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Confuse   /kənfjˈuz/   Listen
Confuse

verb
(past & past part. confused; pres. part. confusing)
1.
Mistake one thing for another.  Synonym: confound.  "I mistook her for the secretary"
2.
Be confusing or perplexing to; cause to be unable to think clearly.  Synonyms: bedevil, befuddle, confound, discombobulate, fox, fuddle, throw.  "This question completely threw me" , "This question befuddled even the teacher"
3.
Cause to feel embarrassment.  Synonyms: disconcert, flurry, put off.
4.
Assemble without order or sense.  Synonyms: jumble, mix up.
5.
Make unclear, indistinct, or blurred.  Synonyms: blur, obnubilate, obscure.  "Their words obnubilate their intentions"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Confuse" Quotes from Famous Books



... emergency nearly every country has, at one time or another, been tempted to confuse the monetary with the fiscal functions of the Treasury. To borrow by the issue of money seems to have a seductive charm hard to resist. Lloyd George established a new precedent for Great Britain by issuing nearly $200,000,000 of Government currency notes, but this was done to provide ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... frequency of non-infectious lymphangitis, the practitioner must not confuse this type with similar lymphatic inflammation occasioned by nail punctures of the foot. It is very embarrassing indeed to make a diagnosis of lymphangitis—expecting that the disturbance will terminate favorably and uneventually—and later to discover a ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix

... strangely believed" in any proposition so obviously and palpably absurd, nor did Napoleon delude himself with philanthropy. Gladstone, even in his confession, mixed up policy, speech, motives, and persons, as though he were trying to confuse chiefly himself. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... religious sanction of polygyny cannot be looked upon as one of its original causes, but when once established it reacted powerfully to reenforce and maintain the institution. How the religious sanction came about we can readily see when we remember that very commonly religions confuse the practice of the nobility with what is noble or commendable morally. The polygynous practices of the nobility, therefore, under certain conditions came to receive the sanction of religion. When this took place polygyny ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... church spire, nearly fused away in the gold. The woman moved on, away from him. He had no language with which to speak to her. She was the bright, solid unreality. She would make a noise of words that would confuse him, and her eyes would look at him without seeing him. She was crossing there to the other side. He ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



Words linked to "Confuse" :   change, flummox, misidentify, be, put together, stick, tack, baffle, puddle, addle, disorient, set up, demoralize, bother, fox, deflect, muddle, pose, fluster, distract, beat, confusion, abash, dumbfound, get, obnubilate, amaze, bewilder, perplex, tack together, mystify, muddy, piece, modify, puzzle, vex, stupefy, assemble, embarrass, mistake, disorientate, gravel, alter, nonplus



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