"Overestimate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the strikers and their families it would be hard to overestimate. Small inconveniences were made light of. Families on strike themselves, or the friends of strikers would crush into yet tighter quarters so that a couple of boys or two or three girls out of work might crowd into the vacated room, and so have a shelter over their heads "till the strike was ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... President Tucker asks, is this power which shall make "maybe" into "is" for us? "Without doubt the trend of modern thought and faith is toward the more perfect identification of Christ with humanity. We cannot overestimate the advantage to Christianity of this tendency. The world must know and feel the humanity of Jesus. But it makes the greatest difference in result whether the ground of the common humanity is in Him or in us. To borrow the expressive ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... already is, by no means completes the list of the last three years' gains of pictures for England. Such a record shows how compact with treasures the little island is becoming. And meanwhile, what is America doing in this way? The overestimate of the importance and value of Mr. Belmont's collection in New York shows how far the American public yet is from knowing its own ignorance and poverty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... general combination of things which only really comes into view in actual warfare. The special standpoint of a particular arm must be rejected as unjustified, and the departmental spirit must be silenced. Care must be taken not to overestimate the technical and material means of power in spite of their undoubted importance, and to take sufficient account of the spiritual and moral factors. Our age, which has made such progress in the conquest of nature, is inclined to attach ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... elbow off the mantel. 'Whatever the reason,' he said airily, 'the result is momentarily inconvenient. Though I am one of those who think it would be easy to overestimate the importance——' ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... Cervantes, the poems and novels of Scott, Grimm's and Andersen's Fairy Tales, much of Defoe and Swift, Goldsmith's Vicar of Wake field, Coleridge's Ancient Mariner (he himself was very fond of that poem), and many other things, and I cannot overestimate the good they did me. His talks to me during our walks gave me, under the guise of pleasantry, not so much specific information concerning things (though that was not wanting), but—character; that is, the questions he put to me, the remarks and comments he made, the stories ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... It is difficult to overestimate the importance of Mr. Humphrey Crewe, of his value to the town of Leith, and to the State at large, and in these pages only a poor attempt at an appreciation of him may be expected. Mr. Crewe by no means underestimated ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... overestimate the usefulness of SCHLAG and ZUG. Armed just with these two, and the word ALSO, what cannot the foreigner on German soil accomplish? The German word ALSO is the equivalent of the English phrase "You know," and does not mean anything at all—in TALK, though ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... large proportion of medical students, much of the first session is wasted in learning how to learn—in familiarising themselves with utterly strange conceptions, and in awakening their dormant and wholly untrained powers of observation and of manipulation. It is difficult to overestimate the magnitude of the obstacles which are thrown in the way of scientific training by the existing system of school education. Not only are men trained in mere book-work, ignorant of what observation means, but the habit of learning from books alone ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... which lies before him. This is another reason why the clearing of clearly fertile land may be better business than the half-clearing of land perhaps best suited for forest growth anyway. Again, not fully realizing the plentifulness of forest products in the new locality, he may actually overestimate the value of an attractive piece of forest land showing evidence of the thoughtful care suggested ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... as prevalent among ignorant whites as among negroes, though with the latter there is generally a tendency to overestimate. Where negroes make wrong estimates, in three cases out of four they will be found excessive. With whites the variation will be diminutive as often as excessive. In judging of numbers of men, a column of troops, for example, both races are liable to exaggerate, the negro generally going beyond the ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... she said, accepting Sammy's slight overestimate of the price of a flying machine ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... begun long enough before it is to be served to allow it to become thoroughly solid. As it is usually difficult to tell how much time this requires on a warm day, even with a refrigerator or other cold place, it is much safer to overestimate the time required ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 4 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... "You greatly overestimate me, Mr. Williams. I have only a poor smattering of knowledge which I absorbed from two friends who are really educated men,—Mr. Little ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... of those who feel that female dignity is compromised by it, I have here omitted a woman's flippant overestimate of the number of women in London society who suffer from nervous disorders at the climacteric ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... universe inhabited only by disembodied spirits, he would have been its ablest citizen; but he was utterly disqualified to live in a human world. He was absolutely incapable of judging people. His tendency was to underestimate men and to overestimate women. His life bore all the scars inevitable to such an instinct. Women, in particular, had played ducks and drakes with his career. Weakly chivalrous, mindlessly gallant, he lacked the faculty of learning by experience—especially where the other ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... overestimate the distances they did—and they did overestimate them, very much. When we were tracking up on the Rat Portage, in the ice water, at the Arctic Circle, don't you remember we figured on double what we had actually ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... you hear from me on my return. In the meantime, I should add that I am helping two Socialist publications, and a good many individuals too, and that my resources have been absurdly exaggerated in the public prints. I say this, that you may not overestimate what I might possibly ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... Roe certainly did not overestimate the value of the manuscript, and it would be extremely interesting could we trace the evidence by which it came to be believed that it was written by the hand of St. Tecla. A note in Arabic at the foot of the first page ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... naturally inclined to overestimate the value of any new sources of information opened by their own diligence or sagacity of research, and a little of this feeling is perceptible in Mr. Bancroft's Preface; but, after all, we apprehend that the new evidence he has so diligently collected ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... magnificent consistency, this confident dogmatism, which gives us the secret of the enormous influence of Treitschke on his countrymen, as it explains the hypnotism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on a previous generation. I do not think it would be easy to overestimate the extent of that influence. It is true that in one sense Treitschke's political philosophy only expresses the Prussian policy, and that he did not create it. But when a political ideal is expounded ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... virtues, and manifesting the unapproached beauty and majesty of the gentler virtues,(4) which in pre-Christian ages were sometimes made secondary, sometimes repudiated with contempt and derision. We cannot overestimate the importance of this teaching by example. The instances are very numerous, in which the fitness of a specific mode of conduct can be tested only by experiment; and Jesus Christ tried successfully ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... property. It is impossible to sell off a large and expensively improved estate like theirs all at once. It is probably true that the machinery and buildings were worth all they received for the whole property; and it would not be an overestimate to give the real value of what they sold at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. They had begun, ten years before, with one hundred and twenty-five families; as after the second year they had bred no children, and as they then lost some members who left on account of their aversion to a celibate ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... to overestimate the value of the Celtic contribution to our national literature and character: the race that gave us Ossian, and Finn, and Cuchulain, that sang of the sorrowful love and doom of Deirdre, that told of the pursuit of Diarmit and Grania, till every dolmen ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... were unscrupulous intriguers, without an atom of moral sense or loyalty, and both possessed ability, differing in kind, perhaps, which they used in the accomplishment of their own ends. France can never overestimate the great evil these two men did to the national cause. Napoleon's power and penetrating vision kept them in check only when he could grasp the nettle. Even when absent on his campaigns, they knew ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... good one in every respect; it is not easy to overestimate either its delightfulness or its moral power. It is not possible for a great society to place before itself a more eminently Christlike purpose. It has been greatly honored of God in its results thus far. And ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... president if he does not overestimate the importance of standing up so straight that there is danger of falling over backward? There is no difference of opinion as to the commercial value of the great asset which he has established for the Companies, in ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... of these writings through many ages, and the actual impression made on the world by the type of character which they embodied and, in a sense, created. In this view, Cicero represents a force that no historian can neglect, and the importance of which it is not easy to overestimate. He did for the Empire and the Middle Ages what Lucretius, with his far greater philosophic genius, totally failed to do—created forms of thought in which the life of philosophy grew, and a body ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... dispassionate judge of his life might deem very exaggerated, very unnecessary. It is so natural for an honorable man to so dread that he should do a dishonorable thing through self-interest or self-pity, that he may very well overestimate the sacrifice required of him through what he deems justice or generosity. May it not be so with you? I can conceive no reason that can be strong enough to require of you such fearful surrender of every hope, such utter abandonment of ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... safe to assume that neither in the city nor country are we likely to overestimate the influence of the press. The daily and weekly paper have a wide circulation among rural people and furnish a source of penetrating and persistent social influence all the more significant because the readers are little conscious of what they receive from ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... sick or dying man, he says, "we overestimate the value of human life, and, besides, we in a measure usurp the place of Providence, when we believe we may save it by committing sin." In other words, Dorner counts falsifying with the intention of deceiving, even with the best of motives, a lie, ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... number but to find it hard to do so, and knowing from experience that the larger the number the harder it is to judge he seemed to reason conversely that the more effort it takes to judge the more points there are, and hence he would overestimate the number. ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... to overestimate the ethnologic importance of the materials thus obtained. They are invaluable as the genuine production of the Indian mind, setting forth in the clearest light the state of the aboriginal religion before ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... go to show how far Dr. Brownson himself was, at this period, from being able to give any but the evasive answer he actually did give to the searching philosophical questions put by his youthful admirer. But it is not easy, especially in the light of Isaac Hecker's subsequent experiences, to overestimate the influence which this new presentation of our Saviour had upon the development of his mind and character. For reasons which we have tried to indicate by a brief description of some of his life-long interior traits, the ordinary Protestant view, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... region, strength and courage do go together. The consciousness of the divine power with us, and that alone, will make us bold with a boldness that has no taint of levity and presumption mingled with it, and never will overestimate its own strength. The charge to Joshua, then, not only insists upon the duty of strength, but on the duty of conscious strength, and on the duty of measuring the strength that is at my back with the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the beginning of the Sherman campaign in Georgia, where I found a ward of eighty sick and wounded soldiers fresh from the battle of Resacea. My professional fitness for duties so grave and so large in extent was of a very questionable order, and I did not in the least overestimate it. ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... But I overestimate our numbers, for it was not the whole of the Heilbron contingent that reached the firing line. We had to leave some of them behind with the horses at the foot of the kop, and there were others who remained ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... is big and broad enough to include both ideas, the human mind is prone to overestimate the one or the other. Traces, at least, of a similar mode of thought persisted by the Greek Fathers of the Church, and disappeared, if ever, with the predominance of Latin theology. To the oriental the idea of evolution ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... much better than the Atlantic ever had that I am probably inclined to overestimate everything I saw on the voyage. It was the first trip at sea that ever gave me any pleasure. The huge vessels are in themselves a great comfort, and in the placid waters and the sliding down the rotund side of the great globe ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... in the system and in the administration of our charitable and penal laws, and have furnished in their reports information and suggestions of great value. If it is true that an abuse exposed is half corrected, it would be difficult to overestimate their work. They have, their reports show, discovered abuses and cruelties practiced, under color of law, in the midst of communities noted for intelligence and virtue, which would disgrace any age. Let the board be granted increased powers ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... the romantic tales have done to marriage and the sober-satisfying everyday life, no one can estimate, no one can overestimate. Romanticism, which extols sex as the prime and only thing of life, prudery which closes its eyes to it and makes sour faces, need special places in Dante's Inferno. Neither has dealt with reality,—reality, which is satisfying and pleasant unless ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... seriously, But not to gloom or whine; To never overestimate Our strength, or to decline To see this is no picnic, But do our earnest part With brain and muscles, newly trained— ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... It is impossible to overestimate the importance of the consequences which followed from these two distinct and opposed theories of government. The one gave us the dominion, but also the decline and fall of, Rome. It followed the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, with ...
— Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution • Elihu Root
... judgment is one of the most frequent causes of misfits. Even when parents are sincere and try to be wise, choice of a child's life work is very difficult for them. In the first place, they either underestimate or overestimate their children. What parent, worthy of the high privilege, can be absolutely impartial in judging the talents of his child? Arthur Brisbane says that Nature makes every baby look like a genius in his mother's eyes, so that she will gladly ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... the night of the 26th Howe outflanked them and brought his main body to a position on their rear. The next day an attack was made on their front; they were caught between two divisions of the king's troops and were defeated. Howe put their loss at 3,300, which is certainly an overestimate, though he made nearly 1,100 prisoners, among them the generals Sullivan and Lord Stirling, as the Americans called him, an unsuccessful claimant of that earldom.[113] The British casualties were 377. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... tendency among Mendelians and mutationists to overestimate the importance of experiments in comparison with reasoning, either inductive or deductive. Bateson, however, has admitted that Mendelian experiments and observations on mutation have not solved the problem of adaptation. It seems to be demanded, nevertheless, ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... Government, with Sir Edward Carson in it—it is impossible to describe or overestimate the effect of this in Ireland. The fact that Mr. Redmond could, had he chosen to do so, have sat in the same Cabinet with Sir Edward Carson had no mollifying influence. If Mr. Redmond had consented, he would, ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... way,—I'm sure I don't know; beyond that it embarrasses me horribly to have you overestimate me so. If any courage has been shown this night, it is yours ... But I'm forgetting again." He thought to divert her. "Where shall I tell the cabby to go ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... of the work within a short series of years. The report of the Secretary of the Navy shows the saving in our naval expenditures which would result. The Senator from Alabama, Mr. Morgan, in his argument upon this subject before the Senate of the last session, did not overestimate the importance of the work when he said that 'The canal is the most important subject now connected with the commercial growth and progress of ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... We can not overestimate the fervent love of liberty, the intelligent courage, and the sum of common sense with which our fathers made the great experiment of self-government. When they found, after a short trial, that the confederacy of States ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. VIII.: James A. Garfield • James D. Richardson
... learned afterwards, a whole division of cavalry, under command of the noted Rebel, Major General Sam Jones, had been sent to effect our capture, to offset in a measure Longstreet's repulse at Knoxville. A gross overestimate of our numbers had caused the sending of so large a force on this errand, and the rough treatment we gave the two columns that attacked us first confirmed the Rebel General's ideas of our strength, and led him to adopt cautious tactics, instead of crushing us ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... Hist. Coll. fourth series, iv. 422.] An established priesthood is naturally the firmest support of despotism; but the course of events made that of Massachusetts revolutionary. This was a social factor whose importance it is hard to overestimate; for though the influence of the elders had much declined during the eighteenth century, their political power was still immense; and it is impossible to measure the degree in which the drift of feeling toward independence would ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... also a bee. Who but a bee would overestimate human beings like that? Your Miss Cassandra, or whatever her name is, doesn't know her history. Those cities and towers and other human devices you speak of are none of them any good to us. Who would take such an impractical view of the world as you do? If you don't accept the premise ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... Can we overestimate the influence of these associations, of these Soldiers'-Aid Societies, rising up in every city and village, in producing just such a state of mind, in keeping the soldier one of us, one of the people? Five hundred thousand hearts following with deep interest his fortunes,—twice ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... sum of money and Glen might overestimate the value of the mine. I've inquired around and learn that the property is considered tremendously promising. If we—if he actually secures that claim it will doubtless mean a for—— I don't like to lose my sense ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... Never left any chance for newspaper controversies Never uses a one-syllable word when he can think of a longer one No satisfaction in being a Pope in those days Not afraid of a million Bedouins Not bring ourselves to think St John had two sets of ashes Old Travelers One is apt to overestimate beauty when it is rare Only solitary thing one does not smell in Turkey Oriental splendor! Original first shoddy contract mentioned in history Overflowing his banks People talk so glibly of "feeling," "expression," "tone," Perdition catch all the guides Picture which ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Mark Twain • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... ministry instead of the nation, so that we cannot but admire the real statesman as the vastest human Poetry. Ever to look beyond the present moment, to foresee the ways of Destiny, to care so little for power that he only retains it because he is conscious of his usefulness, while he does not overestimate his strength; ever to lay aside all personal feeling and low ambitions, so that he may always be master of his faculties, and foresee, will, and act without ceasing; to compel himself to be just and impartial, ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... contains the principle, that solicitude for the future is at bottom heathen worldly-mindedness. The heathen tendency in us all leads to an overestimate of material good, and it is a question of circumstances whether that shall show itself in heaping up earthly treasures, or in anxious care. These are the same plant, only the one is growing in the tropics of sunny prosperity, and the other in the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... any craft at all, I requested him to do his utmost the following day to engage for us Eskimos and a small boat and we would make the attempt to get there. It has been my experience that frontier traders are wont to overestimate the dangers in trips of this kind, and I was inclined to the belief that this was the case with Ford. In due time I ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... box, the theater and social frivolities aggregate no inconsiderable sum, which I will not overestimate ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... person under the flag has a direct interest in the solution of these questions. The end that is now arrived at, the policy now adopted, may and probably will last for many years. One can hardly overestimate the immensity of the interests at stake. A man dealing with his own affairs should take time to consider; he should give himself the benefit of his best judgment. When acting for others he should do no less. The Senators represent, ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... as under graver faults, lies very commonly an overestimate of our special individuality, as distinguished from our generic humanity. It is just here that the very highest society asserts its superior breeding. Among truly elegant people of the highest ton, you will find more real equality in social intercourse than in a country village. ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... North, speaks excitedly," said the elder gentleman; "yet I think she does not overestimate the unfortunate position in which your odd fancy places you. I know nothing of the reasons that have impelled you to this step; I only know that the popular opinion is that the cause is utterly inadequate. You are still young, ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... trees. More than once I have watched her frantic efforts to achieve this end, and she really almost succeeds—at least she can reach a higher point on the trunk of a tree than any other dog of her size I know—say six feet; if the bark is rough, perhaps seven feet would not be an overestimate. Her attempts are unremitting—once the frenzy is on it is with the greatest difficulty that she can be separated, panting and exhausted, from ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... "You overestimate my worth and his interest. He is a man who lives in a world of his own and needs no society, save such as is afforded in his tasteful and elegant home. He loves books, flowers, music, paintings, and his dog! He is a stern man, and shares his griefs and joys with no one. All ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... Now that the enemy was near he wanted nothing but to drive on up to the end of the shaft, come out into that world wherever the shaft ended, then try to fight his way through to the great hall where he hoped to find Phee-e-al. And his haste made him overestimate the passing time; their journey had been ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... often expounded. I think that at present the tendency is rather to do injustice to the common-sense embodied in this system, to the soundness of its aims, and to its value in many practical and immediate questions, than to overestimate its claim to scientific accuracy. That claim may be ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... have to say. If you are imagining that the young fellow with whom you have an engagement of marriage would be rendered inconsolable by the loss of you, when it would be made up to him by the possession of a fortune, perhaps you overestimate things." ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder |
