"Misunderstand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would be to misunderstand totally the greatest craftsman that has come out of America. The flat truth is that Henry James was not a novelist at all, at least in the good, old- fashioned sense that we usually give to the word. He was primarily a critic; the greatest American critic since Poe. Sometimes ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... the girl; "I dare say he will only think you are all too kind to me." She did not like to offend her hostess by begging her not to write. Her father knew her well enough; he would not misunderstand her. He knew her love for Hatty would never let pleasure stand in the way if she required her. "All the enjoyments in the world would not keep me from Hatty if she really needed me, and father knows that; we are both quite ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Severance, copying Mr. Piper finished his drink and rose. "And now, I do not wish you to misunderstand me," he said. "I have not come to my age without realizing that there are certain services that cannot be paid for. But you have done me a very great service, Oliver—a service for which I should have ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... away. You'll get no thanks and do no good and you'll live to regret it. It's all very well to talk lightly of the outlook in Queensland but when you have become implicated in lawlessness and are suffering for it the whole affair will look different. Don't misunderstand me! You are a young man, capable, earnest. There is no position you might not aspire to. Be warned in time. Let me help you. I shall be only too glad. You will never repent it ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... an inclosure perhaps,' said Nicholas, speaking very distinctly, and with an emphasis she could scarcely misunderstand. 'My employer is absent from England, or I should have brought a letter with me. I hope she will give me time—a little time. I ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... understand. Nothing can be more beautiful or more important, and it just contains these few words: 'Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you.' Now keep this precept in mind, all of you, for ye canna misunderstand it. But, just ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... in vindication of the civilization of the age, against the legal barbarisms still remaining on the statute books, and adhered to by the common law, in regard to wives and mothers? Is the current of progress to flow by them for ever, bearing no reforms which shall affect them? Do not misunderstand me. I am no advocate of the practices of the 'strong-minded women,' who hold their conventions and public meetings, who unsex themselves by mounting the forum, and, throwing off the retiring modesty of the true woman, seek to secure notoriety at the price of popular contempt. But ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... you misunderstand, sir," ventured Harley. "This Simms is arrested by the Boston sheriff for stabbing a man; and the Southerners have got the federal commissioner to refuse to give him ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place," said He, according to Matthew's account, and virtually so also as stated by Mark, or "when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies" as Luke writes, "then know that the desolation thereof is nigh." This was a specific sign that none could misunderstand. Daniel the prophet had foreseen the desolation and abominations thereof, which comprized the forcible cessation of temple rites, and the desecration of Israel's shrine ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... no help for it, I know. Hazelwhen you and I had a ride home in the dark one night, a year ago, did I misunderstand ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... psychology, or by psychical research, or by the study of heredity. When I speak of "the genius of Shakespeare," of Jeanne d'Arc, of Bacon, even of Wellington, I possibly have a meaning which is not in all respects the meaning of Mr. Greenwood, when he uses the term "genius"; so we are apt to misunderstand each other. Yet we all glibly use the term "genius," without ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... misunderstand me, young man," replied the captain gravely. "My friend, Captain Tolley, would be the last man to commit piracy, or anything of that kind. But just look at the case. Here Captain Tolley is, off at sea, attending to his proper business. ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... no doubt, but a fault greatly impeditive to progress, and tormenting to a teacher. She got on very fairly in spite of it, however; and her devotion to Godfrey, as she felt herself growing in his sight, increased almost to a passion. Do not misunderstand me, my reader. If I say anything grows to a passion, I mean, of course, the passion of that thing, not of something else. Here I no more mean that her devotion became what in novels is commonly called love, than, if I said ambition or avarice had grown to a passion, I should mean those vices had ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... me down gently, Honor," he said, with a rather cheerless smile. "And you may as well save yourself the trouble. Only—this is where you must not misunderstand me, please,—no shadow of blame attaches to Ladybird if she isn't happy. I had no right to bring her up to this part of the world, knowing it as I did; and I've no right to keep her here. That's ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... The very idea of such a project is to me infinitely risible. However, if I talk reason to you too often, will you not grow weary? This is my sole anxiety, for you well know that I am a pitiless reasoner when I wish to be. With any other heart than that which you misunderstand, I could be a philosopher such as the ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... you just as I would to myself, do you? Very well. If I were in your position, I should ask myself, as a man of honour, whether I really loved her as much as she loved me, or whether I had only been taken off my feet by her beauty. Don't misunderstand me, my boy! I should feel that if I were not quite sure of that, I ought not to marry her, because it would be much worse for her in the end than if we parted. Have you ever asked yourself ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... and strangely misunderstand me." Miss Hopkins spoke with the deadly gentleness of suppressed fury. "I had no slightest intention of reflecting upon the character of so eminent a writer, with whose career, Miss Gaines, I am thoroughly familiar. I was merely trying ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... right to it, if you want to save your skin. Let me see if there's gold or not there." He turned to the rest and told them: "You'll all have a chance. The man who brings me dust is free. The others—" he finished with a suggestive gesture that they could not misunderstand. ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... worn out now by the mutual friction of its own parts, given over completely to hazardous political experiment with the irresponsibility which is ever the great vice of democracy, ever ready to float away anywhither, to misunderstand, or forget, or discredit, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... inappropriately in these days of fiscal controversy, to the question of vital imports and exports. Year after year passes, and politicians in Great Britain grow more and more voracious and, if possible, less and less veracious on the subject of what they misunderstand by imports and exports. The subject is really one for knowledge, not for politicians. With great ceremony at intervals, they go through the highly superfluous performance of calling each other liars, as who ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... backward I don't know. The change that I have undergone has been so rapid and of such a kind; that may be the reason. I feel that as I now am perhaps you cannot understand me. I am afraid lest your conduct would be such that under present circumstances I could not stand under it. Do not misunderstand me. If I have ever appreciated anything in my life, it is the favor and indulgent treatment you have shown me in our business. I know that I have never done an equal share in the work which was for us all to do. I have always ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... the bears the dog seemed to go wild. He circled the tree, barking furiously, while the cubs watched him in wonder. Fearing that Mother Bruin might at any moment appear and misunderstand the situation, the Hermit was about to call the dog and return to the house, leaving the bears in possession of the tree. Before he could pucker his lips for a whistle, however, the situation was taken ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... guarantees, that detoxification and healing is occurring. I can't stress this too much. Of all the things I find my patients seem to misunderstand or forget after being told, it is that they can't heal in a rapid manner without getting smaller. This reality is especially hard for the family and friends of someone who is fasting, who will say, "you're looking terrible ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... in the hands of a capable agent: an extra week's absence could make little difference; moreover, previous statements had made it plain that he had originally intended to stay for some considerable time in town. Plain, therefore, as print, and impossible to misunderstand was the fact that he did not want to accompany his friends on their holiday; that in addition he did not for the moment desire more of ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... believed that you understood—though what it was that made you misunderstand I have never guessed.... There is no Maury Stafford. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... science was actually constituted. They laid down three or four primary axioms, such as the doctrine that men desire wealth, and fancied that the whole theory could be deduced from them. This, if what I have said be true, was really to misunderstand what they were really doing. It was to suppose that you could obtain a description of social phenomena without examining the actual structure of society; and was as erroneous as to suppose that you could deduce physiological truths from a few general propositions about ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... mass of the "basse noblesse;" that our own great feudal nobility would be described on the Continent as a "haute noblesse;" and that amongst all these perplexities, it was inevitable for an Englishman to misunderstand and to be misunderstood. For, if he described another Englishman as not being a nobleman, invariably the foreigner would presume it to be meant that he was not a gentleman—not of the privileged class—in fact, that he was a plebeian or roturier, though very possibly a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... Marmaduke," here came in decisive accents from portly Mistress Endicott, "methinks 'tis you who misunderstand Master Lambert. He is of a surety an honorable gentleman, and hath no desire to insult me, who have ne'er done him wrong, nor yet my friends by refusing a friendly game ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... "Maybe you misunderstand," he began, presently. And his voice was not steady. "I don't forget I'm only—a beggarly rider. I couldn't have gone into the Ford at all—I ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... though, dear, that with you away from me and ill, I realized somehow more fully what you are to me. I wanted to do things. I have read often about a mother and a child. I think I had something of that feeling. I know now about us; we must never misunderstand again. I don't think the colored man helped you much, and I understand he ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... Max,' I said mournfully, 'are you going to misunderstand me too? Providence has deprived me of my parents and my only brother: is it strong-minded or peculiar to be so lonely and sad at heart that gaiety only jars on me? Can I forget my mother's teaching when she said, "Ursula, ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... it bluntly, we welcome you because we believe in your pride of race, and honor it in you as we honor it in our fellow citizens of other races. They and you have some things in common, but you will not misunderstand me when I congratulate you on what is peculiar to you. You have been fully Americanized for more generations than most other Americans. You have no need to strive after the American spirit. I have a friend of Greek birth, who thinks pridefully back ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... For certainly it is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them. Generally, also, a downright fact may be told in a plain way; and we want downright facts at present more than anything else. And though I often hear moral people complaining of the bad effects of want of thought, for my part, it seems to ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... think that a delicate and gentlemanly compliment had been paid to his general downiness, flyness, and ring-craft,—the last of which, for Corporal Dowdall, included every form of foul that a weak referee would pass, an inexperienced one misunderstand, or a lazy one miss. Major O'Halloran, first-class bruiser himself, was in the habit of doing his refereeing inside the ring and within a foot or two of the principals, where ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... only as one of the best remedies for the dejection of our souls—blases, jaded, weary of eccentricities—but also as a pledge and source of social union. I ask also for simplicity in art. Our art and our literature are reserved for the privileged few of education and fortune. But do not misunderstand me. I do not ask poets, novelists, and painters to descend from the heights and walk along the mountain-sides, finding their satisfaction in mediocrity; but, on the contrary, to mount higher. The truly popular is not that which appeals to a certain ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... the goodness of her heart, and because of some sad and bitter circumstances, came here to-day to ask me to talk with you. I do this for her sake. You must not misunderstand me." He laid his hand a moment on her arm, lying on ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... not doing so," replied Mr. Clapp. "Had our client not been received so coldly, and every effort employed to misunderstand him, we should have produced them earlier; although it would have been impossible to have shown them at that meeting, since they were ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... pretend to misunderstand her then, but when it was put to me so plainly it did not seem to me all so certain that my suit would fare better than my vow. I had no fear once that the last would not have been welcome, and was mistaken enough. Now, perhaps because I was in real earnest, ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... French fight gloriously and seem to live in a high, heroic mood. The men of our empire, of all parts of it, jest in the presence of terror, perhaps because the alternative to jesting is either fear or tears. Others may misunderstand us. Often we do not understand ourselves. It is not easy to think of Sam Weller or Mark Tapley as the hero of a stricken field. Yet it is by men with Sam Weller's quaint turn of wit and Mark Tapley's unfailing cheerfulness that the great battles ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... true, and yet it is quite possible for people who do not normally see astrally to misunderstand them. Every order of physical matter has its corresponding order of astral matter in constant association with it—not to be separated from it except by a very considerable exertion of occult force, and ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... the truth, the young man was stunned. It seemed to him a monstrous thing that any could so misunderstand. Yet, there was the evidence of his shame before his eyes. He grew white as he tried to imagine what the sender must think of him. And then, presently, in thinking of the sender, he was filled with an overmastering rage against ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... "I think you misunderstand me," I interrupted; "this is a point of principle with me. Supposing I consume this Czecho-Slovakian mince-up and then have a piece of Stilton; there has been no war ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... the contempt of them; reasonably, if affected. Good men may differ widely from me, and wiser ones misunderstand me; for, their wisdom having raised up to them schools of their own, they have not found leisure to converse with me; and from others they have received a partial and inexact report. My opinion is, that certain things ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... RAFALES' should it be? or what?). As I got down near the beach a poor woman, oldish, and seemingly, lately at least, respectable, followed me and made signs. She was drenched to the skin, and looked wretched below wretchedness. You know, I did not like to look back at her; it seemed as if she might misunderstand and be terribly hurt and slighted; so I stood at the end of the street - there was no one else within sight in the wet - and lifted up my hand very high with some money in it. I heard her steps draw heavily near behind me, and, when she was near enough to see, I let ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... field from experience gathered—I say it literally, gathered—before the footlights, I confess to some sympathy with the gentleman who assured Harry Percy that but for these vile guns he would himself have been a soldier. You will not misunderstand me. I believe on my faith that as a military man I was born out of my time. The scythed chariots of Boadicea, for instance, must have been damned inconvenient; yet I can conceive myself jumping 'em. But a stone, as I learnt in my boyhood—a stone, sirs, ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... "Don't misunderstand me. I was quite honest with him. I told him, what was true, that I liked him very much, that I hoped to come to like him more, but that I was not in any way what the world calls 'in love' with him. He declared that that satisfied ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... deliberately, "to talk as I do. Of course I do not mind what you choose to think of me; or rather I am sure you will not misunderstand." ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... Jaffier Ali Khan, who had been deposed to make room for the last actor, was brought from penury and exile to a station the terms of which he could not misunderstand. During his life, and in the time of his children who succeeded to him, parts of the territorial revenue were assigned to the Company; and the whole, under the name of residency at the Nabob's court, was brought, directly or indirectly, under ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... altogether to be blamed for occasional lapses; but this verdict he should not know. A moderately intelligent General will waste six months in mastering the craft of the particular war that he may be waging; a Colonel may utterly misunderstand the capacity of his regiment for three months after it has taken the field, and even a Company Commander may err and be deceived as to the temper and temperament of his own handful: wherefore the soldier, and the soldier of to-day more particularly, should ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... crying bitterly. As soon as she was gone, the major pointed to the blood, and said, "If we did not see that sometimes, there would be no living with the brutes;" to which I replied in terms he could not misunderstand, and at once left the house, determined never again to enter it—a resolution I religiously kept. I afterwards heard that this miserable creature was pregnant at the time, a circumstance that would have induced at least some regard to leniency in ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... the serious state of our possessions in India, owing to the advances of the English there, that brings me to France. Perhaps I misunderstand." ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... won't misunderstand me," said Ralph, "and I'm not afraid to ask him to think of what you say; wire it to him ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... said, "not of body. Don't misunderstand me," he said after a pause, with the natural fear least Brian should fancy his secularism failed him at the near approach of death. "For myself I am content; I have had a very full life, and I have tried always yes, I think I may say always—to work entirely ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... experiences. We may say that nations, like individuals, crave for luxuries of the emotional life, but to think of these experiences as merely static pleasure-states, after the fashion of a certain conception of the emotions, would be wholly to misunderstand this view which we have been trying to present. These subjective states are full of meaning and of purpose. They are not reactions, but rather, in so far as these collective lives are normal and progressive, these moods and ecstasies are more of the nature of crucibles in which old reactions ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... too familiar a one to Sutch. He had seen it on the faces of recruits during their first experience of a battle too often for him to misunderstand it. And one picture in particular rose before his mind,—an advancing square at Inkermann, and a tall big soldier rushing forward from the line in the eagerness of his attack, and then stopping suddenly as though he suddenly understood that he was alone, and had to meet alone the ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... Neh. xiii: 15-22, we learn that this prohibition related to what was lawful for them to do on the other six days of the week, viz. merchandise and trading. See proof, Neh. x: 31: also unlawful, as in Amos viii: 5. We need not, nor we cannot misunderstand the fourth commandment, taken in connection with the other nine, they were simple and pure written by the finger of God; but in the days of our Saviour it had become heavily laden with Jewish traditions, hence when ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign, from the Beginning to the Entering into the Gates of the Holy City, According to the Commandment • Joseph Bates
... mother that Jesus laid his first hold on the world to redeem it; and now at length I began to understand it. What a divine way of saving us it was,—to let her bear him, carry him in her bosom, wash him and dress him and nurse him and sing him to sleep,—offer him the adoration of mother's love, misunderstand him, chide him, forgive him even for fancied wrong! Such a love might well save a world in which were mothers enough. It was as if he had said, "Ye shall no more offer vain sacrifices to one who needs them not, and cannot use them. I will need ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... trouble myself to go far in search of a friend such as you describe," said Tyrrel, who could not affect to misunderstand the senior's drift, "when I was near Mr. Peregrine Touchwood; but the truth is, my affairs are at present so much complicated with those of others, whose secrets I have no right to communicate, that I cannot have the advantage of consulting ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... address, 'You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors,' he took pains not only to keep this declaration good, but also to keep the case so free from the power of ingenious sophistry that the world should not be able to misunderstand it. By the affair at Fort Sumter, with its surrounding circumstances, that point was reached. Then and thereby the assailants of the government began the conflict of arms, without a gun in sight or in expectancy to return their fire, save only the few in the fort ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... their minds that the northern Christians were inimical to the progress of the Japanese scheme of assimilation, they set their spies to work. Now the rank and file of spies are very much alike in all parts of the world. They are ignorant and often misunderstand things. When they cannot find the evidence they require, ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... numerous people who have had godfathers and godmothers, learned their catechism, been confirmed, and gone to church every Sunday, and yet, for any practical result of strength in life, or trust in death, have never appropriated a single Christian idea or Christian feeling. You would misunderstand her thoughts during these wretched days, if you imagined that they were influenced either by religious fears ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... is to misunderstand Byron completely. Who, more than Byron, ever believed in our right of judgment, and proclaimed that right more strenuously than he has, in prose and in verse? Let any one who has read "Manfred," say whether a poet ever developed such ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... your dear old Pasteur, and clergymen generally, are so apt to misunderstand. They think that there is only one way of learning things beyond, and that every other must be wrong. Also I am sure that your friend, Isobel Blake, ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... you would not misunderstand me," she said, triumphantly. "Prince S. and Evgenie Pavlovitch and Alexandra don't understand anything about these two kinds of mind, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in Europe at that time Jews were being accorded opportunities for the study and practice of medicine. There are local incidents of persecution, but we are not so far away from the feelings that brought these about as to misunderstand them or to think that they were anything more than local, popular manifestations. The more we know about the details of the medical history of these times the deeper is the impression of academic freedom and of opportunities ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... "Don't misunderstand me, Miss Kronborg. You interest me more than any pupil I have. I have been thinking for months about what you ought to do, since that night when you first sang for me." He walked over to the window, turned, and came toward her again. ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... misunderstand me, mon vieux. I insinuate nothing," replied Carlier. "I scent danger, that is all. She may turn from you when—well—when she knows ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... him too well to misunderstand him, but he was deeply disappointed. He retired into the library behind the drawing-room of the Schuyler mansion, and wrote another and a more elaborate letter to Robert Morris. He began with a reiteration of the impotence of Congress, its loss of the confidence ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... a weak silly maiden, and cannot believe that my beloved, because I love him dearly, dearly, will make the poor girl unhappy. Ah! thou art so kind, so inexpressibly kind, but do not misunderstand me. Thou shalt sacrifice nothing for me, desire to sacrifice nothing for me. Oh God! I should hate myself if thou didst! No—thou hast made me immeasurably happy; hast taught me to love thee. Away! I know my own fate. Count Peter belongs not to me, he belongs to ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... 9th and last. You misunderstand me in supposing that I meant to insinuate, that by what you wrote respecting the apostles' stating nothing more than what was substantially true, you must mean that they stated falsehood. I meant, if you do not believe that they stated the truth ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... say, these commands are so clear that none could misunderstand them, but not so these under consideration; perhaps if we were to analyze a little deeper our hearts, we should find that the one owes its clearness to our freedom from any consequent burden on finding them clear; the other its indistinctness from the reverse, ...
— Christian Devotedness • Anthony Norris Groves
... Instead of returning to England and leaving Flamin in possession of the field, as he had resolved on doing, he was now at liberty to try and win the beautiful, noble girl. On the other hand, Flamin would misunderstand his actions, and this would bring both of them ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... and he looked at Woodward with a steadiness which the other did not misunderstand. It was a look which said, "If you've got that warrant in your pocket, it won't be safe to pull ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... but the widow could stand no more: this nautical phrase, familiar to the streets of Bristol, allowed her no longer to misunderstand his meaning; and she quitted the room in a tumult of laughter, sending a servant to show her unfortunate suitor out of the house, with his false friend the dictionary; whose help he might, perhaps, invoke ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... they are very valuable, don't misunderstand me. After the first ten years you may find a seedling orchard is going to produce a very good crop, tree by tree. We have had a lot of experience, similar to that reported in New York, with grafted trees dying. We get seedling trees dying, too, but I agree that there is more ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... better of his opponent, who chances to be younger. He helps him carefully into the carriage. He explains upon the spot as well as he can, and to-day he comes to explain further; and you will not believe him; you misunderstand and misrepresent ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... of his hearers some of such outbursts were altogether unintelligible—a matter of no moment; but there were of them who understood enough to misunderstand utterly: interpreting his riches by their poverty, they misinterpreted them pitifully, and misrepresented them worse. And, alas! in the little company there were three or four men who, for all their upward impulses, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... H. CHANNING said: When I was returning from the first Woman's Rights Meeting at Worcester, a friend said to me, "I intend getting up a Man's Rights Society; you misunderstand the matter; all the efforts of society are for the elevation of woman, and man has to perform the drudgery. The consequence is, the women are far better educated than the men." The answer was obvious. "If women are, according to your admission, fitted for the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... something in me that wants more, much more than that. There's something in me that—I think only a son of his could have satisfied my yearning. A son might have been Maurice come back to me, come back in a different, beautiful, wonderfully pure relation. I prayed for a son. I needed a son. Don't misunderstand me, Emile; in a way a son could never have been so close to me as Vere is,—but I could have lived in him as I can never live in Vere. I could have lived in him almost as once I lived in ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... represented in it. Its function is racial more than individual. It is the art-work of the folk-soul in the religious sphere. Here man's inveterate creative faculty seizes on the raw material given him by religious-intuition, and constructs from it significant shapes. We misunderstand, then, the whole character of religious symbolism if we either demand rationality from it, or try to adapt its imagery to the lucid and probably mistaken conclusions ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... people will not misunderstand, nor will the world misconstrue. We have no thought to impede the paths to closer relationship. We wish to promote understanding. We want to do our part in making offensive warfare so hateful that Governments ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... misunderstand. So far from his devotion having abated, it was stronger than she had ever imagined, and the discovery made her sorrier for him than ever. "Girofle!" she cried remorsefully, "I never knew you felt it like that—I thought you understood, and were content ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... the prophecy being thus established, it will be impossible to misunderstand the internal relation between the star of Balaam and the star of the wise men from the East. The star of Balaam is the emblem of the kingdom which will rise in Israel. The star of the Magi is the symbol of the Ruler in whom the kingly power appears concentrated. ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... 'You misunderstand me,' said the Marchioness composedly. 'I was as far as possible from proposing marriage as a ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of my life you have been able to judge. Of those interludes which are necessary to a human being, unless his system is to fall to pieces as dry dust, you have also seen something. I trust you will not misunderstand me when I say that apart from the necessities of my work, I am a man ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... really being studied vigorously. With Frau Dustmann, on the other hand, I became immediately involved in very unpleasant disagreements through my relation to her sister Friederike, which it was easy to misunderstand. It was impossible to make her see how things really stood. In her eyes her sister was involved in a liaison, and had been cast off by her family, so that her arrival in Vienna was compromising to them. ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... genuine affection that she would always have for him. She would tell him frankly—she was a grown woman now—because she thought she owed that much to him—because, under the circumstances, she thought it was her duty; and he would not misunderstand her, even if he really did not have quite the old feeling for her. Then, recalling what he had said on the drive, she laughed softly. It was preposterous. She understood all that. He had acted that little part so many times in by-gone years! ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... American citizen, or of a citizen of any constitutional Government, is obedience to the Constitution and laws of his country. I have no apprehension that any man in Illinois, or beyond the limits of our own beloved State, will misconstrue or misunderstand my motive. So far as any of the partisan questions are concerned, I stand in equal, irreconcilable, and undying opposition both to the Republicans and the secessionists. You all know that I am a very good partisan fighter in partisan times, and I trust you will find me equally ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... creditable. It marks a progress simply wonderful, when all the circumstances are taken into the account. It is prophetic of a very hopeful future. It demonstrates that the negro race can enter every profession and calling in which the white man is found. It proclaims in tones that no one should misunderstand, that he who writes or speaks of the colored people should be careful how he pronounces judgment in regard to their capacity. They should be given a white man's chance. No trade nor occupation should be closed against them. Open doors should welcome to honorable ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 07, July, 1885 • Various
... "Don't misunderstand me, Harvey," he began to plead, forgetting that there was anybody else to save besides ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... actually speak with either of you again,' replied Lal, 'but you will be able to live all your youthful days over again in him;' here Lal pointed to me. 'You can help him to avoid all the mistakes you have made yourself; yet do not misunderstand me, I shall give both of you a sign, and an unmistakable sign, to show how pleased I am if you fulfil all the expectations I shall ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... upon me as your big brother. Will you do that?" His voice entreated, and as she remained silent, he continued: "Roaring Fork is one of the worst towns in the State, and a girl like you needs some one as a protector. I don't know just how to put it so that you will not misunderstand me, but, you see, I protect the forest, the streams, and the game; I help the settler in time of trouble; I am a kind of all-round big brother to everybody who needs help in the forest. In fact, I'm paid for protecting things that can't protect themselves, and so"—here ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... alone. That could not be. If friends would only be simple, and straightforward, and kind, one could afford to be straightforward too; but as it was, she must not do what she longed to do, and they would be sure to misunderstand. There was, indeed, the morning of the day following left her, if Mr. Olmney did not take it into his head to stay. And it might issue in her not seeing Mr. Carleton at all, to bid good-bye and thank him? He would not think her ungrateful, he knew better than that, but ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Jane, "that he will not be displeased. We take for granted much too readily, I think, that he will misunderstand us." ...
— Principle and Practice - The Orphan Family • Harriet Martineau
... ignorant. But in the laboratory of opinion, beside the studious lamp, we begin already to discard these figments. We begin to return to nature's order, to what I might call, if I were to borrow from the language of therapeutics, the expectant treatment of abuses. You will not misunderstand me,' he continued: 'a country in the condition in which we find Grunewald, a prince such as your Prince Otto, we must explicitly condemn; they are behind the age. But I would look for a remedy not to brute convulsions, but to the natural supervenience of a more able ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... so full of brightness, the scenes around you are so lovely, it is no wonder if they follow you into your dreams. But—but, Mr. Owen, I will not pretend to misunderstand you." ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... not think she was afraid; he had tactfully pretended to misunderstand her glance, and she fixed her eyes ahead. The shadows were deeper and the forest was indistinct, but it was not dark. Besides, the moon was getting bright and threw a glittering beam across the river. She could see for some distance and not far in front the water ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... the travelling expenses of missionaries to Surinam and the West Indies; they maintained a number of missionaries to the Red Indians. Thus did Spangenberg, by means of his "Economy," establish the Moravian Church in North America. We must not misunderstand his motives. He never made his system compulsory, and he never intended it to last. If any Brother objected to working for the "Economy," and preferred to trade on his own account, he was free to do so; and as soon as the "Economy" had served its purpose it was abolished by Spangenberg himself ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... affected and agitated at this appeal, the purport of which I could not misunderstand. My emotions, at first, prevented me from speaking. I arose from the sofa, Josephine still hanging upon my shoulder, and taking her father's hand, led them both to the window. The sun was near the horizon; ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... eat, and for the women, who have to cook and clean up when the day's business should be nearly done. It is quite characteristic of some kinds of modern Germans that they should in a breath condemn us, imitate us, and completely misunderstand our ways. ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... me any more than I am mad at my dog when he misunderstands me, for I know he is a good dog and wants to do what I want him to if he can only learn what it is. If it is not your will that I should marry Charity tell me now so that I can't misunderstand, for if you don't I'm going ahead. If I have to take the punishment afterward, I'll take it rather than leave that poor soul alone. Bless her, O God, and help ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... "You misunderstand me. I allege neither hiding nor spying on your part. Name of a good little gray man! The President of the Royal Academy would hide and spy for a month if he could palliate his conduct by that picture. But, ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... pursuing an occupation that depresses me so. I have a riotous imagination. Perhaps I could be a writer. But I am determined to become a sculptor. While I was sick, especially at the end of the second week, I remodelled all the works of Phidias and Michael Angelo. Don't misunderstand me, Eva. In becoming a sculptor, I am no longer ambitious of distinction. I shall merely be rendering homage to the greatness of art. While remaining a faithful workman asking nothing for myself, I may in time succeed in mastering ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Janetta, in distress, "you quite misunderstand Miss Adair, mamma. Besides, it has not deprived me of my teaching: Miss Polehampton had told me that I might go to her sister's school at Worthing if I liked; and she only let me go yesterday because she became irritated at—at—some of the things ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... "Don't misunderstand me," he said, "there's nothing I'd like better than to buy in this neighboring property—if I could get it at a reasonable figure; but Mr. Shadd advises me that your ore lies in a gash-vein, which will ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... said Mrs Dorothy, as if to herself. "How do men misunderstand God! Child, wert thou never taught the first and great commandment? 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy soul, and with all ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... Don't misunderstand me, and quote me as saying that it is a good thing for a nation that it should have many drunkards. Nothing of the kind. What I say is, that if a nation has many morally weak people, then it is good that there should be a means ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... "He is insane. It will be proved to be so. He will end his days in an asylum—as a lunatic. I have felt it myself for years and said so in private.... Knowing what I did.... To such friends as I could trust not to misunderstand me.... Now at least I can ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... "Don't misunderstand me, Uncle," cried his niece, realising that she had reached a moment of crisis. "You know I would not for a moment presume to interfere with the Bank, but"—here she deployed her whole force,—"the lad's youth and folly; his previous good character, guaranteed by Dunn, who knows ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... serious! It doesn't matter what I am to-day, David; it's what I was such a little while ago. I am not trying to belittle myself. I am proud of what I am. Don't misunderstand me. I am a Portman! Her blood is in me—her mind, her soul. But I am not all Portman. Suppose, David—suppose that my father were to come back some day. We know what he is—what he was. Perhaps the world may have forgotten, but ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... transposition which sympathy effects we cannot escape; it itself appears when we know that we are protected from the criticism of another by the complete privacy of our own doings. It alone can keep us upright when all about us misunderstand us and judge us falsely. For the actual judgments of another about us form, so to speak, a first court whose findings are continually being corrected by that completely unpartisan and well informed witness who grows up with us and reacts on all our ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... earnest and melancholy look at the fowl, retired with a sigh. Repeating his visit he exclaimed, "That fowl will never be done in time." "What do you mean?" said the gentleman, "that fowl is for my supper, and you shan't touch a bit of it." "Oh," replied the other, "you misunderstand me; I don't want the fowl; but I am to play Oroonoko this evening, and we cannot begin for want of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 396, Saturday, October 31, 1829. • Various
... all their lives. As if, indeed, this could be the case. I tell you that marriage is a thing necessary in order that society should exist, but it is not in the nature of our race, do you understand? There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. And how you misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... am urging things of which your people disapprove, but it is only because they misunderstand that they do disapprove. They are too close, Samson, to see the purple that mountains have when they are far away. I want you to go where you can see the purple. If you are the sort of man I think, you won't be ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... you to wish to tell me about poor Austin," she said, pretending to misunderstand him, "and I am really grateful. But I must not stay any longer away from ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... meaning to one like you of the truth that we are made in the image of God? The Kingdom of Heaven—that whole whirling activity of the commonwealth of God—the citizenship towards which you might be pointing Baxter Court—you have not even imagined it. I am not being sentimental. Don't misunderstand. Don't fancy, for instance, that I am exhorting you to go slumming. Deliberately or not, you took a wrong impression from my first letter. You can't mistake this. Reach after a few of the realities. Why not shut your questioning mind a while and open your soul? Live a little—begin to ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... have nothing to pardon; only, I did not want you to misunderstand me." The gloves were on, and she shook hands with him, and laughed a comical little insincere laugh in his face, and ran away to her own room to have a foolish little cry. She heard her friend Cecile ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... themselves—their own capabilities of joy, suffering, or achievement. As with Ida, Stanton was at a loss to understand the changes in his own character. It was quite possible, therefore, that Miss Burton should misunderstand him. Indeed he had, as yet, but little place in her sad and ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... shook him to the depths of his soul. This it is to be young and for the first time mastering the geography of an unknown and untraversed continent. The unversed might have thought that light breath a sigh, but no lover could have made the mistake. It is only in books, wordy and unreal, that lovers misunderstand each ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... there, a tremor on the sad lips, and a shadow of soul-hunger in her eyes. Shefford did not misunderstand her. She did not mean love, although it was a yearning for real love that she ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... acquiescence was impossible, forced her to develop her own strength by steady and determined resistance. But her position was more than difficult; it was desperate. There was scarcely one, even amongst the most indulgent of her friends, who did not misunderstand her and blame her at times. She kept the pendulum of public opinion swaying vehemently during the whole of her first season in Malta. Major Livingston shook his head ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... state of your affections.' The lady hastily rose and would have left the room; but Mr. Watkins Tottle gently detained her by the hand, and holding it as far from him as the joint length of their arms would permit, he thus proceeded: 'Pray do not misunderstand me, or suppose that I am led to address you, after so short an acquaintance, by any feeling of my own merits—for merits I have none which could give me a claim to your hand. I hope you will acquit me of ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... of me as the assassin of Lagron. I do not affect to misunderstand you. You expounded your views to me once ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... the cabin when at last, detaching himself from his usual lounging place, the door-post, he walked to the window and leaned, more shadowy than ever, over Wayne's chair. "I want to tell you suthin'," he said slowly, "that I don't want you to misunderstand—you follow me? and that ain't no ways carpin' or criticisin' nor reflectin' on YOU—you understand what I mean? Ever sens you and me had that talk here about you and Safie, and ever sens I got the hang of your ways and your style o' thinkin', I've been as sure of you and her as if I'd been ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte |
