any Thing that is obscene be said, don't laugh at it, but keep your Countenance, as though you did not understand it; don't reflect on any Body, nor take place of any Body, nor boast of any Thing of your own, nor undervalue any Thing of another Bodies. Be courteous to your Companions that are your Inferiors; traduce no Body; don't be a Blab with your Tongue, and by this Means you'll get a good Character, and gain Friends without Envy. If the Entertainment shall be long, desire to ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... trust it may not be supposed that I undervalue M. Renan's labours, or intended to ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... Lord did take at the first to exalt his son Jesus: he goes not amongst the Jewish rabbis, nor to the schools of learning, to fetch out his gospel preachers, but to the trades, and those most contemptible too; yet let not any from hence conceive that I undervalue the gifts and graces of such who have been, or now are endued with them, nor yet speak against learning being kept in its place; but my meaning is, that those that are learned should not despise those that are not; or those ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... with a few exceptions here and there. I like books,—I was born and bred among them, and have the easy feeling, when I get into their presence, that a stable-boy has among horses. I don't think I undervalue them either as companions or as instructors. But I can't help remembering that the world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men. The Hebrew patriarchs had small libraries, I think, if any; ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... his chains? Nothing of this could she perform—and what did she there? For sympathy, at such a moment, he cared little for such sympathy, at least, as he could command. His pride and ambition, heretofore, had led him to despise and undervalue the easy of attainment. He was always grasping after the impossible. The fame which he had lost for ever, grew doubly attractive to his mind's eye from the knowledge of this fact. The society, which had expelled him from its circle and its privileges, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... and the piles of rock and gravel have been considered so many moraines, that is, deposits of diverse material transported by the glaciers. They do not regard the probability of other agents taking the place of glaciers, and undervalue the moving power of water. Water in liquid state has often produced analogous effects, and it has often been the error of the glacialists to confound the one with the other. The erratic rocks and the moraines are undoubtedly the ordinary indications of the ancient gravels, but, taken isolatedly, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... the very finest of all human things, to be very rich. A much smaller number, either from the exercise of their own reflective powers, or from the indoctrination of romantic novels and overdrawn religious books, run to the opposite extreme: undervalue wealth, deny that it adds anything to human comfort and enjoyment, declare that it is an unmixed evil, profess to despise it. I dare say that many readers of the Idylls of the King will so misunderstand that ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... domestick Way of Life deny themselves many Advantages, to satisfy a generous Benevolence which they bear to their Friends oppressed with Distresses and Calamities. Such Natures one may call Stores of Providence, which are actuated by a secret Celestial Influence to undervalue the ordinary Gratifications of Wealth, to give Comfort to an Heart loaded with Affliction, to save a falling Family, to preserve a Branch of Trade in their Neighbourhood, and give Work to the Industrious, preserve the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... have a collection worthy of the name of a library must of all things have a thorough knowledge of books, that he may distinguish such as are valuable from the trifling. He must likewise understand the price of Books, otherwise he may purchase some at too high a rate, and undervalue others: all which requires no small ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... theory of the world did the conviction of the dignity of man and his elevation above nature, attain so certain an expression as in Neoplatonism; and never before in the history of civilisation did its highest exponents, notwithstanding all their progress in inner observation, so much undervalue the sovereign significance of real science and pure knowledge as the later Neoplatonists did. Judged from the stand-point of pure science, of empirical knowledge of the world, the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle marks a momentous turning-point, the ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... not so much undervalue your Majesty's judgement as not to obey you herein, and I wish I could remember as much of this as when I was ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... ambition for literary distinction is now very prevalent with the sex. But without any disposition to undervalue their claims, whenever I hear of a female traveler clambering the Alps, or describing the classic grounds of Greece and Italy, publishing her musings in the holy land, or revealing the mysteries of the harem, I cannot but think that for every success ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... houses offer some hope of support in a literary career. Even in the older and better equipped universities the faculty is usually a corps of working scholars, each man intent upon his specialty and rather inclined to undervalue merely "literary" performance. In many cases the fastidious and hypercritical turn of mind which besets the scholar, the timid conservatism which naturally characterizes an ancient seat of learning and the spirit of theological ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... one—especially a working man—in this church this day who is inclined to undervalue the Bible and Christianity, let him know that, but for the Bible and Christianity, he has not the slightest reason to believe that there would have been at this moment a hospital in London to receive him and his in the hour of sickness or disabling accident, and to ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... kept constantly in view, and the teacher should feel that these three fundamental branches stand by themselves, and stand first in importance. I do not mean to undervalue the others, but only to insist upon the superior value and importance of these. Teaching a pupil to read, before he enters upon the active business of life, is like giving a new settler an axe, as he goes to seek his new home in the forest. Teaching him a lesson in history, ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... nation. As James in his Declaration afterwards asserted, the confident asseveration of that which every man was willing to believe, enchanted the world. To a certain degree it influenced the King and Court. James was not of a nature to undervalue dignities and opportunities of wealth. While he imprisoned the explorer, he had asserted the title to Guiana acquired through him. He commissioned Captain Charles Leigh in 1604, and, after his death, Captain Robert Harcourt in 1608, to take possession of all from the ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... said the coachman, in his gruff voice, "that here is a low fellow who takes every opportunity to undervalue me and my horses, and I have sworn to give him a good drubbing the first time I could lay my hands upon him. So, Pere Rousselet, step aside. He will see if I am a pickle; he will find out ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... They did not undervalue him. If he had been less a man than he was, they would not have taken the trouble to cover him with their drunken ribaldry. He had scored off them in the past in just such sprees as this, when he had the power to do so, and used the power good-naturedly ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... here intend to personate the bashful Author, and out of a point of Honour undervalue my Comedy. I should very unseasonably disoblige all the People of Paris, should I accuse them of having applauded a foolish Thing: as the Public is absolute Judge of such sort of Works, it would be Impertinence in me ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... been the real author, all this would of course have been delightful to him; it was all so kind and so evidently sincere for the most part, that only a very priggish or cynical person could have affected to undervalue it, and any other, even if he felt it overstrained now and then, would have enjoyed it frankly while it lasted, remembering that, in the nature of things, it could ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... of Hubert Walter had secured order in England, but oversea Richard found himself face to face with dangers which he was too clear-sighted to undervalue. Destitute of his father's administrative genius, less ingenious in his political conceptions than John, Richard was far from being a mere soldier. A love of adventure, a pride in sheer physical strength, here and there a romantic generosity, jostled roughly with the craft, ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... the influence of Athenian life he took him to Lacedaemon, and placed him with the young men who were undergoing the Spartan training there. The Athenians were vexed at this, because Phokion appeared to despise and undervalue the institutions of his own country. Once Demades said to him "Phokion, why should we not advise the Athenians to adopt the Spartan constitution; if you bid me, I am quite willing to make a speech and bring forward a motion in the assembly for doing so." "Indeed," ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... day, was called "a bite." "You must ask a bantering question," he informs Stella, "or tell some damned lie in a serious manner, and then they will answer or speak as if you were in earnest; then cry you, 'there's a bite.' I would not have you undervalue this, for it is the constant amusement in court, and every where else among the great people; and I let you know it, in order to have it obtain amongst you, and teach you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... more supportable than one that was, new Laws (of Plato on travel), which forbids it after threescore Liberty and laziness, the qualities most predominant in me Liberty of poverty Liberty to lean, but not to lay our whole weight upon others Little affairs most disturb us Men as often commend as undervalue me beyond reason Methinks I promise it, if I but say it My mind is easily composed at distance Neither be a burden to myself nor to any other No use to this age, I throw myself back upon that other Nothing falls where all falls Nothing ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... JOHN QUINCY ADAMS is one that opens no new truth in the philosophy of virtue; for there is no undiscovered truth in that philosophy. But it is a history that sheds marvellous confirmation on maxims which all mankind know, and yet are prone to undervalue and forget. The exalted character before us was formed by the combination of virtue, courage, assiduity, and modesty, under favorable conditions, with native talent and genius, and illustrates the truth, that in morals ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... words as to the action of the last legislature on this subject. After an examination of the Geghan bill, we shall perhaps come to the conclusion that in itself it is not of great importance. I would not undervalue the conscientious scruples on the subject of religion of a convict in the penitentiary, or of any unfortunate person in any State institution. But the provision of the constitution of the State covers the whole ground. It needs no awkwardly framed statute ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... fond rhymes of their seannachies or bhairds, as aequiponderate with the evidence of ancient charters and royal grants of antiquity, conferred upon distinguished houses in the Low Country by divers Scottish monarchs; nevertheless, such was their outrecuidance and presumption, as to undervalue those who possessed such evidents, as if they held their lands ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... lately killed Ponwane, and, as you see, are now killing me." Ponwane had died of fever a short time previously. Sekeletu asked us for medicine and medical attendance, but we did not like to take the case out of the hands of the female physician already employed, it being bad policy to appear to undervalue any of the profession; and she, being anxious to go on with her remedies, said "she had not given him up yet, but would try for another month; if he was not cured by that time, then she would hand him over to the white doctors." But we intended to leave the country before a month was up; so ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... instances of the way in which people wish for the advantages they have not, and undervalue those they have,' said Lady ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... past? No, do not believe that, Ida. Nothing in this world is such an illusion as this belief. Life is rich; its tree blossoms eternally, because it is nourished by immortal fountains. It bears dissimilar fruits, varies in colour and glory, but all beautiful; let us undervalue none of them, for all of them are capable of producing ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... might undervalue Adelle's passion, however, if it were judged solely by its intellectual quality. The beauty and the wonder of passion is that it cannot be weighed by any mental scales, its terms are not transferable. Adelle's share of the universal ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... reasons, in its tranquil and harmless life, it may appear to casual observers to exhibit even less than ordinary ability; but when danger and apprehension call for the exertion of its powers, those who have witnessed their display are seldom inclined to undervalue its sagacity. ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... experiment is going on. If, before the war, any man in this country was disposed to undervalue a government thus conducted, he should have learned by this time the wisdom and strength of a government which embraces and embodies the judgment and the will of the whole people. If the negroes of the South, four million strong, had ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... Social Democracy permits the working masses to be brought to the battlefield in the interests of Imperialism, the action of the Bolsheviks is not the work for Socialism but for German Tsarism. I do not undervalue the significance and the greatness of the Russian Revolution: it is the German Social Democrats who fail to perform their moral duty in this war and do not ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... have not forgotten; and I am grateful to you for giving my ideas a trial. But what has been done hitherto is purely superficial." Bessy's eyes clouded, and he added hastily: "Don't think I undervalue it for that reason—heaven knows the surface of life needs improving! But it's like picking flowers and sticking them in the ground to make a garden—unless you transplant the flower with its roots, and ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... too acute a judge of men to undervalue the special type of mind which is produced and fostered by the influences of an Indian career. He was always ready to admit that there is no better company in the world than a young and rising civilian; no one who has more to say that is worth hearing, and who can say it ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... say that?" and Greta's eyes had a dreamy look in them; "but I tell Alwyn that I mean to lean on him. Indeed, Olive, you must not undervalue him. Alwyn is stronger than you think. He has repented truly and deeply of all his boyish mistakes, and those who love him should utterly and for ever wipe out the record of his past. See how devotedly his father loves him; his forgiveness ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... N. underestimation; depreciation &c. (detraction) 934; pessimism, pessimist; undervaluing &c. v.; modesty &c. 881. V. underrate, underestimate, undervalue, underreckon[obs3]; 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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... carry itself as it ought, high and unmatchable in the presence of any man; if the secret oracles whose whisper makes the sweetness and dignity of his life do here withdraw and accompany him no longer,—it is time to undervalue what he has valued, to dispossess himself of what he has acquired, and with Caesar to take in his hand the army, the empire, and Cleopatra, and say, "All these will I relinquish, if you will show me the fountains of the Nile." Dear ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of clever men,' continued General Ducrot sagely, 'to undervalue their opponents; but surely after yesterday the commonest prudence might have warned you to put the greatest possible distance between yourself ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... sacraments of the church are types of the vaster mystery. In both type and antitype it is all important to give due weight to divine and human, and not to exalt one element at the expense of the other. Those who undervalue the human nature of Christ are disposed to undervalue the outward sign in the sacraments. Not appreciating the hypostatic union of divine with human, they misunderstand the sacramental union of the same elements. ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... adjusted themselves, and the law has had no control over the feelings and opinions of men and women. Those who were large-minded enough to respect labor asked no warrant from legislation, and those who were small-minded enough to undervalue woman's work because it was woman's, do so still despite the statutes, and would if women voted at every election. Men were equal with each other before the law, but that did not compel the respect of foolish men, nor did their wages adjust themselves ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... like you to give him every facility you can for his work, but of course you will remember that he is an enthusiast, and in certain circumstances might undervalue his own safety or that of the ship. I don't want you to run risks ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... its dependence on Spirit. "The devotee flouts Nature."—"Plotinus was ashamed of his body."—"Michael Angelo said of external beauty, 'it is the frail and weary weed, in which God dresses the soul, which He has called into time.'" Emerson would not undervalue Nature as looked at through the senses and "the unrenewed understanding." "I have no hostility to Nature," he says, "but a child's love of it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons."—But, ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... had kept pace with her brother: sometimes he had excelled her, sometimes she thought that she was outstripping him. Now in the hour of his possible success (of which she would be proud and glad), why should her father seem to undervalue her powers and her industry? They would never bring her the guerdon that might fall to Sydney's lot; but she felt that she, too, had a right to ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... out the essential difference in their kinds of poetry, and the qualities which insured perpetuity to that of her husband. 'You can't persuade Campbell of that,' said she. 'He is apt to undervalue his own works, and to consider his own lights put out, whenever they come blazing out with their ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... left Oxford in 1765, and passed thirty-five years on the Continent. His lordship here makes a striking observation on his own experience, which has been authenticated by every intelligent and honest mind under the same circumstances—remarking that his foreign residence was so far from making him undervalue England, that it raised it still higher in his estimation. He adds—"Here I will make an assertion, grounded on experience and conviction, and which may be applied as a never-failing test, that an Englishman who, after a long absence from England, returns to it with feelings and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... I don't undervalue your drugs; but Mr. Kemble has been to see me and appealed to me for help—to still be on hand if needed. Come, I've had my hour for weakness. I am on the up-grade now. Tell me how far the affair ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... Northern States this question has nothing to do; it is not difficult to foresee how both must inevitably be compromised by the load of debt which swells portentously with every hour of warfaring. But if we have been wont to undervalue the strength of Federaldom, latent and displayed, we have perhaps scarcely realized how very unsubstantial and slippery are its ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... say that! I know well that no man who has been such a friend of Mrs. Stannard's, such a friend to Captain Truscott and Grace, could be what you paint yourself. Oh, don't think—don't think for an instant I undervalue the gift; you—you shall not speak of yourself that way! Do you think any woman who deserves a thought could fail to glory in such a name as you have won? Oh, Mr. Ray, Mr. Ray, I hardly realize that it is possible ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... writer, may well be enhanced by ascribing to him that which he himself, for the protection of his own honour, has been constrained to disclaim. He cannot suppose that too much is alleged, if he will admit that a grammarian's fame should be thought safe enough in his own keeping. Are authors apt to undervalue their own performances? Or because proprietors and publishers may profit by the credit of a book, shall it be thought illiberal to criticise it? Is the author himself to be disbelieved, that the extravagant ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... me," cried Lady Randolph the elder, holding up her hands. "Of course I don't undervalue the importance of an heir to the property," she said in a different tone. "I have heard enough about it to ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... stretched on the dead child, (to use one of Jeremy Taylor's characteristic illustrations), gave life and animation to every part of the body politic. But years rolled on; and the original impulse given at the Reformation, and augmented at the Rebellion, to undervalue all outward forms, has silently continued to prevail, till, with the form of godliness, (much of it, up doubt, objectionable, but much of it wholesome), the power in a considerable degree ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... awakened an interest in geological subjects, besides being the author of an account of his life, "My Schools and Schoolmasters"; died by his own hand at Portobello; he was a writer of considerable literary ability, and "nothing," says Prof. Saintsbury, "can be more hopelessly unliterary than to undervalue Hugh Miller" (1802-1856). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... this way. You have no idea how faithful and devoted she is. She has actually refused a most advantageous offer of marriage to remain with us. She told me this in confidence; the girls do not know it: perhaps I ought not to have repeated it; but you undervalue Etta. Few women would sacrifice themselves ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Nous verrons. I will not show Southey's letter to Lockhart, for there is to him personally no friendly tone, and it would startle the Hidalgo's pride. It is to be wished they may draw kindly together. Southey says most truly that even those who most undervalue his reputation would, were he to withdraw from the Review, exaggerate the loss it would thereby sustain. The bottom of all these feuds, though not named, is Blackwood's Magazine; all the squibs of which, which have sometimes exploded among the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... choyse If ere thou love, give eare unto my voice; Turne not aside thy eye, the feares I feele Makes me to bow, where tis thy part to kneele. Loe vassailelike, laying aside command, I humbly crave this favour at thy hand: Let me have my beloved, and take my state; My life I undervalue to that rate. Crave anything that in my power doth lye, Tis thine, so faire ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... what has already been acted on the earth. The philosopher, leaning on principles which Science styles immutable, is confined within the narrow bounds of created matter. Why then should Reason make us undervalue that Revelation which carries us upwards to Creation's birth, and bears us downward to a period when time shall be ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... not, however, be supposed to undervalue the genuine and graceful ability of execution displayed by the author at his best. He could write at times very much after the earliest fashion of the adolescent Shakespeare; in other words, after the fashion of the day or hour, to which in some degree the greatest writer ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne |
