"Overrate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it was wiser not to dwell on it, and yet I could not cast it from me. My only, my great resource was prayer—great and supporting it was. Let any one, placed as I was, try it, and they will find that I in no way overrate it. Whenever I felt the miserable depressing feeling coming on, I fled instantly to that great source of comfort, of all true happiness, and it ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... living in Germany during the war I would have felt a powerful tendency to defend the cause of the Allies, to excuse their misdeeds, to overrate their ability, while being highly critical and censorious of ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... shuts up shop and ceases to diffuse liquid poison, he does not invite the world to put up the shutters; neither will I. Actors overrate themselves ridiculously," added she; "I am not of that importance to the world, nor the world to me. I fling away a dirty old glove instead of soiling my fingers filling it with more guineas, and the world loses in me, what? ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... a world does the very name convey to one who has never known what it is!—much as Moore's "Peri" regarded Paradise, and as the lost angels may wistfully think of the heaven from which they were expelled. Perhaps they overrate its attributes, imagining, as they do, that it is a blissful state of being, for ever debarred to them; but they do have such feelings—the dregs, ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... had made himself master of a large part of the central provinces. Nobunaga despatched Hideyoshi with the best equipped army that at that time had ever been fitted out in Japan, to subdue the provinces lying to the west of Kyoto. He did not overrate the ability of the general to whom he entrusted this task. They set out in the early part of the year A.D. 1578. Their first movement was against the strongholds of the province of Harima, which he reduced. We for the first time find mention in this campaign of Kuroda(158) Yoshitaka, who in the invasion ...
— Japan • David Murray
... overrate my influence, and underrate the Prince's judgment, if you imagine aught save personal merit would weigh with him. Your son shall have every opportunity of deserving his notice, but whether it be favourable or not must depend ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... protestations, no matter how incapable they might be of fulfilling the one or authenticating the other! The truth is that the Spaniard is a proud, independent, and grave personage; possessing many excellent qualities, but quite conscious of their existence, and not unapt to overrate them.... Yet with all this, there was much about the air and manner of the Spaniards to deserve and command our regard. The Portuguese are a people that require rousing; they are indolent, lazy, and generally helpless. We may value these our faithful allies, and render them useful; ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... weakness is not our ignorance; we know the good, but lack the will and purpose to live it out. And this is because the thought of truth and goodness excites no such strength of feeling as that of some lower gratification. We cannot perhaps overrate the value of intellect; we certainly underrate the value of emotion and feeling. "Knowledge puffeth up, love buildeth." It does not require great intellect, it does require intense feeling to be a hero. We ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... to overrate the value of the services rendered to the exposition by the special commissioner for history, Miss Florence Hayward, who not only secured the special exhibit of the Queen's jubilee presents, but also the exhibits ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... said enough, Alice," said Julian, with sparkling eyes; "you have said enough in deprecating my urgency, and I will press you no farther. But you overrate the impediments which lie betwixt us—they ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... silk hat, no middle-class school in his scheme of things. He calls the shopman "Sir," and makes no struggle against his native accent. In his heart he despises the middle class, the mean tip-givers, and he is inclined to overrate the gentry or big tippers. He is much more sociable, much noisier, relatively shameless, more intelligent, more capable, less restrained. He is rising against his tradition, and almost against his will. The serf still bulks large in him. The whole ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... do that," answered the girl steadily. "Whatever your power over Maurice may be, it is not strong enough for that; you overrate it." ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... happens to be a successful writer, his friends who become then proud of his acquaintance, flatter him, and by soothing his vanity teach him to overrate his importance, and while he grasps at universal fame, he loses by too vigorous an effort, what he had acquired by diligence and application: If he pleases too little, that is, if his works are not read, he is in a fair way of being a great loser by his attempt to please. Mr. Steele ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... Cuthbert," Sir Baldwin said, "that you overrate the chivalry of our master's enemies. Had we been thrown on the shores of France, Philip perhaps would hesitate to lay hands upon the king; but these petty German princelings have no idea of the observances of true chivalry. They are coarse ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... in driving the mental screw, to be careful how you allow it to dwell too constantly upon any one topic. If you allow yourself to think too much of any subject, you will get a partial craze upon that; you will come to vastly overrate its importance. You will make yourself uncomfortable about it. There once was a man who mused long upon the notorious fact that almost all human beings stoop consider ably. Few hold themselves as upright as they ought. And this notion took such hold upon the poor ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... to disparage the appearance of that fellow. Probably community of language rather than of blood accounts for our sense of kinship, for a common means of expression cannot but mould thought and feeling into some kind of unity. One can hardly overrate the intimacy which a common literature brings. The lives of great Americans, Washington and Franklin, Lincoln and Lee and Grant, are unsealed for us, just as to Americans are the lives of Marlborough and Nelson, Pitt and Gladstone and Gordon. Longfellow and ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... and St. Peter's, were taken on the same scale, and looked at with the same magnifying power, we should compare them without the possibility of being misled by those partialities which might tend to make us overrate the indigenous vegetable and the dome of our ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... for you, and you treated him skilfully and left him in a fair way to recovery. That's all that we really know about it. Yes, I know," the officer continued as I made signs of disagreement, "you think that a crime is possibly going to be committed and that we ought to prevent it. But you overrate our powers. We can only act on evidence that a crime has actually been committed or is actually being attempted. Now we have no such evidence. Look at your statement, and tell me what you can ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... eyes: his is a healthy rapture, a torch lighted by the feelings, but which the reason holds upright and steady. His native favorites he enjoys as no Englishman or German could, but he does not overrate them. Nor does he overrate Voltaire, whom he calls "the Frenchman par excellence," and of whom he is proud as the literary sovereign of his age. At the same time, in articles directly devoted to Joubert, as well as by frequent ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... overrate the bravery of their troops or the abilities of their generals, but they did underrate the difficulties in conquering a population scattered over a vast extent of territory. They did not take into consideration the protecting ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... 'fanciful' girl. She afterwards becomes the Christian type of the Bride, in the 'Song of Solomon,' involved with an ideal of all that is purest in the life of a nun, and brightest in the death of a martyr. It is scarcely possible to overrate the influence of the conceptions formed of her, in ennobling the sentiments of Christian women of the higher orders;—to their practical common sense, as the mistresses of a household or a nation, her example ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... Christianity, and his Pastoral Care, which contains instruction in conduct and doctrine for all bishops, was a work that Alfred could not afford to leave untranslated. For this translation Alfred wrote a Preface, the historical value of which it would be hard to overrate. In it he describes vividly the intellectual ruin that the Danes had wrought, and develops at the same time his plan ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... afraid you overrate my abilities. I have no consciousness of any such resources as you suppose me ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... clothed in fine fancies any incident or scene presented, however nakedly, to his view, accounts in part for his notorious tendency to overrate the work of other writers, especially those who wrote stories in any form. This explanation was hinted at by Sir Walter himself, and formulated by Lockhart; it seems a fairly reasonable way of accounting ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... No, no, no, I did not overrate it. I can no longer attempt to conceal from myself that this woman has conceived a passion for me. It is monstrous, but it is true. Again, tonight, I awoke from the mesmeric trance to find my hand in hers, and to suffer that odious feeling which ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the world; here Madame de Sevigne brought her bright, incisive wit, trebly commended by stainless reputation, unwithering beauty, and charming address, in the woman who wielded it. The noblest blood of France added the decoration and inspiration of their presence. It is not easy to overrate the diffusive beneficent influence that hence went forth to change the fashion of literature, and to change the fashion of society, for the better. The Hotel de Rambouillet proper lasted two generations only; but it had a virtual succession, which, though sometimes interrupted, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... Altmuehl, all of which conduct an invader to the regions east of Ulm. Indeed, it passes belief how even the Aulic Council could have ignored the dangers of that position. Possibly the fact that Ulm had been stoutly held by Kray in 1796 now induced them to overrate its present importance; but at that time the fortified camp of Ulm was the central knot of vast operations, whereas now it was but an advanced outpost.[24] If Francis and his advisers were swayed by historical reminiscences it is strange that they forgot ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... "Have I not a friend here who is only too much inclined to overrate the little I am able to do? Lenore, you have permitted me to draw nearer to you than would have been possible under ordinary circumstances. Do you reckon it nothing that I should have won some of a brother's privileges with ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... observer of human affairs. For it is to be chiefly ascribed to a law as certain as the laws which regulate the succession of the seasons and the course of the trade winds. It is the nature of man to overrate present evil, and to underrate present good; to long for what he has not, and to be dissatisfied with what he has. This propensity, as it appears in individuals, has often been noticed both by laughing and by weeping philosophers. It was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Tristrams burst into a peal of merry laughter. "Oh Mags!" they cried, "we never did think before that you were conceited. You certainly overrate even your powers when you imagine that you will get Mr. Cardew ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... "You overrate the matter altogether, Bertha. The man shot me by mistake. The fellow he took me for richly deserved shooting. When he found it was a mistake, the poor fellow was bitterly sorry for it. Surely, there was nothing more ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... early erected, and bore witness to a more advanced civilization. We meet with them again, however, in Palestine, but we must traverse many miles before we find other examples at Peshawur and in the valley of Cabul. It is difficult to overrate the importance of these facts, or to explain these gaps. Are they, however, so complete as has been supposed? The few travellers who have crossed Afghanistan and Daghestan have seen tumuli which may have served as points of union ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... was abstemious in her living, and in apparel void of all vain ornaments. I must needs say, that her mind had a noble prospect: her eye was to a better and more lasting inheritance, than can be found below. This made her not overrate the honors of her station, or the learning of the schools, of which she was an excellent judge. Being once at Hamburgh, a religious person, whom she went to see for religion's sake, remarked to her, that 'it was too great an honor for him, that a visitant of her ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... readers who are not gluttons, but epicures, in literature, whether they do not wish to see the bill of fare? I appeal to monthly critics, whether a preface that gives a view of the pretensions of the writer is not a good thing? The author may overvalue his subject, and very naturally may overrate the manner in which it is treated; but still he will explain his views, and facilitate the useful and necessary art which the French call reading with the thumb. We call this hunting a book, a term certainly invented by a sportsman. I leave the reader to ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... protested, 'I fear you overrate my poor ability. It is quite true that if I had been called in on the night of the robbery, my chances of success would have been infinitely ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... had set myself, I wish, of course, that I could have performed it more to my own satisfaction and that of my readers. This is a feeling which almost every one must have at the conclusion of any work he has undertaken. A common and very simple reason for this disappointment is that most of us overrate our capacity. We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to, in virtue of our endowments. The figurative descriptions of the last Grand Assize must no more be taken literally than the golden crowns, which ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... "Overrate him, sir? That is impossible. I love him so well that I hope he will solve this mystery himself, unaided and alone, and that in going back to Chicago he will be smashed to pieces in a railway accident, so that we can have him here ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr |
