"Confuse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... confuse my life with rebellion, but through thy guidance find peace. Help me through the perplexities that may keep me from the quietness of to-day. Keep me in sight of the great plan of life, that I may grow ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... and give an extremely forced interpretation to their words: those on the other hand, who would make reason and philosophy subservient to theology, will be forced to accept as Divine utterances the prejudices of the ancient Jews, and to fill and confuse their mind therewith. (5) In short, one party will run wild with the aid of reason, and the other will run wild ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza
... Robert Cairn sat at his writing-table, endeavouring to puzzle out a solution to the mystery of Ferrara's motive. His reflections served only to confuse his mind. ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... Jimmy had to strain forward to catch the quick phrase. This was not altogether pleasant for him, as he had nearly always to make a deft guess at the meaning and shout back a suitable answer in the face of a high wind. Besides Villona's humming would confuse anybody; the noise ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... where the Confederate infantry found shelter behind a stout stone wall, and numerous batteries occupied the commanding ground in rear, was selected for assault. Neither feint nor demonstration, the ordinary expedients by which the attacker seeks to distract the attention and confuse the efforts of the defence, was made use of; and yet division after division, with no abatement of courage, marched in good order over the naked plain, dashed forward with ever-thinning ranks, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... down, frost cleans the air, My sky is black with small birds bearing south; Say what you will, confuse me with fine care, Put by my word as but an April truth,— Autumn is no less on me that a rose Hugs the brown bough and ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... likewise taken into account,—and they say so themselves,—that Mr. Seward's oracular vaticinations about the end of the rebellion from sixty to ninety days confuse the judgment of diplomats. Mr. Seward's conversation and words have an official meaning for the diplomats, are the subject of their dispatches, and they continually find that when Mr. Seward says yes the events ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... make common truths as easy to discern and adopt as common errors. But if we effect this, which we all allow is so easy, with our children; if we strengthen their minds, instead of weakening them, and clear their vision, rather than confuse it, from that moment, we remove the prejudicial effects of fiction, and just as we have taught them to use a knife, without cutting their fingers, we teach them to make use of fiction without perverting it ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... point to which I desire particularly to draw the reader's attention in this comparison of the Indo-Germanic languages with the branches of the vertebrate stem is, that one must never confuse direct descendants with collateral branches, nor extinct forms with living. This confusion is very common, and our opponents often make use of the erroneous ideas it gives rise to for the purpose of attacking evolution generally. When, for instance, we say ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... introduction of a sharp or a flat was likely to alter the character of the ancient scales, that she must not judge the ancient scales by what had already been written in them; it was nowise his intention to imitate the character of the plain chant melodies; she must not confuse the sentiment of these melodies with the modes in which they were written. It might be that in adding a sharp or a flat the musician destroyed the character of the mode which he was leaving and that of the mode he was passing into, but that proved nothing except his ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... enough to stand without being propped by Currer Bell, and would have disdained what Ellis himself of all things disdains—recourse to trickery. However, Ellis, Acton, and Currer care nothing for the matter personally; the public and the critics are welcome to confuse our identities as much as they choose; my only fear is lest Messrs. Smith & Elder should in some way be annoyed ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... why not to do these things, and why to do just what you have done, which constituted your power of design; and like all the people I have ever known who had that power, you are entirely unconscious of the essential laws by which you work, and confuse other people by telling them that the design depends on symmetry and series, when, in fact, it depends entirely on your own sense ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... dubium mihi est quin vos, ornatissimi consiliari S. M., quum in maximi momenti negotiis praeclare ac sapienter agere soleatis, ubi has de fide controversias, quas adversarii nostri non sine fuco et confuse plerumque pertractant, bona fide delectas et fuco nudatas perspexeritis, luce meridiana clarius cognituri sitis, quam solidis et firmis fundamentis fides catholica nitatur. Et quia e contrario protestantium argumenta sunt omnino ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... hurried along, trying to push the pace while Ross delayed all he could. He realized that in his recognition of the power of the gun back in the control chamber, his surrender to its threat, he had betrayed his real origin. So he must continue to confuse the trail to the project in every possible way left to him. He was sure that this time they would not leave him in the first ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... it is," said Tom; "we must agree on something, or we shall both get left. All we're doing now is to confuse the poor girl. She evidently likes us both the same. What I mean is, we're both so alike that she can't possibly make a choice unless one of us chucks it. You don't feel like chucking ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Nevill advised, at the hotel door. "He's got too much Arab blood in him to stand that. You'd only make him tell you lies. We must seem to know things, and ask questions as if we expected him to confirm our knowledge. That may confuse him if he wants to lie. He won't be sure what ground ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... clearly understand the real nature of our inmost being, we should see how absurd it is to desire that individuality should exist eternally. This wish implies that we confuse real Being with one of its innumerable manifestations. The individuality disappears at death, but we lose nothing thereby, for it is only the manifestation of quite a different Being—a Being ignorant of time, and, consequently, knowing neither life ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... analysis a case which was neither dementia praecox nor paranoia but a combination of the two, he reaches conclusions which are valuable additions to our knowledge of psychotic processes but merely confuse the issue as to the specific mechanisms of paranoia and dementia praecox. In Schreber a profound psychotic reaction corresponded to crude formulations of his fancies, whereas, when he built these ideas into constructive speculations, ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... bones of the saints, Count Corti, thou dost confuse me the more! With such odds against thee, what preparations were at ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... plans ran on. She would pack her own pretty things—out of sight! They must not confuse, or call for pity. There would be no note. She, that woman at the bungalow would explain, and would tell him that there could be no reconsideration, for she, Joyce, had ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... Asquith, speaking at Bury St. Edmunds on the 12th of December, declared that "the sole issue at that moment was the supremacy of the people," and he added, in deprecation of all the talk about Ireland, that "it was sought to confuse this issue by catechising Ministers on the details of the ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... waterproof cloak, and slipped out of the house unperceived. The rain was falling steadily along the descending trail where she walked, but beyond, scarcely a mile across the chasm, the wintry distance began to confuse her brain with the inextricable swarming of snow. Hurrying down with feverish excitement, she at last came in sight of the arching granite portals of their domain. But her first glance through the gateway showed it closed as if with a white portcullis. ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... which you take in ornament with that which you take in construction or usefulness. They have no connection; and every effort that you make to reason from one to the other will blunt your sense of beauty, or confuse it with sensations altogether inferior to it. You were made for enjoyment, and the world was filled with things which you will enjoy, unless you are too proud to be pleased by them, or too grasping to care for what you cannot turn to other account than mere delight. Remember that the most beautiful ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... horror and alarm, even pretended to see these dead wives again appearing to them in open court. Though small of size, Burroughs was remarkably strong, instances of which were given in proof that the devil helped him. Stoughton treated him with cruel insolence, and did his best to confuse and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... its original causes, but when once established it reacted powerfully to reenforce and maintain the institution. How the religious sanction came about we can readily see when we remember that very commonly religions confuse the practice of the nobility with what is noble or commendable morally. The polygynous practices of the nobility, therefore, under certain conditions came to receive the sanction of religion. When this ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... began from the upper batteries of the enemy. At 11.16 the great guns began, slowly at first, but soon more rapidly. A few moments later a large fire was lit on the point, bringing the vessels, as they passed before it, into bold relief, and serving to confuse, to some extent, the pilots of the fleet. Each ship as she brought her guns to bear on rounding the point, opened her fire, first from the bow and then from the port battery. The engagement thus soon became general and animated. The confusion of the scene was ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... start with the players sitting in consecutive order, or they may change places at the outset to confuse the blindfold player, although the changing of places takes place very rapidly in the course of the game. The blindfold player calls out two numbers, whereupon the players bearing those numbers must exchange places, the blindfold player trying meanwhile either to catch one of the players ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... altogether. But no kind of camouflage will hide a ship. Nor is there any point in making a boat look like anything else; for everybody knows that ships are the only things at sea. Camouflage afloat was therefore meant to confuse the submarine commander's aim by deceiving his eye as to his target's speed and course. By painting cunning arrangements of stripes and splashes of different colours a ship's course and speed could be so disguised that the torpedoist was puzzled in getting his ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... Tanite line has been complicated in the minds of most Egyptologists by the tendency to ignore the existence of the sacerdotal dynasty of high priests, to confuse with the Tanite Pharaohs those of the high priests who bore the crown, and to identify in the lists of Manetho (more or less corrected) the names they are in search of. A fresh examination of the subject has led me to adopt provisionally the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... had been built up; the Prussian nobles were, he maintained, not, as so often was said, unpopular; a third of the House belonged to them; they were not necessarily opposed to freedom; they were, at least, the truest defenders of the State. Let people not confuse patriotism and Liberalism. Who had done more for the true political independence of the State, that independence without which all freedom was impossible, than the Prussian nobles? At the end of the Seven Years' War boys had stood at the head of the army, the only ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... assure him he's wrong." Drew saw a chance to confuse the enemy. "We're very much around. You'll be seem' a lot of us from now ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... ribs; and that if the said EDWIN would return, with a brass ferule slightly worn, the finder should receive earnest thanks, and be seen safely to his home by J. BUMSTEAD. Mr. Gospeler SIMPSON and Judge SWEENEY agreed that a handbill should be issued: but thought it might confuse the public mind if the missing nephew and the lost umbrella were not ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... to them prejudicial! Not on such terms will Englishmen be willing to spread civilization across the ocean! I do not pretend to understand Wheaton and Phillimore, or even to have read a single word of any international law. I have refused to read any such, knowing that it would only confuse and mislead me. But I have my common sense to guide me. Two men living in one street, quarrel and shy brickbats at each other, and make the whole street very uncomfortable. Not only is no one to interfere with them, but they are to have the privilege of deciding that their brickbats have the ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... and there was no change in the situation. Not that no attempts were made to change it. One night friends from the shore came out in a skiff and attempted to confuse us while the two Italians escaped. That they did not succeed was due to the lack of a little oil on the ship's davits. For we were drawn back from the pursuit of the strange boat by the creaking of the davits, and arrived at the Lancashire Queen just as the Italians were ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... effect of calm, "to save a small nest-egg from the wreck, to keep me from the poorhouse in my old age. I did not wish to tell you this because, with your lack of acquaintance with business methods, the details would only confuse, and possibly mislead, you. I had, too, another reason for wishing to keep it a surprise. You have forced me, against my preferences, to tell you. As to this small pittance," he said, without the flicker of an eye-lash, "any court in the country would tell you ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... ship which could have reported our action off Meriden. I'm sure we've sent four shiploads of food back to the fleet, besides the passenger-ship we'd rather have missed. But there's still something to be done. To confuse Mekin and keep it busy, and therefore off Kandar's neck, we have to start trouble elsewhere. From now on we are pirates ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... materialism, atheism, and the morality of interest, to the criticism of revelation. Why, in addition to natural religion, with its three fundamental doctrines, God, freedom, and immortality, should other special doctrines be necessary, which rather confuse than clear up our ideas of the Great Being, which exact from us the acceptance of absurdities, and make men proud, intolerant, and cruel—whereas God requires from us no other service than that of the heart? ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... be held that the Red Men derived their bear from the European settlers. But, as we have seen, an exact knowledge of the stars has always been useful if not essential to savages; and we venture to doubt whether they would confuse their nomenclature and sacred traditions by borrowing terms from trappers and squatters. But, if this is improbable, it seems almost impossible that all savage races should have borrowed their whole conception of ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... chime of bells had pealed! The frozen songs within the breast Of silent birds that hid in leafless woods, Melt into rippling floods Of gladness unrepressed. Now oriole and blue-bird, thrush and lark, Warbler and wren and vireo, Confuse their music; for the living spark Of Love has touched the fuel of desire, And every heart leaps up in singing fire. It seems as if the land Were breathing deep beneath the sun's caress, Trembling with tenderness, While all the woods expand, In shimmering clouds of rose and ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke
... not to confuse the colour of the bismuth iodide with that of free iodine. If the yellow colour is removed by boiling and returns on standing it is due altogether to iodine; if it is lessened by the addition of a few drops of the dilute sulphurous acid, it is ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... especially in their later works, the idea that links the group together is sufficiently similar to impart to all a certain resemblance. In other words, you can nearly always pick out a "Birmingham" illustration at a glance, even if it would be impossible to confuse the work of Mr. Gaskin with that of ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... creation. My strength lies in my fortune. I am new, like the Empire; there is, therefore, a perfect homogeneity between the Empire and myself."—"However," says Metternich, "I have often thought that Napoleon, by talking in this way, merely sought to study the opinion of others, or to confuse it, and the direct advance which he made to Louis XVIII., in 1804 seemed to confirm this suspicion. Speaking to me one day of this advance he said, 'Monsieur's reply was grand; it was full of fine traditions. There is something in legitimate rights which appeals to more ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... support that Steptoe strangely clung to in his designs for the future, and a wild idea seized him. The surveyor was really the only disinterested witness between the two parties. If Steptoe could confuse his mind before the actual fighting—from which he would, of course, escape as a non-combatant—it would go far afterwards to rehabilitate Steptoe's party. "Very well, then," he said to Marshall, "I shall call this gentleman to witness that we have been attacked here in peaceable possession ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... which preserves or destroys them, undoubtedly do, in some remote and roundabout way, hang together. What Darwin means is, that, since that environment is a perfectly known thing, and its relations to the organism in the way of destruction or preservation are tangible and distinct, it would utterly confuse our finite understandings and frustrate our hopes of science to mix in with it facts from such a disparate and incommensurable cycle as that in which the variations are produced. This last cycle is that of occurrences before the animal is born. It is the cycle of influences ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... Roland should be a ghost-seer; for that generally means a hysterical temperament and weak health, and all that men most hate and fear for their children. But that I should take up his ghost and right its wrongs, and save it from its trouble, was such a mission as was enough to confuse any man. I did my best to console my boy without giving any promise of this astonishing kind; but he was too sharp for me: he would have none of my caresses. With sobs breaking in at intervals upon his voice, and the rain-drops ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... come in afterward, I suppose," replied Miss Shelton; but Bessie said to herself that he would do no such thing. How thoughtful he was for her comfort! He was staying away purposely, that his presence might not confuse her; and Bessie felt grateful to him for the delicacy that shielded ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... many times. She had made up her mind with the right instinct that the thing to do was to blunt her sensibilities. By the third day she had ordered the earlier associations on duty, and managed to confuse them somewhat with those which had held possession for so brief a time. She was determined to succeed. She had no right to love the husband of another woman, and suffering was something so much more ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... such a situation, and the jurisdictional disputes attending upon it, tend to bewilder and confuse the public and create the impression that service differences ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... Salem, Vienna, Lexington, Paris, Vernon, Dupont, and Sumanville to Harrison, near the Ohio State line and twenty-five miles from Cincinnati. Detachments were sent to Madison, Versailles, and other points, to burn bridges, bewilder and confuse those before and behind us, and keep bodies of military stationary that might otherwise give trouble. All were drawn in before we reached Harrison. At this point Morgan began demonstrations intended to convey the impression ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... us of the stimulus, but we are concerned with the response. The facts of color-blindness and color mixing show very clearly that the response does not tally in all respects with the stimulus. Physics, then, is apt to confuse the student at this point and lead him astray. Much impressed with the physical discovery that white light is a mixture of all wave-lengths, he is ready to believe the sensation of white a mixed sensation. He says, "White is the sum of all the colors", meaning that the sensation of white ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... of fairyland. But the existing tales give no hint of this, and, after being carefully examined, they show that Elysium had always been a place distinct from that of the departed, though there may have arisen a tendency to confuse ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... either, Willis. I was just thinking whether you couldn't manage this wretched man rather better alone. I—I'm afraid I confuse you; and he gets things out ...
— The Albany Depot - A Farce • W. D. Howells
... his way into an orchard cool; There on a throne he sate, of marble blue, Round him his men, full twenty thousand, stood. Called he forth then his counts, also his dukes: "My Lords, give ear to our impending doom: That Emperour, Charles of France the Douce, Into this land is come, us to confuse. I have no host in battle him to prove, Nor have I strength his forces to undo. Counsel me then, ye that are wise and true; Can ye ward off this present death and dule?" What word to say no pagan of them knew, Save Blancandrin, of th' Castle of ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... divide poetry, the office of imagination is to disengage what is essential from the crowd of accessories which is apt to confuse the vision of ordinary minds. For our perceptions of things are gregarious, and are wont to huddle together and jostle one another. It is only those who have been long trained to shepherd their thoughts that can at once ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... verses to that effect at the end of these notes. If you are an impatient reader, skip to them at once. In reading aloud, omit, if you please, the sixth and seventh verses. These are parenthetical and digressive, and, unless your audience is of superior intelligence, will confuse them. Many people can ride on horseback who find it hard to get on and to get off without assistance. One has to dismount from an idea, and get into the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... religion, are not of such a nature that they can be said to be absolutely convincing. But they are also of such a kind that it cannot be said that it is unreasonable to believe them. Thus there is both evidence and obscurity to enlighten some and confuse others. But the evidence is such that it surpasses, or at least equals, the evidence to the contrary; so that it is not reason which can determine men not to follow it, and thus it can only be lust or malice of heart. And by this means there is sufficient evidence ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... glass of wine without the trivial fact being announced all over the country as indisputable proof that he was an habitual drunkard, though the most remarkable characteristic of his speeches is their temperance,—their "total abstinence" from all the intoxicating moral and mental "drinks" which confuse the understanding and mislead the conscience. He could not borrow money on his note of hand, like any other citizen, without the circumstance being trumpeted abroad as incontrovertible evidence that Nick Biddle had paid him that sum to defend ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... hit a spot so absolutely invisible as the ruin seemed quite incomprehensible to me; but there is no doubt he was specially gifted in that respect, it being apparently impossible for him to forget or confuse the slightest details of any locality ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... seemed to confuse her, but she finally said it was because she wondered whether Miss Eva had gone away on purpose. According to Perry the affair with Edward Cayley was a serious one. To some extent her young mistress had confided ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... emergency. No doubt, errors have been made, but they are errors inconceivably less in their results than would be the unpardonable sin of the people, should they, because differing in opinion, weaken the hands and confuse the purposes of the powers that be. With secret and treacherous foes in our very midst, hidden behind the masks of a painted loyalty, the President, after deep and earnest consultation and reflection, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... during the year than the day above mentioned; so that, for all purposes, it is sufficient to give the day and its number in the week. We notice, however, that the last five columns of figures for week days of thirteen are just the same as the first five. But this did not confuse any, for the last five columns of days belong to the "sun-reckoning," the others to the moon-reckoning. And though the number of the day in the week was the same, yet a different deity ruled over them than in the corresponding days ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... language necessary in addressing the king at the first audience, which he had signified his readiness, to grant on the morning of the fourth day. The general insisted that it be interpersed with so much latin as to confuse both the king and the interpreter, though both were profound scholars. "I have rare skill in mixing latin, as your excellency knows but you grind it up so in the delivery that neither the king nor the devil can understand a word of it. And as your English is good enough for the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... rock outcroppings the horses slipped. Frequently to get his bearings, Laramie felt his way forward by reaching for trees and scraped his knees against them as he pushed his horse close. And in spite of everything to confuse, intimidate and hold them back, they slipped and floundered on their way, until quite suddenly a new roar from out of the impenetrable dark ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... cordial. The chief drawbacks with her were that cynical tone, which made it always doubtful whether she were making game of her hearers, and the philanthropy, not greatly tinged with religion, so as to confuse old-fashioned minds. She used to bring down strange accounts of her startling adventures in the slums, and relate them in a rattling style, interluded with slang, being evidently delighted to shock and puzzle her hearers; but still she was always good-natured in deed if not in word, and Lord Northmoor ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at first to remember the turns, and their direction, but there were so many that I very soon lost count. I think they took me in a round-about way purposely, to confuse me. I have no idea how long we drove, but it must have been well over two hours. At last we struck a long up-grade, and one of my companions announced that ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... pronouns is complicated. Even if we knew the original power and derivation of every form of every pronoun in a language, it would be far from an easy matter to determine therefrom the paradigm that they should take in grammar. To place a word according to its power in a late stage of language might confuse the study of an early stage. To say that because a word was once in a given class, it should always be so, would be to deny that in the present English they, these, and she are personal pronouns ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... voices which are now bound up in our public opinion, and the many different representatives of its interests, naturally appear very different views on militarism and its object—war. The propertied classes are inclined to confuse even the intellectual movement against militarism with aspirations for the subversion of social order; on the other hand, agitators, seeking influence on the minds of the masses, deny all existing rights, and promise to the masses more than the most perfect institutions could give ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... people the illusions of the higher classes were reflected without the ballast of mentality. Ready to fight on any provocation, yet circumscribed by their own natures, not understanding life, unable to picture to themselves different types and conditions, these people were as prone as children to confuse the world of their own desire with the world of fact. When hardship came, when taxation fell upon them with a great blow, when the war took a turn that necessitated imagination for its understanding and faith for its pursuit, these people with childlike simplicity immediately ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... make one idea the centre of thought for the week,—not to confuse the minds of the children by too much at once," said the Directress. "This week it is pansies." In the garden children were watering pansies in bloom, and pansies were cut and dug for use in the house, where they were the materials for play and work. In one room the children had cards in ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... Some of the women in the room in which I was placed had belonged to papa's Sunday-school, and they were all very kind to me, and told the others who I was; so from the outset I felt myself among friends. In two weeks I had grown used to the work; the noise of the looms did not frighten or confuse me, and it did not tire me to stand so many hours. I found that I should soon be able to do most of my work mechanically, and think about what I pleased in the mean time. So I hoped to be able to study at home and recite my lessons to myself in the mill. The only thing that troubled me was that ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... intelligent as she was, lent herself to the fashion of the day, and delighted in practical jokes and tricks. At the splendid masquerade given by the queen she continued to plague her cousin, Lady Muskerry; to confuse and expose a stupid court beauty, a Miss Blaque; and at the same time to produce on the Count de Grammont a still more powerful effect than even her charms had done. Her success in hoaxing—which we should ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... horseback; with extraordinary promptness and accuracy, his topographical glance has discerned "the best direction for the projected canal, the best site for the construction of a factory, a harbor, or a dike."[4140] To the difficulties which confuse the best brains in the country, to much debated, seemingly insoluble, questions, he at once presents the sole practical solution; there it is, ready at hand, and the members of the local council had not seen it; he makes ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... they threatened, because it was not worth while. But they won't want to let you out of their sight in the final hours, so they will almost certainly come here to be on the spot. Our object is to keep them out and confuse their plans. Somewhere in this neighbourhood, probably very near, is the man you fear most. If we nonplus the three watchers, they'll have to revise their policy, and that means a delay, and every hour's delay is a gain. Mr. McCunn has found out that ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... overtax their brains, he was a poor sleeper. He would sometimes go through a whole book of Euclid in bed; he was so familiar with the bookwork that he could actually see the figures before him in the dark, and did not confuse the letters, which is perhaps ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... or (w l^{2})/20, according to the degree of fixture of the slabs at the four sides. Inasmuch as fixed ends are rarely obtained in practice, the formula, (w l^{2})/24, is generally adopted, and the writer cannot see any reason to confuse the subject by the introduction of a new ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... double capacity of composer and 'impressario,' the latter duty charging him with the selection and engagement of singers. The new society was to be called the Royal Academy of Music, but we must not confuse this body with the Royal Academy of Music existing at the present day, which was founded ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... he?' replied Drake. 'The man by the fireside is apt to confuse sentiment with humanitarian principles; and sentiment, I admit, you have to get rid of when you ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... boys started down the track after the flying contestants, but Ruth darted after them and begged them to keep out of the way so as not to confuse the racers when they should come back up the ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... Satan!" Mikah shouted, leaping to his feet and pacing back and forth before Jason, clasping and unclasping his hands with agitation. "You seek to confuse me with your semantics and so-called ethics that are simply opportunism and greed. There is a Higher ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... shows, on near approach, a face unknown to the searcher, the hurried exit and the quick passage through the dark night air to the next halting-place—all these impressions, following hurriedly upon each other, confuse the mind ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... You confuse me!—But why should I play the prude? I will own there was a time, when I thought myself handsome. 'Tis past. Alas! the enchanting beauties of a female countenance arise from peace of mind—The look, which captivates an honourable ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... have all of us forgotten the meaning of necessity. Gladstonians have come honestly to confuse the needs of a party with the necessities of the country. This is a delusion that at all times and in all lands affects great political connections which, having once rendered high services to the nation, have outlived the valid reasons for their existence. The Republicans saved the United ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... cruel error to confuse her with the sinful woman of whom Luke has just been writing. Mary had suffered from demon possession, as here stated, but there is nothing in the Gospels to indicate that she had ever been a woman of ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... returned to his mind as the surprise of the moment calmed down. He had a great deal to think about. Old difficulties which seemed to have passed away for long years were now coming back again to embarrass and confuse him. "Our pleasant vices are made the whips to scourge us," he said to himself. The past had come back to him like the opening of a book, no longer merely frivolous and amusing, as in the Contessa's ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... very important thing. I am sure that Midwinter—I must call him by his ugly false name, or I may confuse the two Armadales before I have done—I am sure that Midwinter is perfectly ignorant that I and the little imp of twelve years old who waited on Mrs. Armadale in Madeira, and copied the letters that were supposed ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... attend to the matter ever so little. 'Various readings' in fact is a term which belongs of right to the criticism of the text of profane authors: and, like many other notions which have been imported from the same region into this department of inquiry, it only tends to confuse and perplex ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... Centerville and Manassas, when he digged mud and graves for our soldiers before Yorktown, and in the Chickahominy, the Times was extatic beyond measure and description, extatic over the matured plans, the gigantic strategy of McClellan—and at that epoch the Times powerfully contributed to confuse the public opinion. ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... he said. "A well-directed blow on the head would confuse a man's thoughts. It is time to depart. When thou art free, Philip, as, if possessing courage, thou art sure soon to be, forget not the friend who helped thee ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... of morality that knowledge cannot be converted into the highest kind of knowledge, or aproksha jnanam, and thus lead to the attainment of mukti. It availeth naught to intellectually grasp the notion of your being everything and Brahma, if it is not realized in practical acts of life. To confuse meum and teum in the vulgar sense is but to destroy the harmony of existence by a false assertion of "I," and is as foolish as the anxiety to nourish the legs at the expense of the arms. You cannot be one with all, unless all your acts, thoughts, and feelings synchronize with the ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... of the geological formation of mountains and their various methods of origin in language so clear and untechnical that it will not confuse even the ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... statements of Nicol Brinn, his theory that Sir Charles Abingdon had not died from natural causes rested upon data of the most flimsy description. From Phil Abingdon he had learned nothing whatever. Her evidence merely tended to confuse ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... sweetest, truest little voice; and by the time she was eight or nine, she had learned both to write and read, though M. Linders took care that her range of literature should be limited, and chiefly confined to books of fairy-tales, in which no examples drawn from real life could be found, to correct and confuse the single-sided views she received from him. This was almost the extent of her learning, but she picked up all sorts of odd bits of information, in the queer mixed society which M. Linders seemed everywhere to gather round him, and which appeared to consist ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... ear close to the grate, is a round, smoothly developed Italian head, with that rather tumid outline of features which one often sees in a Roman in middle life, when easy living and habits of sensual indulgence begin to reveal their signs in the countenance, and to broaden and confuse the clear-cut, statuesque lines of early youth. Evidently, that is the head of an easy-going, pleasure-loving man, who has waxed warm with good living, and performs the duties of his office with an unctuous grace ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... words, returned to her The clear remembrance of a gentle voice:— 'And O! my child, should ever a flatterer Tap with his wares, and promise of all joys And vain sweet pleasures that on earth may be; Seal up your ears, sing some old happy song, Confuse his magic who is all mockery: His sweets are death.' Yet, still, how she doth long But just to taste, then shut the lattice tight, And hide her eyes ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... the reader to confuse me for a moment with those vague persons who imagine that Ibsen is what they call a pessimist. There are plenty of wholesome people in Ibsen, plenty of good people, plenty of happy people, plenty of examples of men acting ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... she said, smiling, "that you are trying to confuse me. Of course, I have not thought much about such things, but when I am a little older, if there was anything I could do I should simply try to do it in the best possible way, and I should feel that I was doing what was right. There is room for a ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ground, but the rebels had cut them, probably that very day, and had arranged them so as to form a very effective abatis,—thereby clearing the spot and thus enabling them to see our movements. Up to this point there had been no firing sufficient to confuse or check the battalion, but here the rebel musketry opened. A sheet of flame, sudden as lightning, red as blood, and so near that it seemed to singe the men's faces, burst along the rebel breastwork, and the ground and trees ...
— The County Regiment • Dudley Landon Vaill
... carefully followed. In my later works I omitted the metronome and merely described the main tempi in general terms, paying, however, particular attention to the various modifications of tempo. It would appear that general directions also tend to vex and confuse Capellmeisters, especially when they are expressed in plain German words. Accustomed to the conventional Italian terms these gentlemen are apt to lose their wits when, for instance, I write "moderate." Not long ago a Capellmeister complained of that term ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... preposterous length, might well be severed from the book and made into a separate poem. Moreover, these long illustrations are often but faintly connected with the subject they are used to illumine; and they delay the movement of the poem while they confuse the reader. The worst of these, worst as an illustration, but in itself an excellent fragment to isolate as a picture-poem, is the illustration of the flying slave who seeks his tribe beyond the ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... induced largely by blind greed, which allowed the friar orders to confuse the objections to their repressive system with an attack upon Spanish sovereignty, thereby dragging matters from bad to worse, to engender ill feeling and finally desperation. This narrow, selfish policy had about as much soundness in it as the idea upon which it was based, so ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... Many people confuse Liebknecht with his father, now dead. Liebknecht, the son, is a man of perhaps forty-three years, with dark bushy hair and moustache and wearing eye-glasses, a man of medium height and not at all of strong build. In the numerous interruptions made by him during the debates in the Reichstag, ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... we invent by the free decree of our will; they thus regard ideas as though they were inanimate pictures on a panel, and, filled with this misconception, do not see that an idea, inasmuch as it is an idea, involves an affirmation or negation. Again, those who confuse words with ideas, or with the affirmation which an idea involves, think that they can wish something contrary to what they feel, affirm, or deny. This misconception will easily be laid aside by one, who reflects on the nature of knowledge, and seeing that it in no wise involves the conception ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... is weak and unsteady," said he, "perhaps they may question and confuse her, and thus may death ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... at all," cried Riddell, whom the bare mention of those ladies' names was sufficient to confuse hopelessly. ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... hears spoken about him is at once a puzzle and a surprise. It is his own, yet not his own. It seems to him a caricature of English, a phantom speech, ghostly but familiar, such as he might hear in a land of dreams. He recognises its broad lineaments; its lesser details evade, or confuse, him. He acknowledges that the two tongues have a common basis. Their grammatical framework is identical. The small change of language—the adverbs and prepositions,—though sometimes strangely used in America, are not strange ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley |
